A couple of years ago, just in time for the holidays and cold days stuck inside, there was a neat thread on the Core design forum where we submitted our favorite “designer” flicks. I was thinking about that recently while in the midst of some mindnumbing work, and as it happened I managed to stumble across some interesting bits of moving images this week. And while they’re not all related to product design or virtual worlds, there is a quality to them that I find interesting and relevant – if not in practicality, then in sensibility.

First up is a one-man effort to put out a film called “We Are the Strange”. I happened across this via some surfing through the CGTalk forums (where the filmmaker apparently ruffled a few feathers some time back). It’s a eclectic mix of videogames (the Sinistar soundclip is a nice touch), puppeteering, CG and whatever else the filmmaker seems to have had lying around; but that’s what I like. Word is that it was just admitted into the Sundance Film festival, so we’ll see where it goes from there.

Next up is Crispin Glover’s “What is it?” (Link – NSFW trailer on the site) I’m not sure where this fits, to be honest. It’s getting some good reviews from people who probably like such films as “Eraserhead” and “Begotten“, so I figure maybe I’ll find this oddly entertaining. I don’t know. There are elements in it (like using negative images) that seems dated to me; as if this film belongs in the 70’s. Even so, I like Glover’s film acting work so I might really like this.

Back to more blog-relevant fare, I’m unsure how I missed the machinima-made XB0x 360 commercial showing the visually-stunning “Gears of War” videogame that was recently released, but I did. If, like me, you missed it, the above is the low-quality YouTube version of the commercial. To really see the power of the Unreal 3 engine, check out the Quicktime on director Joseph Kosinski’s website (Link). Amazing what can be done with a videogame now. To think that “Toy Story” cost something like $30M to make and each frame took hours to render, and today something not too different can be rendered on a highend PC using a videogame.