She Likes to Watch

Hankering for a dose of digital media?
The Short Attention Span Digital Video Festival is back for a sixth year of funny, fascinating and moving short films.
Sponsored by Cuesta College, the festival showcases digital films — one to 20 minutes long — by students from around the world. Organizers work with the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.
Catch the first screening this Thursday at the Palm Theatre, 817 Palm Ave., in San Luis Obispo. Tickets are $10.

Here’s a sampling of the 17 short films you’ll see at Short Attention Span:

“Snip Crunch”: A pack of scissor wolves hunt for their paper sheep lunch.

“Eternal High”: A teenager captures his true-life struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide on film.

“Sailing the Star of India”: Modern men and women explain why they sail on the world’s oldest working tall ship in this film about the Star of India, the Maritime Museum of San Diego’s star attraction.

“SI SE PUEDE!?”: A mini-documentary covers the May 1, 2006, immigrant march in Los Angeles, combining sights and sounds with music and the spoken word.

“Plight of the Windie: Birds of Mystery”: This three-minute mockumentary tells the amazing tale of an endangered species of birds. The birds are plastic and powered by rubber bands but their owners don’t seem to notice.

“ORIZURU”: A forbidden love lost in the atomic ashes of Hiroshima.

“My Name Is Wallace”: A lonely, mentally challenged man finds love and redemption with a sex hotline operator.

Short Attention Span will screen more films on Nov. 8 at the Palm Theatre. The festival is also sponsoring November screenings in Los Angeles and Boston.

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Monty Python fans will want to catch John Cleese at UC Santa Barbara next week.
Cleese will introduce a screening of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” on Tuesday, May 1. The comedian, co-creator of Britain’s famous “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and star of “Fawlty Towers” and “A Fish Called Wanda,” will also answer questions about the classic, controversial “Life of Brian” after the film.
Tickets are $20, $10 for UC Santa Barbara students. Visit the event Web site for more details.

The future of film is coming to the Fremont.
This week, San Luis Obispo’s historic movie house becomes one of the first theaters in the area to screen films using a state-of-the-art digital projector.
“It’s the way of the future,” said Sanborn Theatres Inc. spokesman Harold Taylor, whose company runs the Fremont Theatre and SLO’s Downtown Centre Cinemas. “Once the public hears about it and the word goes around, they’re going to go nuts over it.”
According to Taylor, the Barco projector will mean a “brighter, clearer, crisper picture” for new releases.
The new projector also opens the Fremont to digital 3-D movies such as Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons,” which opens Friday.
“It’s not like those green and red glasses you used to wear … It doesn’t tire your eyes out,” Taylor said, adding that the digital format “brings a new depth to the picture.”
As Taylor explains it, digital films are downloaded from the studios onto a Kodak computer server, then projected onto the Fremont’s massive screen. Plans for a digital projector have been in the works for about six months, he said.
Based on their experiences in San Luis Obispo, Sanborn Theatres hopes to implement the technology at its other movie theaters.
“After a while, you just have to admit that it’s an improvement,” Taylor said.

So, is it better? Check it out for yourself at The Fremont Theatre, 1025 Monterey St., in San Luis Obispo.

– Sarah L.