Shorts? Sweet!

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An astonishing number of cartoons are nominated for Academy Awards this year—Up, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Avatar, Meryl Streep's mawkish turn as Julia Child—but only five are in contention for Best Animated Short Film.

Oscar's recognition of animated shorts dates all the way back to 1932, when Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees took home the statuette in what was known for nearly 40 years as the "Short Subjects, Cartoon" category. The Seventies heralded two name changes, first to "Short Films (Animated Films)" and then its current moniker. That era also saw Disney et al.'s dominance challenged by the likes of the Hubleys, Will Vinton, and various works created under the auspices of the National Film Board of Canada and its Francophone sibling, Société Radio-Canada.

Then came Pixar. Today it's tough to imagine seeing an animated short—in the theaters, anyway—from any other studio, but in 1986, John Lasseter and William Reeves' Luxo, Jr. had to be satisfied with the honor of being nominated. Academy voters—and, indeed, the world—little realized that the eponymous desk lamp starring in the short would soon stomp on nearly every animated flick in its path.

Which brings us to the 2009 slate. Boasting more motion than an emoting Nicole Kidman's forehead, this year's nominees hail from France, Spain, the U.K., Ireland, and, er, France and employ techniques ranging from old-school claymation to CG. Pixar's lackluster Partly Cloudy, although short-listed, is not among their number. But it is part of the traveling program of Oscar-nominated animated shorts, a series which reportedly broke the single-screen box office record for highest gross at the IFC Center in New York and is being held over across the country at indie theaters like the Coolidge Corner in Brookline, Massachusetts; and Cine Athens (Georgia).

The sequencing of the shorts is almost as interesting as their subject matter. First up is Fabrice O. Joubert's slight slice-of-life, French Roast, which has been on the festival circuit since 2008. A smoothly executed eight-minute CG vignette set in a Parisian café, Roast tells the story of a businessman's plight once he realizes he's forgotten his wallet. There's an unctuous waiter bringing endless espressos, a fly-haloed beggar, and an apple-cheeked nun at the adjacent table with a big wad of cash in her purse. There's also no dialogue, just a lot of musical Mickey-Mousing. It's cute, and no doubt accomplished from a zeroes-and-ones standpoint, but French Roast lacks buzz.

Spain's La Dama y la Muerte, energetic and engaging though it is, is also the first of four films dealing with aging and/or death (and not in a wholesome Lupo the Butcher manner, either). A little old lady drifts off to sleep, clutching the photograph of the dead husband she longs to join. Just as the Grim Reaper comes to collect her, modern medicine—in the form of a preening masked doctor with an Elvis coiffure and a harem of hotsy-totsy nurses—intervenes and brings the old lady back from the brink. A terrible tug-of-war ensues, but the hilarity can't hide the essential melancholy of a widow no longer interested in living.

Nick Park will have to work faster to best Walt Disney's record 26 Academy Award wins, but the smart money has him walking away with another statuette Sunday, based on name recognition alone. The longest short at 30 minutes, A Matter of Loaf and Death finds cheese-loving Wallace and his long-suffering pup Gromit running a bakery. It is nowhere near as engaging as, say, 1993's The Wrong Trousers, but that shouldn't matter. In each of their adventures, Gromit comes across like a canine Hedy Carlson, determined to undermine any potential interloper to his cozy toast-and-tea lifestyle with Wallace. In Loaf, it's one Piella Bakewell, a hardy harridan who sets her toque for the gormless Wallace just as someone's been killing the (great) bakers of Britain. Gee, whoever could be responsible for these crimes? There are great action set pieces, but the new characters don't measure up to Shaun the Sheep or that gloriously evil penguin.

The big animation news out of Ireland this awards season is the essentially unseen feature nominee The Secret of Kells. The country's nominated short, Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, is far less newsworthy, and it seems cruel to show it after the Park piece. Essentially, an Irish gran with Heatmeiser hair wearing a stretched-out woolen jumper scares the bejeezus out of a child when she over-identifies with the overlooked bad fairy while reading Sleeping Beauty. And that's it. The storytelling takes place in 3D-ish CG, while the fairy tale unfolds in filigreed 2D animation as crudely rendered as a "Fractured Fairy Tale," albeit without the anarchic charm.

Next up should be the much-bruited and brutally funny fifth nominee, Logorama. [Watch it here.] However, run times must be padded and homage must be paid to shortlisted also-rans from usual suspects like Pixar, Canada, and the former Soviet Bloc. The aforementioned Pixar short Partly Cloudy is an only partly engaging tale of a clumsy cumulous. His fellow fluffy clouds ably make babies and kitties and puppies for storks to deliver, while he churns out spiny porcupines and snappish gators, to the dismay of his designated avian.

Canada keeps it simple with the straightforward, spindly animation of Runaway. A train collides with a cow, and eventually everything goes off the rails. The only surprise is the short's pointed class commentary. The engineer abandons the fireman to pitch woo to a pretty passenger, while the well-off swells persuade the lower-class travelers to sell them all their luggage and clothing to stoke the stove before pulling the pin coupling their cars and cutting them loose.

The Kinematograph uses elegant but bloodless CG to animate the story of a Polish inventor who comes up with talking moving pictures—in color—well before the Lumière brothers shot a single train, factory, worker, or baby. But the world will never know because (SPOILER ALERT!) his beloved wife dies of consumption or TB or something, and he stays holed up in his attic watching her flickering image instead of sharing his invention with the world.

After that tearjerker, the program closes with a palate-cleansing senseless bloodbath. Yay! A title warns of the adult content and gives ample time for kids to exit before Logorama begins. Its inclusion among the nominees is startling: The entire 16-minute movie animates L.A. using the corporate logos and icons of global capitalism. Ronald McDonald goes on a murderous rampage, and the Bibendum (Michelin Man) cops trading Tarantino-esque pop culture banter are powerless to stop him from trashing the whole town. Will Esso Girl, Big Boy, and the Haribo kid survive the bloodbath? It hardly matters. Win or lose, Logorama is a foul-mouthed victory for fair-use abuse.

Posted by ahillis at March 5, 2010 8:35 PM