We were chatting the other night about how the Death Star, for all its evil genius as a total killing machine, was really badly designed. I mean from a defensive point of view – a huge open port, with no gun turrets inside, leading to a big self destruct button. And Darth, despite all his Jedi training, is a pretty lousy pursuer of Luke.

So we wondered if, at the end of Episode 3, aware that the Emporer is set to win, and that not much can be done about this, he reisgns to a life inside a giant gimp suit while secretly making plans to allow it all to come crashing down when the time comes, knowing that his son would one day come to avenge his death.

I await the calls of derision from proper fans, but meantime, keep this thought in your mind as you watch the latest Darth Vadar film doing the rounds.

Have a slightly madver 2008

As the season finally closes in on us, for those tired of the same old re-runs on TV or wanting to avoid the family warzone of the living room and watch TV on a computer under your bed - or better still are looking for films to share during the post-dinner web video show-off - I've pulled together some of our favorites of the year.

In the first bundle I've focussed on animation and stop motion, with no shortage of inventiveness from France to Japan, Sweden to America. As well as a particularly strong set of films using stop motion, there's a special look at one of YouTube's first punk-star filmmakers, Lasse Gjertsen, who was ignored while studying at the Kent Institute but now, back living with his parents in Norway, gets millions of views for his no-budget yet most finely cut flicks.

Of course this is but a tiny selection - do link to your favorites in the comments, and more to follow soon.

Animation 

走れ！(Life in 30 seconds) 

Backspace Float

Le Grande Motion

Music in the City by James Sandifer

The beautiful music of Elgar could be heard amongst scrap metal, bin bags and shrieking gulls yesterday as players from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played a recital in their most unusual venue ever - a London rubbish dump.

Dan - man with a Cannes Van Plan, has posted the first Rogue Runner Cannes update to his website. The show - shot over 12 hours and edited in 8 - runs on alternate days on his site and sponsor LoveFilm. Latest episode now online.

It is so easy to forget the human stories behind the daily news headlines. BoingBoing has pointed to a couple of great films appearing this week. One from the BBC sees Rageh Omaar, who after a year of wrangling got to film freely inside Iran, and which shows a world a million miles away from the normal footage of angry people protesting. The other, more disturbing yet similarly touching series is Hometown Bagdhad, a new vodcast syndicated to Salon from some Iraqi filmmakers and Chat the Planet. Both focus on indefatigably human and likable people, and watching them online really hammered home that it's only geography and fate that stops these people from being next door neighbors, colleagues or friends.

Hometown Iraq - The Dentist