Editor’s note: Welcome to the thirty-second of a 33-part series dissecting the 83rd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

by Fletch from Blog Cabins

* Note 1: I am not a smart man. I was assigned the Animated Short Film category, so what did I do? I made sure to see the Live Action Shorts at the theater. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a problem at all, but with a newborn in the house, getting out to the theater isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Thankfully, so many of the other writers had their stuff in on time, and Jess was able to push me back until today. Also helpful (since I couldn’t, in fact, get to the theater again) was the fact that you can purchase many of the short films for $1.99/each via iTunes. Not a bad deal at all - at least, not until you consider that one of them (in both live action and animated) is not available. So that sucks, in that I’ll only be able to provide an opinion on 80% of the nominated animated films. But that’s a much better percentage than 0%, right?

* Note 2: The following intro was written for the live action shorts post I already put up on my site, but I’ll include it here for perspective.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition in the Fletch household to see the Academy Award-nominated short films each year - at least all but the docs, which aren’t typically screened. This is the third year in a row my wife and I have gone to see them, and it’s an event that I look forward to more and more with each passing year. They play away from our “home” theater (that’s just a few miles away), but that’s no deterrent - the longer drive is made up for by the picture house in which they are screened: the wonderful Harkins Valley Art theater in Tempe, Arizona. It’s somewhat of a relic of days gone by, having stood for decades (a rarity in the Phoenix metro area) and being one of, if not the only, theaters in town that has but one screen. The lobby is no bigger than a large master bedroom, but that only adds to the charm, as does the retro art above the concession stand.

The setting puts us in a great frame of mind to catch some of that movie magic - short films are anything but commercial, so you know that they are made with loads of passion and heart. Every year leaves us with at least one short that has you rooting for the filmmakers’ future, giving us a chance to one day possibly say “Hey, I knew about them from way back when.” Who will it be this year?

Day & Night

Far as I can tell, Pixar’s entry into this category - and the pre-show bonus for Toy Story 3 audiences - is the favorite to win, and for good measure. It’s quick, to the point, and beautiful on a variety of levels. It tells a story of rivalry, tolerance, and, ultimately, understanding, by way of introducing us to two characters who at first seem polar opposites but soon find common ground. That it does so (mostly) without words and (of course) with a healthy dose of humor should come as no surprise to veterans of Pixar’s work. The real kicker, however, is the brilliant blending of old- and new-school animation techniques, rendering a final product that can truly be enjoyed by audiences of all ages.

Fletch’s Film Rating:

	“It’s in the hole!”

LAMBScore:

Let’s Pollute

Hey kids! Have you ever watched a PSA that turns its message on its head? That tells you to do something that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t want to do in a lazy attempt at humor and/or satire? Well, then sign right up for Let’s Pollute, a short film so bewilderingly obvious that it blows my fucking mind that it was nominated for any awards at all, much less from the Academy! You’ll blow your mind when you struggle to stay awake during this six-minute short that says that same thing over and over again! You’ll shit your pants when you wonder how it is that a six-minute short can feel long and tedious!

Ugh.

Fletch’s Film Rating:

	“I want you to punch me as hard as you can.”

LAMBScore:

Madagascar, carnet de voyage

Madagascar will not win the Oscar, and will likely turn off a number of voters/viewers for one significant reason: it’s 11 minutes long and doesn’t tell much of a story at all. However, of the three short film categories, I’ve kind of always felt as though you might be able to get away with such a thing in the Animated category, as it hinges so strongly these days on technology and pure visuals than either of the others.

In that regard, Madagascar is a tremendous achievement, and a pretty literal adaptation of its title. “Carnet de voyage” essentially translates to “travel diary,” and for those out there with even a hint of desire to visit Madagascar, I would assume that this might be the best place to start. Mixing seemingly dozens of animation styles, creator Bastien Dubois infuses each frame with so much vibrancy and life and sounds that you can’t help but want to make the trip yourself. Let go of your need for narrative and just enjoy the scenery.

Fletch’s Film Rating:

	“Darn tootin.”

