LAZY SUNDAY # 53: WOLPHINDVD

"You've got to love it when magazines release better films than Hollywood." — Rolling Stone

As the Main Stream Media continue to chronicle their own decline -- smaller newspapers, magazines folding, TV networks reducing their hours of new drama; it's only natural for us creative types to wonder where we'll find outlets for what we create and how we'll find an audience for them when we do.

We needn't worry. Because some people are way ahead of us.

Among them is a DVD magazine published quarterly by McSweeney's entitled Wholphindvd. Each issue includes short movies, documentaries, instructional videos, foreign sitcoms and other uncategorizable films. As the publishers say, "If it's good, rare, new or unseen, it's on Wholphindvd".

You can sample Wolphindvd via their Youtube Preview Channel or their own website, where you can download many of the magazine's offerings.

For a guy socked in by winter, the short video from the magazine appended below had a lot of appeal. A warm, sandy beach, a friendly impromptu game of volleyball -- make that "Wallyball" because there's also a wall -- one dividing two countries and two very different cultures.

It reminded me of how much you can communicate in a couple of minutes of sparsely verbal film. And it had me wondering what might happen if another couple of countries with their own sand and their own walls started tossing a ball over them instead of rockets and missiles.

Bask in the sunshine. Imagine the future -- and enjoy your Sunday.