The James Francos of tomorrow...today

Last year, around this time, I wrote about attending Erasers for Breakfast, 826 NYC's annual film festival to showcase the kids' masterpieces from the summer film program. This year, around this time, and specifically last night, I attended Erasers for Breakfast 2011 and was yet again blown away by the talent and creativity of the young'uns. This both inspires me to work on my own creative pursuits and makes me jealous of 10-year-olds for having seemingly endless time and a fountain of fresh ideas. I probably should have written more down when I was 10 because I'm pretty sure I had better ideas back then, and I certainly had more of them.

But enough stewing on past regrets! I wanted to share some of the kids' stories and film ideas because I enjoyed them so much and because they deserve credit before I try to pass them off as my own. My favorite film this year (almost on par with last year's favorite "There's One I in President") was called "Shhhhh!" and told the story of a fairy tale village in Prospect Park beset by an evil librarian (I hope no umbrage will be taken by any of the wonderful, far-from-evil librarians in my life). The villain of the story was on a mission to capture all the world's sounds in little jars and thus the townspeople were reduced to speaking with signs and resorting to silent movie over-acting. Her mission would only be complete when she captured the final missing sound, which, as it turns out, was that of a ukulele. The cleverness of the film was mostly in the details. In the librarian's evil layer they had taken the time to label all the canisters of sound behind her including everything from "ringtone" to "birds whistling" and my personal favorite "Bieber." Not to spoil the ending, lest "Shhhh!" should ever receive the wider audience it deserves, but suffice is to say it involves bagels, an army of ukuleles, and just the right amount of karmic justice.

The evening included two other "feature length" films and two short films which were all equally charming. One of the shorts "Old Ninja" was about an octogenarian ninja who fights crime in mostly serendipitous and stereotypic old-man-in-New-York sort of ways. It was made even more delightful through the use of a catchy theme song. There was also an excellent story involving a set of interns who have to take over the news show after all the real anchors are beset by donut-induced food poisoning. This could seriously be a Judd Apatow movie by next summer, only it will sadly lack the raw authenticity.

One of the films scores was done by a musician who is apparently well known (by Brooklyn hipsters) as evidenced by how many people took out their iphones to record him. However, being hopelessly unhip (I still mostly just listen to ABBA...is that wrong?), I've never heard of him. In fact, I thought based on the few words he spoke that he had a southern accent, but apparently he is Norwegian. At any rate, I liked the song he played, so I will leave you with that.