On the short circuit

It's boom time for short films, says Lisa Rosen in The LA Times.

"There's definitely a feeling that big things are happening for short film, partly because of MySpace and YouTube, but also because of the mobile platforms," said [Shane] Smith [a juror at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival]. "We're very much behind Asia and Europe in terms of downloading mobile content, but the potential is huge.

"It almost reminds me of the Internet gold rush of the late 20th century; there's an element of that, along with the hope that there's a revenue model in this, that filmmakers won't be burned like they were with the dot-com rush."