16-BIT ARTHOUSE: MCSWEENEY’S SCREENS EMILY CARMICHAEL’S LEDO & IX

From the “where you least expect them” dept.: McSweeney’s offshoot DVD magazine Wholphin is currently screening the first episode of The Adventures of Ledo & Ix online — a low-tech/high-brow five minute faux-16-bit short by Emily ‘Kid Can Drive‘ Carmichael.

I won’t over-explain the purpose of the short (the teaser trailer is above), except to excerpt this bit of the subsequent interview with Carmichael:

I wanted that sense of lieu vague, a term that Wikipedia has just told me describes the “nonspecific setting” of Waiting for Godot. Even the vagueness is vague, no one says, for instance: “It’s weird we don’t know where we’re going, and we should perhaps consult some sort of reference material”… One of the main things Ledo and Ix are up against is a world which is anti-climactic at every turn.

Watch the episode in its entirety via Wholphin — and consider a subscription, it’s one of the consistently best curated video collections in recent years.