LAMBScore:

The Lost Thing

Is it possible to rate one film lower than the top spot and still have it be your favorite? The Lost Thing is certainly beautiful, but in that regard alone, it can not match either Day & Night or Madagascar. It tells a touching story of people being so fretfully busy with the lives around them that they neglect to open their eyes to the wondrous things in their world, but it’s a story that feels a bit too familiar to really wow you. All in all, I guess you could say that the sum of the whole is greater than that of its individual parts. It has a childlike wonder, a compassion - a humanity - that, while found in the plotless Madagascar, is missing somewhat from Day & Night, which hits all the right notes, but feels too precise and organized (Partly Cloudy had the same effect on me a few years back). The Lost Thing meanders, charms, and introduces you to a dystopian world in need of cheering up, but in the end it’s you that gets cheered up.

Fletch’s Film Rating:

	“It’s in the hole!”

LAMBScore:

The Gruffalo
The one film unavailable via iTunes, and it just so happens to be the longest, clocking in at 27 minutes. I tried to do some research on the film to gauge just where it might fit in, but opinion seems a bit split, largely due to said run time, which doesn’t seem to be able to support the story being told. Adapted from the children’s book by Julia Donaldson, but in a much sharper visual style, The Gruffalo features a loaded voice cast of top-notch British actors, including Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt, and Robbie Coltrane. I hope to catch it soon.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the eighth of a 33-part series dissecting the 82nd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Sam Turner of This Time It Will Be Different.

The Oscar for Best Animated Short Film can be an odd one. You would perhaps be forgiven for thinking that award winners would reflect changing times, trends and technologies in the animation genre; a natural evolutionary step-change from the hand-drawn charms of Flowers And Trees, the first winner in 1923, to a Pixar computer generated marvel in 2010. However, even though it is often marginalised, announced with little fanfare alongside the technical awards, The Academy likes to keep its audience guessing in this category just as much as in any other.

Last year the award went to La Maison En Petit Cubes, a rather rough-round-the-edges Japanese hand-drawn short which beat the silken CGI lines of British entry This Way Up and the charming mad-cap stupidity of Oktapodi, also a CGI entry. Two years before that, The Danish Poet, another very sparse hand-drawn animation, dethroned the mighty Pixar’s Lifted, capping a double slap in the face for the Disney-owned studio, as Happy Feet triumphed in the longer category over Cars.

Already, prior to the ceremony, this year has been no different. A couple of months back a long list of ten films were announced for the consideration of Academy voters. Now at shortlist stage, we’ve already lost five and who fell at the first hurdle? That’s right, Pixar. Gone too is Australian animation The Cat Piano, a film which featured the voice over talents of Nick Cave, as well as Cordell Barker’s entry, Runaway, a film which looked to have all the trappings of ‘typical’ academy success.

And so we’re now down to the following five. Covering different styles, themes, countries and messages it’s difficult to predict what The Academy will do. The smart money would be on three-time award winner Nick Park, an apparent Academy favourite whose Wallace And Gromit animations last won in 1995. But then again… the smart money every other year, would have got you nowhere.

French Roast - Fabrice Joubert

CGI but in a unique, almost grubby, incarnation, we follow one man’s day in a coffee shop as he continues to order drinks, ashamed that he has forgotten his wallet and is unable to pay. Charming, morally aware, visually interesting and with a great side character in the OCD-affected beggar, this is my favourite of the bunch.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty - Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell

Granny O’Grimm reads fairy tales to her granddaughter to send her to sleep. Shame though that in Granny’s old-age and cynical hands, all is not as it seems. A great perversion of the Sleeping Beauty tale this has had brilliant campaigning and promotion from Brown Bag films and features a fantastic character to front the campaign.

The Lady and The Reaper (La Dama y la muerte) - Javier Recio Garcia

A beautiful, surreal, darkly-comic tale of the battle for an old lady’s soul between death and the doctor trying to save her. Thankfully this has now finally become available to watch online and it doesn’t disappoint. Not dissimilar to last year’s This Way Up, this is highly entertaining.

Logorama - Nicolas Schmerkin

With the full film still not publicly available this looks like an outstandingly clever idea but one which will need a strong narrative to tie all its smarts together.

A Matter of Loaf and Death - Nick Park

Clocking in at only just shy of half an hour, the latest entry in the Wallace and Gromit series is way ahead of the other entries on length but not necessarily on story. Borrowing heavily from previous adventures, this nonetheless displays the charm, wit and slapstick silliness which the series is famed for.

[Editor’s note: many of the films have longer write-ups, along with links to their official websites and picture previews over at the thistimeitwillbedifferent website.]

Editor’s note: Welcome to the fourteenth of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Jeff Ignatius of Culture Snob.

I’ll start with an admonition: You have no reason not to have a horse in the short-film categories for the Oscars.

