In recent years, all ten of the Animated Short and Live Action Short film Oscar nominees have been gathered up and released into theaters in one package, or sometimes two, depending on the collective lengths of the shorts. These programs are almost always wondrously entertaining, even if a few of the shorts are clunkers, and let's face it, we're talking the Academy here, so there are always clunkers. (Note: This rant does not include the Documentary short nominees.)Best Animated ShortThis year, I started with the Animated Shorts, which were, overall, refreshingly short. Paperman I had seen theatrically, twice, in front of Disney's Wreck-It-Ralph, and loved it both times. It's about 7 minutes long and has a beautifully fluid, black-and-white look and a glorious use of shadows and spaces. It's funny and romantic, and I easily gave up disbelief during the odd paper airplane-infested climax.
Fresh Guacamole is less than 2 minutes long, though I'm sure it must have been very complicated to make; it looks like stop-motion. A hand chops up strange items, hand-grenades, baseballs, etc., and makes guacamole from them. Head Over Heels is another stop-motion film, about 10 minutes long, and it's truly imaginative and heartwarming. It depicts an old couple that have stopped speaking to one another and have grown apart. One of them lives on the ceiling and the other lives on the floor. Their refrigerator slides up and down the wall so they can both access it. But a sure sign of hope is that they fight over the orientation of their wedding picture. Directors Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly capture a nice sense of gravity and space here.
Adam and Dog is the longest of the animated shorts, running about 15 minutes. It's hand-drawn, with some really beautiful backdrops. Director Minkyu Lee often uses huge, empty frames with very tiny figures moving around within. It tells the possible story of what might have happened if Adam met a dog slightly before he met Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Lastly, we have The Longest Daycare, our official Simpsons entry, telling the wordless story of Maggie's first day at daycare and her quest to protect a butterfly from a bully. This five-minute short is lovely and hilarious, and -- subtly -- almost a spoof of the kinds of short films that tend to get nominated for Oscars.
Concerning non-nominated films, it's a huge field and short films are only sporadically made available to critics, so I'm leaving that field blank in this category. As for my personal favorite from among the nominees? I'm torn between Paperman and The Longest Daycare, but as a longtime Simpsons fan, I guess I'll have to go with the latter. As for the voters and my prediction? I'm not sure, but I'll go with Paperman for now.
The (Possible) Winner: PapermanShould Win: The Longest Daycare
Best Live Action ShortThe live action shorts program is, sadly, quite a bit longer, running almost two hours in total. The French-language Henry was not a good place to start in the live action program. It's a dreary depiction of an old pianist losing his memory; it attempts to be playful, like a spy movie, but ends up being cruel and depressing. It reminded me of Amour, which was not a good thing.
Thankfully Death of a Shadow was next, an amazing, powerful sci-fi fantasy tale about a dead German soldier forced to photograph the shadows of 10,000 dead people for another chance at life, and his lost love. This short, in Dutch with English subtitles, contains some extremely lovely, as well as devastating imagery. Another winner is Curfew, an American short that manages to be adorable, touching, and heartbreaking in less than 20 minutes. A suicidal loser gets a desperate call from his sister, asking him to babysit his niece for a few hours, an act that changes all their lives.
The South African tale Asad manages to deflect its message about Somali refugees through its moving tale of a scrappy young boy trying to catch a fish... mostly. The 17-minute short still manages to get a bit heavy-handed from time to time, but on the whole, it's sweet and effective.
Finally, we have the longest of the shorts, the half-hour Buzkashi Boys, from Afghanistan. It involves two boys, the son of a blacksmith, and an orphaned beggar, who are best friends. The orphan takes the other to a buzkashi match, where horseback riders fight for the possession of a goat. The boys talk about their destinies, etc. Despite the exotic setting, there was just something so American about the rhythms of this one, and the ending is a dud.
So, my favorite is Curfew, mainly for the way it manages to achieve such depth of emotion in such a short amount of time; it manages to be tough, but funny and sweet at the same time, and I wanted to spend more time with those characters. However, I doubt it's going to win. It seems like either Buzkashi Boys or Asad are the type of thing that usually takes home Oscars. Asad is better, and more political, so for now I'm going with that. But I may change my mind.
The (Possible) Winner: Asad
Should Win: Curfew
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