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In Case You Haven't Seen "Ataque de Pánico!" ...

… aka “Panic Attack!” You should do so now. The five minutes above was released in 2009 and comes courtesy of Uruguayan animator/director Fede Alvarez. The video premiered at a the indie sci-fi/horror film festival Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre, was uploaded to YouTube, and with a little help from the blog of Kanye West, became a minor hit (touching seven million views as of today). In short time, Alvarez was in Hollywood with a $30 million movie deal and Sam Raimi on board as producer/mentor.

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The whole affair gets a lot of attention for its role as a sort of Hollywood inversion: DIY filmmaker gets big on the internet, goes huge in Hollywood, making Hollywood look kind of stupid in the process. And it gets a bit less attention for being a oddly beautiful ballet of mass disaster, the sort of thing we see major studios spend tons of money on, and frequently fail at. I’m thinking here first of the seasickness-inducing battles of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, and how tons of money and all of the explosions you could possibly want made by the finest CGI studios in Los Angelees might make an already hacky filmmaker care even less about actual choreography — and fear.