These should be your favorite races, because they require relatively small investments of time. If you see and hate The Reader, you’ve lost 124 minutes of your life. If you see and hate Lavatory - Lovestory, you’re out 10 minutes. And the chances of you hating Lavatory - Lovestory are much smaller.

Alas, each has about the same chance of winning the top prize in its category.

My point is this: In 20 minutes, you can see all five nominees in the Animated Short Film category — three in full, one trailer, and one excerpt. On the plus side, it doesn’t appear that there are any stinkers here. On the down side, the movies that seem to be the most interesting are the ones that you can’t see in their entireties.

Here’s another reason to watch these movies: Given the high level of prognosticator consensus in major categories, your best chance of winning your Oscar pool is to make smart picks in the minor categories.

I present the Best Animated Short Film nominees from least likely to win to most likely.

Lavatory - Lovestory, Konstantin Bronzit

Cute, clever, slight, and wordless, this concerns a miserable bathroom attendant who one day finds flowers at her station. In expressive line drawings, the movie tracks the rising and inevitable falling of her hope, renewed by a fresh bunch of flowers — the only bursts of color.

In its favor: Whimsical, patient, observant, and decidedly old-school, it gets a lot of emotional nuance right.

Against it: Although it’s only 10 minutes long, it drags. And given the meticulous animation of the other nominees — particularly its hand-drawn competition La Maison en Petits Cubes — voters will dismiss it as simple.

Oktapodi, Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand

Cute, clever, slight, and wordless, it’s the story of octopi in love. When one is taken away to become somebody’s meal, its partner begins a heroic quest to save it.

In its favor: Energetic and quick, I think it’s more imaginative than presumptive winner Presto, and a better use of the medium. And as inevitable as the … err … money shot is, it comes as a surprise, and it seems to come as a surprise to the protagonists, as well.

Against it: It ain’t Pixar, either in distribution or the detail of its computer animation. And its brevity seems a function of budget rather than narrative economy; it’s rushed.

Better resolution: http://dekku.blogspot.com/2008/08/oktapodi.html.

This Way Up, Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes

Based on the trailer, this is either delightfully morbid or morbidly delightful, as two men accompany a body to the afterlife. I haven’t seen it, but I suspect it would be my favorite among these five. You should take that as a strong recommendation to not choose it in your Oscar pool.

In its favor: It appears to be fiercely imaginative and odd.

Against it: It appears to be fiercely imaginative and odd.

Better resolution: http://www.thiswayupmovie.com/.

La Maison en Petits Cubes, Kunio Kato

By some reports, the class of the bunch is the one that you get no sense of in its online form: “[T]he one film that just totally takes your breath away. … [I]n its beauty, purity, and emotional delicacy, it makes an impression that resonates well past its 12-minute running time.”

In a world of rising seas, an old man revisits his life through a house that he’s had to abandon, submerged story by submerged story.

Clever and wordless hold true here, too, I’m guessing, but not cute or slight.

In its favor: It looks lovely, and it if it delivers on the promise of its premise, there’s a good chance it’s as affecting as any of the Best Picture nominees.

Against it: It ain’t Pixar.

If you’re looking for a place to differentiate yourself from your fellow pool-sters, choose this over Presto; it’s a smart risk.

Presto, Doug Sweetland

Cute, clever, slight, and wordless, this was the short in front of WALL•E. A magician and his bunny prop do battle over the man’s failure to properly feed his charge.

In its favor: WALL•E has combined domestic-box-office and sales revenue of more than $357 million, and there’s absolutely no reason to dislike Presto — beautifully, richly animated, funny, and with a ladder to the groin to satisfy fans of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Against it: The curse of Pixar’s consistent excellence is that merely-quite-good movies feel disappointing. Presto looks like Cars compared to WALL•E, and it’s probably merely quite good compared to its fellow nominees.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the seventeenth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Nayana of The Center Seat.

Best Animated Short Film is the coolest Oscar category ever! Anyone know why? Well, aside from a lack of the usual bitchiness and intrigue that plagues many of the other awards, this is one of the few categories in which a movie-phile like me (or you) has the opportunity to sit down and watch all the nominees… in under two hours!

