21 February 2010

Blind fucking cheetahs

Oscar®-nominated animated shorts

Crit
Most persistent theme in this collection is crime by women; next is probably lost love late in life.
  • French Roast--Pleasant enough exploration of grotesquerie and irony--with a female criminal.
  • La dama y la muerte (The lady and the reaper)--An energetic, trippy treatment of old age ready for death, but for the busybody medical profession.
  • A Matter of Loaf and Death--The Wallace and Gromit entry, thus wild and wonderful, and a lock for the Oscar. Another lawbreaking woman here (though sorry, that's a bit of a spoiler).
  • Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty--More grotesquerie, more female criminality, in the old fairy who curses the christening and in her real-life double, the granny telling her terrified grandchild a bedtime story that concludes with a promise of death upon sleep. A wonderful piece.
  • Logorama--Talk about trippy: multinational commercial symbols dominate foreground and background of this crime and natural disaster story. The criminal is male this time, a fast-food-peddling clown.
The rest are not nominees, but were added to pad the program to feature length:
  • Partly Cloudy--Here's your Pixar (thus Disney) pic, and annoying as its early cuteness is, it won me over with its portrayal of the stork who draws the short feather, baby-delivery-commisionwise.
  • Runaway--Criminal female here is a cow on the track, who wreaks havoc on a train. Well animated and fun.
  • The Kinematograph--Striking visually, clichéd thematically.

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