For their second issue of Wholphin—the “DVD magazine of rare and unseen short films”—the folks at McSweeney's have assembled another fascinating collection of things both entertaining and provocative. Oh, never heard of a wholphin? It's a cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin and, as a weird sea creature, is meant as a metaphor for the equally unusual movie finds out there that seldom get an audience.
The second Wholphin collection had me mesmerized most of the time, completely frustrated and pissed off the rest (like most McSweeney's endeavors), but I have enough confidence in the passion and integrity of the enterprise that I was willing to see what they'd discovered.
Of the 13 shorts on the main disc, the most satisfying this go around are the comedy pieces. “American Storage” is a quirky bit about a dull employee (Martin Starr) at a storage facility who discovers a man living in one of the units while his boss is away (Steve Carell) and forms a bond that inspires him to take control of his life. Jessica Yu's “Sour Death Balls” gets its intended laughs by merely documenting the reactions of kids and adults when given a super sour gobstopper.
Errol Morris manages to uncover yet another side of a man we all thought we'd figured out with “More,” a narration by Donald Trump from an aborted doc in which he analyzes Citizen Kane and states that it's about “accumulation and that not all accumulation is necessarily positive…wealth isn't everything.” The other “star” turn is by Steven Soderbergh with his nearly four-minute long contribution, “Building No. 7”—which purportedly held up this volume's release—and is the most disappointing in the bunch: a shaky cam follows a guy across town on the NY subway (accompanied by a rock soundtrack). I had to check the info three times to make sure this was the Soderbergh piece; it feels more film school than finished.
But it's no question that the most powerful part of the release is the bonus disc, the first of three installments of “The Power of Nightmares,” a documentary everyone should see by Adam Curtis from the BBC that focuses on the parallels between the rise of American neoconservatism and Islam fundamentalism. It's with this vital addition that Wholphin transcends from a collection of fripperies and achieves its rank as vital cultural force.