That’s right: if you’re lucky enough to have an arthouse cinema in your town (or a theater chain that passes for one, like Landmark), you can see a feature film which is just a compilation of all the nominated shorts, in either the Animated or Live Action category. I watched both, but the all-knowing, all-seeing Fletch has assigned me the Animated Shorts. So, here’s the rundown, in the order in which I saw them:

Même les pigeons vont au paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) - France
This film (available on YouTube) is part silly slapstick, part dark social commentary. An enterprising priest tries to scam a feeble old man into buying a machine that will take him to heaven. The animation is exquisite and engaging. There are a few twists and a satisfying (if ironic) ending, and the film is definitely good for some hearty laughs. Underneath it all, however, there are dark themes of death, bad karma, and the masses getting screwed by religion. Of all the short films on the list, Even Pigeons is the most user-friendly, and earned the most out-loud laughter from our audience.

Moya lyubov (My Love) - Russia
The most startling thing about My Love is the animation. It was rendered with oil painting on glass, and it comes out looking like a fluid Monet painting come to life. Visually, it was stunning; honestly, though, after a few minutes, my eyes started to water. And as masterful as the animation was, the story seemed to be slapped together with Play-Doh. The film follows a teenage boy in pre-revolutionary Russia. He’s yanked around by his libido: one moment, he’s passionately in love with a family servant, and the next moment, he is utterly devoted to a mysterious neighbor woman. The boy lurches back and forth between the two women, and is ultimately disappointed, as neither fantasy is what he had hoped for. It is worth noting that My Love’s director, Aleksandr Petrov, has been nominated three times before in this category, winning once for The Old Man and the Sea in 1999.

Madame Tutli-Putli - Canada
This short is a seamless integration of computer and stop-motion animation. We follow the title character as she takes an eerie late-night train ride with all her worldly possessions. The film starts out light and mildly funny, but it soon morphs into suspense, horror, and eventually metaphysical whacked-out-itude. Technically, it’s marvelous. Madame Tutli-Putli’s huge eyes alone are an animation masterpiece (according to Wikipedia, Jason Walker came up with the idea of using composited human eyes and adding them to the stop-motion puppets). The detail is amazing, from the veins in Madame’s legs to the endless collection of odds and ends she hauls with her. Personally, though, I just found it gross. And weird.

I Met the Walrus - Canada
In 1969, a ballsy kid named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and somehow convinced the Beatle/activist/music god to give him an interview. Holy crap, right? That kid’s got something to talk about for the rest of his life. But rather than rest on those fantastic laurels, Jerry grows up and produces a poetic animated short with the interview as the audio track. It’s like SNL’s “Fun With Real Audio”, but way, way cooler. The animation mostly consists of pencil-type drawings that illustrate Lennon’s words; sometimes humorously, sometimes poignantly, but always reverently. And the greatest thing about this film: forty years later it’s still completely relevant. Turn on CNN right this minute, and you can apply John Lennon’s observations on war, peace, and the ultimate futility of revolution. Please, please, please let this one win.

Peter and the Wolf - UK/Poland
I grew up loving this classic work by Prokofiev. My mom was a classical music buff, and she jumped at the chance to present this piece to my sister and I as a way to teach us about the different instruments in the orchestra. Most of the time, in fact, when Peter and the Wolf has been produced, it has been narrated for children, as an introduction to classical music. Personally, I was always enraptured by the story of a boy, his pet goose, a bird, a cat, a grandfather, and the Big Bad Wolf. This new production, however, goes much darker. We still have the basics of the story: Peter sneaks out of the gate into the forest and plays with his animal friends; the wolf attacks; and Peter and his grandfather are ultimately victorious over the predator. Before all that, though, the film introduces us to Peter’s hometown: a dirty, decaying industrial hole, crawling with bullies and miscreants. While Peter and the birds are playing, the cat and wolf mirror the human antagonists. Most strikingly, the film does not shy away from the darkest elements of the story, which have traditionally been whitewashed by Disney and other producers. This was probably the most well-rounded of the shorts, with moments of humor, suspense, and horror all blended in a modern update of the classic tale.

OK, if you made it through that whole write-up, you know who I want to win. For creativity, uniqueness, and sheer pluck, I Met the Walrus needs to take home the little gold man. Of course, Even Pigeons easily has the most mass appeal in this category (but when does Oscar ever reward mass appeal?) On the other hand, if Academy voters are going for technical impressiveness, Madame Tutli-Putli or My Love could take the cake. I suspect, however, that we’ll see Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman climb those steps for Peter and the Wolf: it’s got a great pedigree, and it’s a gritty take on a classic tale. The Academy will eat that right up.