Packaged with the latest edition of McSweeney's Quarterly was a wonderful surprise: The first issue of a new DVD magazine called Wholphin¹.

As one would expect from the publishers of McSweeney's and the Believer, Wholphin is full of quirky, inventive, and often (bizarrely) touching content. The short films included have not managed to find major distribution, and sometimes it is easy to tell why; despite the cleverness of the films, these are not all entirely marketable products.

J. Lisa Chang and Newton Thomas Siegel's The Big Empty (an adaptation of "The Specialist," first published in McSweeney's 11) is the story of a "little woman with [a] big empty." The titular mystery centers around a large, frozen wasteland contained within the body of a young woman named Alice (the surprisingly talented Selma Blair). I won't spoil the surprise gimmick that this premise hinges on, but I assure you that it's unlike anything you've ever seen before.

While some films, like the aforementioned The Big Empty, were produced on larger budgets by professional crews, other films like Scott Prendergast's hilariously strange The Delicious and Spike Jonze's remarkable documentary profile of Al Gore are presented in a much more of a guerrilla style. Yes, you did read that properly. There is a remarkable documentary profile of Al Gore, one which editor Brent Hoff suggests "might have wiped away [...] Gore's reputation as a robot." Perhaps the film wouldn't have "changed the world" as Hoff goes on to say, but it certainly is a revealing bit of filmmaking.

Other highlights include excerpts from David O. Russell's Iraq documentary Soldier's Pay and conceptual artist Jeroen Offerman's mind-bending backwards-sung rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" (Stairway at St. Rose). There are also animations (including a surreal 1970s Iranian production), an instructional video from the 1950s, and an episode of a Turkish sitcom complete with six different subtitle tracks (one original and five written especially for the DVD).

To round out the collection, there is also a brand new short film written by Miranda July and starring John C. Reilly entitled Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody. Although I'm not sure about labeling it "haiku-like," it certainly is a fun and engaging short piece.

The package is completed with an informative booklet featuring director interviews and/or artist's statements and three separate DVD menu designs, each blossoming into a stand-alone short film after a few seconds. It is an elegantly designed product and is packed with strange goodness. Future installments promise short films from the writers of the Daily Show and the Academy Award-nominated animation The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. If the successive discs are as good as this one, I will certainly be more than willing to shell out the $10 per issue. As a cineaste, a resource for short films (outside of the festival circuit) such as Wholphin is truly indispensable.

^1. What is a 'wholphin,' you ask? According to the accompanying booklet, a wholphin is "a cross between a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin." And yes, they are real, and no, it doesn't matter.