Flash Frames

Flash animation's appeal lies in its primitivism: purposefully choppy and minimalist in order to use as little bandwidth as possible, flash is the dominant medium of Internet art. In this highlights collection, the clips range from high profile efforts like Icebox's ambiguous riff on racism “Mr. Wong” to a series of snazzy Pontiac commercials done with flash. While the majority of the shorts are humor-based (and if you don't like one clip, the next one comes along within minutes), the terrifying blur of post 9/11 imagery and techno in “911: State of Emergence--The Saturation Engine, Pt. 1” from One Infinity shows that the medium has the potential for hard-core political messages. Flash Frames also features videos from artists as disparate as DJ Spooky, Supreme Beings of Leisure, and Todd Rundgren. Unfortunately, although it was nice of the DVD's producers to save people web surfing time, Flash Frames is a badly organized collection and finding the clips you actually want to see can be a frustrating task. Still, if Marvel Comics genius Stan Lee says that flash animation is important (on one of the DVD's several interviews with famous artists), who are we to argue? Although these are cartoons, the language, drug humor, and sexual content, make this suitable for older viewers. Optional. Aud: C, P. (D. Fienberg)