Wednesday, February 11, 2009

2008 Academy Award Nominees for Best Animated Short Film

Yesterday I went to the Magnolia theater in Dallas to watch a program of animated short films that are nominated for an Academy Award. I love animation and it’s rare to see short films of this type outside of the ones Pixar releases in front of their movies. In fact, one of the nominees is Presto, the short that was presented with WALL-E. Presto tells the story of a magician and his put-upon rabbit who refuses to be pulled out of a hat until he gets to eat a carrot. The rabbit puts the magician through all sorts of slapstick torture in the style of a Warner Brothers cartoon, kind of like what Bugs Bunny would do to Yosemite Sam. As with all of Pixar’s efforts, Presto is clever and very funny.

The first short of the program is Lavatory Lovestory from Russia. It’s a simple story about a lonely woman who attends a generic public restroom. My mom is living in Europe right now and she wrote about how different the restrooms are over there and even mentioned going to one that had an attendant that you are supposed to give money to when you enter. The animation in Lavatory Lovestory is mostly simple line drawings in black and white with a few splashes of color. The animators got a lot of expression from their characters even with the bare-bones style they used.

Oktapodi came next. Two octopi are in love but one of them is taken away by a chef to be served for dinner. The other octopus goes after his lover in a hilarious CGI adventure that is non-stop fun for all of its three minute running time. Obviously inspired by both Warner Bros. and Pixar cartoons, it was my favorite with lots of sight gags and a frenetic pace.

I initially had a hard time figuring out what was going on in La Maison en Petits Cubes. It’s about an old man whose house is slowly flooding. As he swims to the lower levels of his house, he remembers details of his life, especially memories of his late wife. I found myself quite moved by this surreal story of memory and loss.

This Way Up is a short with a distinctly British sense of black humor. Two serious looking undertakers try to take a casket to a cemetery and things go horribly wrong as all sorts of accidents happen to both the casket and the dead woman inside including a bizarre descent into hell itself. Morbid but hilarious.

After the five nominees, the program continued with several other shorts, which I presume were on the short-list but didn’t receive a nomination. The first was Varmints, a 24-minute short that I’m not sure I can accurately describe. It involves an anthropomorphic animal of indeterminate species who loves nature and being in the outdoors. His world soon turns nightmarish as other creatures drag a giant city into a meadow and the creature finds himself living in this bland, mechanical world. It reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. He hangs on to a plant seedling he rescued before the city arrived and meets a female member of his species. The CGI animation is outstanding with lots of surreal imagery and special effects.

Another fascinating short was Schizein from France. This one is a Twilight Zone type story about a man who is hit by a meteorite and perceives himself to be located exactly 91 centimeters from his actual body. I know, it s hard to describe in words but it works very well in the animation medium. This is one of the few films that has dialogue.

The program was rounded out by a few more shorts, the best of which is one by well-known animator Bill Plympton called Hot Dog about an overeager firehouse dog who tries to help fight a fire with disastrous and hilarious results.

2 comments:

Holy Roller said...

I just watched these movies and found them anywhere between outrageous and deeply moving. La maison en petits cubes was sad and touching and deserving of the Oscar it won. My personal favourite was the French Schizein though, it was quirky and extremely original, much like the well-known Amelie...

Sam Harper said...

Jeremy has a collection of Pixar shorts on DVD. Maybe if we ever go to the lakehouse again, we can watch them.