Two Thumbs Up (And a Couple of Open Toed Slingbacks)

You have got to check out Amazon Theatre at Amazon.com. For the holiday season they are presenting five short films by various directors. These are all classic shorts. They have excellent production values, and most of them contain some very familiar faces. "Portrait" was the very first presentation, and so far it is still my favorite. Minnie Driver is outstanding as the spoiled, bitchy, shrewish corporate queen in this twisted Cinderella story, which serves to remind us that it really is what's on the inside that counts. Blair Underwood is the star of "Do Geese See God?", a plot driven short where the audience is carried along with Underwood's Dr. Awkward as he races against time, time and time again.

Okay, granted, this is a marketing ploy. A really interesting, and entertaining marketing ploy. I mean, the cast list in the credits contains the names of all the objects featured in the films, along with links to take you right to the place on Amazon.com where you can buy them. Makes sense, I guess. After all, we now get commercials in the movie theaters for everything from Coke to airline tickets. Why not cut out the middleman? Make the movies themselves the commercials. Get the consumer connected directly to the object of her desire. This is product placement for the new millennium; you see it, you want it, we got it, come get it.

It would be easy to dismiss this as mere crass commercialism, one more nail in the coffin of Western civilization, except for one thing. These films are good. Really good. They are well-written and cleverly plotted. There is innovative camera work, seamless digital tricks. There are fine performances; even in the films where dialogue is absent no one is upstaged by the BCBG Max Azria skirt, or the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ Pocket PC. Which I guess really says something when the shoes, and the purse, and the tea kettle are ostensibly the point. It is a commercial, but it is also art. These are real films, some by new directors, who are just getting out there. If Amazon gets a million hits per day and even a small fraction of these people take the five minutes to watch one of these intriguing movies, in a month this director already has more exposure than even Scorsece or DePalma get with an all out studio blitz. And how many people saw any of these guys' early attempts at filmmaking?

I am almost tempted to drag out the keyboard and pen a little drama of my own. How about a taut, gripping five-minute thriller, where a frazzled English teacher agonizes over how to get her Christmas shopping done and make sure everything is delivered before December 23? I bet I could get top billing at Amazon with that one.