Dilation Studios’ The Associate
Beautifully shot, with a retro aesthetic, Dilation Studios’ quiet story of a man faced with a distasteful choice, a devil of a deal with a true demon, is a tense, thoughtful jaunt that makes you question both yourself, and the ways of the world.

Antfood, Buck, String Theory, and Good Books: Metamorphosis
The best commercial I’ve seen in months, with clean narrative and mellifluously slick imagery; high-minded and lowbrow and rollicking like a rum diary.  Plus, it’s persuasive too—Antfood, Buck, String Theory, and Good Books have something brilliant here.

Us and Benga: I Will Never Change
The visualization of sound and the way we access music is explored in a nicely layered fashion by Us to the tune of Benga’s forcefully hypnotic I Will Never Change—a streaming record waveform: full of symbolism; simple, and superb.

SWooZie
SWooZie is an illustrator, filmmaker, and ace with DeviantArt’s Muro, but to me, his greatest strength is his oral storytelling, his words, not his images.  This is what the art of the griot looks like in the 21^st Century.

MF DOOM at the Red Bull Music Academy
It’s always interesting and inspirational to hear an artist whom you like a lot talk about his or her life and work, and it is especially cool when the artist in question is as elusive and mysterious as MF DOOM—fantastic.

Tobias Szabo’s Vorare
A lushly animated cautionary tale, Tobias Szabo’s Vorare is a fine digital parable with striking visuals and somewhat unsettling content.

Yves Geleyn’s Snow Angels
An animated storybook, a warm good-night tale, Yves Geleyn’s Snow Angels has the narrative of a holiday special with the visuals that have an almost puppet-like dynamic.

W. Scott Forbes’ A Good Wife
Capturing complex emotions with sensitivity and style, W. Scott Forbes uses sparse and plaintive shots, each measured and full of smart design, to place his viewer squarely in the shoes of the titular wife.  Be sure to also check out his wonderful illustrative work on his site.

Mark Bramley’s Lost in Tokyo
A heady mix of fluid street photography, time-laspse shots, and architectural contemplation, all alive with light, Mark Bramely takes us on a tour of Tokyo that makes me wish I could be lost like him.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ Evelyn Grace Academy
If I’d asked my grandparents when they were my age what the school of 2011 would look like, they might have dreamed of a place like Zaha Hadid Architects’ RIBA Sterling Prize-winning Evelyn Grace Academy in London.  With plenty of light, open spaces for honing the mind and body, and classic-retro styling, it seems like a really great place to learn.