A Moral Abyss

The main character (the synopsis on the website calls him Charlie, but nowhere in the film do we find out his name) of "The Black Hole" is presented with an amazing gift, one it seems tailor-made for the criminally minded, which he just so happens to be. The copy machine at work seems to be malfunctioning, spitting out the same page, blank but for a large black dot on it.  He puts his cup of water on the paper with the black dot and it falls through it.  He tries sticking his hand in, and it goes through as well.  He figures out that the black dot is more of a black hole, one that dematerializes whatever is directly under it. 

In quick order, Charlie goes from using the dot to steal a candy bar out of the snack machine to taping it to the side of a safe to steal the money out of it.  The only problem is that Charlie gets a little too greedy and climbs all the way inside the safe, after which, the paper with the black dot, peels off of the front of the safe, leaving Charlie trapped inside.

It's clearly a morality play.  Don't be greedy, don't take more than you need, etc.  But I can't help wondering what else this black dot would be good for.  Maybe you can help me.  What "good" could someone readily do with something like that.  Like I said before, it is a criminal's wildest dream-come-true.  It makes me think of the saying, "locks are for keeping out the honest people." What if you had something that rendered all locks pointless?  How strong would the temptation be to use it?

The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow

This highly stylized short film is a bit of an enigma to me, but it's fun to watch, if just for the inventiveness of it.  It has a strong, Sherlock Holmes / Bram Stoker / Robert Louis Stevenson feel to it.  It must have been both very simple and very complex to make. The film takes place in the 1930s, if the film can be said to "take place" at all.  It's essentially one still image, a photograph that's being combed over, presumably, by a detective in a macabre murder case.  The photograph, which actually seems to be a collage of things that happened in one place, but at different times, is looked at with a magnifying glass.  Someone with a keener eye than mine, or with more time, might be able to figure out the mystery, but I've watched the film twice and still haven't figured it out. 

There seems to be some kind of conspiracy or cult or secret society involved, as all the men in the photo have the same tattoo on their wrists. Also, it could be that they are all the same man. (Are they Mr. Hollow? Who is Mr. Hollow!?) The woman in the center of the photo may or may not also be the woman who is dead inside the car.  During the credits there is a newspaper clipping about child kidnappings, and the woman in the photo is holding a child, so I'm inclined to think that she is the murder victim, and that she's been killed for her child.  However, the word "Keres" appears at the beginning, during the credits, as well.  I looked it up and Keres is a Greek mythological character, one who is associated with darkness and death.  So maybe the woman in the photo is a kind of Keres, one who has a thing for other people's children.  Anyway, it's a mystery, and I have not solved it.  Maybe you will...