Amy; Ka-Pow

With few artistic exceptions, student short films either a) show promise, or b) do not show promise, but they rarely warrant being placed on the market for sale--especially at prices like $39.95 and $100. Amy, Susan Rivo's charming short about her lifelong attachment to a stuffed dog doll combines home movie footage, interview clips with relatives and friends, commentary from the filmmaker, and a mock (I think) scene of a support group for women overly attached to childhood playthings. It's a cute one-note film that might play well on a collection of shorts but hardly seems worth a hundred bucks. Interesting find: A quick Internet search revealed that Amy was, in fact, available on a collection with four other shorts entitled Dancing with the Sun, listed on Reel.com (www.reel.com) for $16.99 (reg. price: $19.99). For that price, Amy is a good buy; at $100, it's a very optional purchase. Aud: P.Ka-Pow, from recent film school graduate D.A. Covington, is a grainy effort with mediocre sound, in which an African-American mother (played by Covington) and her two daughters are threatened when an abusive boyfriend suddenly turns up at a new boyfriend's house (I think) and confronts the mother in a (poorly lit) basement. The title refers to one of the girls using a wand from a magic set to make things disappear, abracadabra-like, although how that ties into the film's climactic close when a gun comes into the picture and the little girl apparently confuses fantasy and reality (with two very different objects) is a little unclear. Very optional. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)