Wonderful character development!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Am I Missing Something?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The Looking Planet "A tale translated from the Cosmic Background Radiation." That is the tag line for this really cute and very well animated 17 minute CGI short film. Why is it called "The Looking Planet"? Well, the film answers that question in a very interesting way, and at the center of the story is a young Cosmic Engineer named Lufo. He's creative but feels stifled doing the same thing millennium after millennium, so he finds a way to break up the monotony and discovers something unexpected in the process.Many human artists often feel they and their creativity are being wasted on the routine rut of day-to-day life, often desperately searching for a way to break out of the daily grind, if only just once, and let that wild creative scream out for the world, the Universe, to see and hear. It would seem that humans are not so unique in this, after all.Being someone who has been hooked on Astronomy since the tender age of eight and listening to the sound of the Universe as I look up at the stars twinkling in the night sky, I've wondered, as so many of us have, what might be out there? Are we alone in the Universe or are there other forms of life lurking among those distant stars? How did we get here? Why are we here? What are we doing or supposed to be doing? Through science fiction, the human imagination has sought increasingly creative ways to tell stories to perhaps come up with some plausible ideas. Are any of them right? Are we even close? Who is to say? But that doesn't stop us from asking those questions and finding more inventive ways to answer them as science grows ever more complex and we discover more and more secrets hiding in the Universe, waiting for someone smart enough, or perhaps creative enough, to find and understand them.Winner of numerous awards at more than 40 film festivals across the country and around the world, The Looking Planet is well deserving of those awards, I assure you. And if you pay careful attention, you will see hints of a much deeper and far greater story yet to be told. Imagine if this were to become a full length feature film - how much of the story could be told then? If you have not seen "The Looking Planet" yet, what are you waiting for? Perhaps Einstein was right; maybe imagination truly is more important than knowledge after all.Katt – Nerdversity 101

I saw this film at the 2014 Knoxville Film Festival, and I had the extraordinary experience of seeing an audience on pause. The entire film was utterly mesmerizing, but there was one particular moment (and one will know when he or she sees it) where I personally came to the slightly tearful realization that we are ALL in this together. Not sure if my fellow audience members came to the same conclusion, but in that moment, we shared something that silenced us and stilled the air. I had the notion that this film should be translated into every language and shown everywhere across the planet in hopes that everyone would have the epiphany or the aha moment that I did. In the moment, I truly felt that would be the beginning of the shift into world peace. This film spoke a message that clearly to me. But, if the least this film does is put an audience on pause, that is no less extraordinary work.

I caught a screening of The Looking Planet at the 2015 Phoenix Film Festival. While it was one of many films included in a showing of Science Fiction Shorts, it didn't have to be. What I mean by that is that it could have just as easily been at home screening with non-SciFi shorts and would have easily been at home screening with feature length films. It was that good. The difference between you, as a reader of this review, and me is that I had no idea what I was in for and you have the advantage of being told to seek this out. It can stand with any of those other types of films regardless of its short running time because of what it does with the time it has - and yes, fleshing this out to a full length feature might be an option if the ideas are there... or maybe its perfect the way it is now. What makes this film a joy is that its equal parts smart, humorous, thought provoking, beautiful to watch, and technically brilliant. It proffers one imaginative way in which our universe might have been created... and wouldn't it be grand if scientists eventually discovered that this filmmaker got it right?! Just go find this film, sit back, open your eyes ears and mind, and be prepared to leave the theatre pondering the possibilities while wearing a big grin on your face.

Ben and Keith (The Two Gay Geeks) who screened this short at the first Phoenix Loves Sci- Fi Film Festival along with 20 other shorts. This was one of the ones they chose as a standout among the crowd. This was part of the second block of films on the program. It is too bad so many people left during the break. This was likely the best on the program. Keith thought it was fun and a humorous look at our planet. I will say in this short, they did a lot of universe building (insert rim shot here). Nice to self expression at its best. Ben's thoughts: One of the most charming shorts I have ever watched with plenty of nods to Magrathea from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but drawn from a very interesting premise regarding the science regarding Earth's own moon. It was heartwarming, beautifully animated, and left me with a smile on my face by the time it finished. No wonder this fine short is award winning, it truly is a winner. We look forward to seeing more form this director.