Perhaps you've heard that Robert Redford has announced a Sundance Institute initiative called the "Global Short Film Project" for mobile phones, signing up directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton of "Little Miss Sunshine," Justin Lin of "Better Luck Tomorrow," and three other filmmakers to shoot cell-phone films. Another blow struck for the shiny future of movies? The end of cinema as we know it? Neither and both, but director Josh Appignanesi, writing in the London Guardian, is in a stew about the church/state issues of cinema and corporate sponsorship. He has a point, and so does the commenter who notes that if the doubters had had their way 100 years ago, we'd still be cranking the handles of nickelodeons. Who's to say we can't crank a Nokia instead?

Personally, I consider this Redford (pictured, above) and Sundance's latest attempt to remain relevant in a rapidly expanding world of micro-cinema that's fleeing in the opposite direction. If the cell-phone film clips shown before the features at this year's Toronto International Film Festival are any indication, the very small screen format will be a forum for the same sort of navel-gazing solipsism that drives most IMs. Oh, and porn. Which I guess is the same thing. But who knows? Maybe the future holds a Proust of pocket movies?