Secondhand Reviews: "2010 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation"

 Each year, the local Landmark theatres present a program featuring all of the Oscar-nominated short films: actually, they do two: one for the live action shorts, and one for animation. This year, the good folks at the Riverview Theatre have wound up presenting the animated program in a Friday through Sunday weekend matinee, enabling me to catch it for once. And I'm mighty glad I did. particularly with three bonus shorts that didn't quite make the cut on the final ballot. Herewith, a few brief comments.

1. "FRENCH ROAST" (France). This could have worked very nicely as a live action silent film. A man finishes his coffee in a cafe, goes to look for his wallet, and finds it missing. What to do (without telling the waiter, of course)? The who thing leads to a string of very silly gags that play out without the need of sub-titles, since there is virtually no dialogue. A number of the shorts in this program get quite dark, but this isn't one of them. It's pure silliness, but silliness on a marvelously entertaining level.

2. "GRANNY O'GRIMM'S SLEEPING BEAUTY" (Ireland). Now, this one is also silly. A grandmother starts to tell her grandchild the classic story of Sleeping Beauty as a bed time story, but obviously granny has some major, major issues with how she perceives that she has been ignored and put down by the higher-ups of society, and this keeps creeping into her story, morphing it into a strange, twisted version of the tale the likes of which Disney never knew. Her grandchild keeps getting more and more frightened as an oblivious Granny talks on. Young kids might not quite "get" this one, but in its own way, it's a classic.

3. "THE LADY AND THE REAPER" (Spain).  Now, talk about dark: an old woman is ready for death, which she sees as finally allowing her to rejoin her beloved husband. She welcomes the reaper when he appears... except that an obnoxious, self-centered doctor keeps bringing her back, leading to a wacky, slapstick struggle between the lady & the reaper on on side, and doc on the other. If you think suicide should be totally off limits as a subject for humor, perhaps this isn't the film for you, but it's every bit as wild and wacky as a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Short. Hmm... Daffy, Bugs and the Reaper. I could see that.

4. A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (England).  The return of the beloved Wallace And Gromit (when this came on, the cheers and applause were nearly deafening). The brilliant dog Gromit and his lovable but utterly stupid master Wallace are now bakers. But a serial killer has been bumping off bakers in the area, and it looks like Wallace could be the next target. Naturally, it's up to Gromit to save him, as always. The genius of creator Nick Park is as sharp as ever, and the film is filled with all sorts of subtle visual gags you could very likely miss the first time through, including (surprisingly) a couple of politically-oriented bits. All the more reason to see it again... you can never catch a Wallace and Gromit film too many times.

5. "LOGORAMA" (Argentina). This was the actual winner, and I have to say that I was a bit surprised, as to me it was one of the weaker pieces. Imagine, if you will, your typical violent buddy-cop movie condensed down to 16 minutes and featuring a cast composed entirely of characters from advertising logos... the two cops are Micheline tire men, the big villain is Ronald McDonald, Mister Clean drives a kiddy train in a zoo, and a couple of mustached guys from the Pringles Potato Chip cans wind up as hostages, for starters. For a while, it's amusing, especially since the blood & guts, and the language, is as strong as it would be in a live action movie of this sort, but it runs out of steam before long, and seems to go on a whole lot longer than 16 minutes. At least it was only one part of a largely more inventive program.

AND THE BONUS THREE...

1. "PARTLY CLOUDY" (USA). A Pixar short that played in theatres in front of the feature "Up". A group of storks keep picking up babys (human and animal both) from friendly clouds and delivering them... but one particular stork is stuck with a cloud who can't seem to create any kinds of babies but dangerous ones like alligators and sharks. It's very, very cute. Maybe a little too cute. I suppose that the very youngest of the small fries will have a good time, but those accustomed to the more adventurous Pixar work, including the feature film that it accompanied in theatres, might feel a little let down. As one of only two let downs on a program of eight, though, it's harmless enough.

2. "RUNAWAY" (Canada). Another film that might surprise audiences accustomed to light and fluffy harmless kid's stuff animation. This story of a runaway train and the efforts of the train's crew to bring it to a halt take death very lightly indeed, as many of the film's laughs derive from how one or more character meets their end. It also has some very, very sharp satirical points about the gap between the haves and the have-nots and how little the former care about what happens to the latter. It's similar to "The Lady And The Reaper" in that the somber subject matter is played for humor, but here it isn't silly at all, it's biting, even vicious satire that still manages to be funny.

3. "THE KINEMATOGRAPH" (Poland). One of the three in the program that didn't quite make the final cut, it turns out that this is the one of the eight that would have gotten my actual vote. It's the story of an inventor who's working on perfecting his invention... motion pictures with both color and sound... at the same time that the Lumiere brothers are working on their silent black and white movies (and we know that they got the credit). Incredibly touching and moving, this very human story is ultimately about how the movies can keep alive the people, places and feelings that we might otherwise have lost in a way that no other art form can. The other shorts in this program often result in tears of laughter. This is the one that evokes real tears in a honest, non tear-jerking style. There are moments in it that are just as inventive visually and deeply emotional as the moments in Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" that deal with the same subjects, and I wouldn't have thought any other film could ever do that as effectively.

Except for perhaps "Lograma" and "Partly Cloudy" I'd recommend any of these little films as fine examples of what animation is capable of. I'm not sure whether this program is available on DVD in the same form as it was screened theatrically, but even if it isn't, it would be worth searching out the various individual films. They're that good.  They're enough to make you wish short animated films were still shown in front of features as a standard policy.