And by the way, don't look for documentary shorts recommendations from me, as those programs have gone away from my downtown theater after just a week. I'm hoping to get to stream them at some point, but I'm not banking on it.
2014 Oscar®-nominated animated shorts
Crit
A perfectly honorable and adequate collection of films, with no embarrassments and no standouts, in either writing or animation. Feast is the Disney offering, and it's always dangerous to bet against Disney, but this dog's-eye (and -palate) view of romance, an unwelcome turn to veganism, and breakup is the slightest of the 5 thematically. Me and My Moulton, a memoir of childhood, rises only to the level of "pleasant" (and for the record, a 3-legged chair is apt to be at least as stable as a 4-legged one).
Which leaves the probable winner, perhaps deservedly so: The Dam Keeper is about bigotry, bullying, friendship, misunderstanding, and redemption; you can hardly go wrong there, right? And the dreamy, sort of colored-charcoal-drawing-style animation is the most engaging of the bunch.
As always, these films are so short that we get to see a few extras as lagniappe: Sweet Cocoon (the trials and evanescent rewards of pupal metamorphosis); Footprints (a gun-totin' vengeance quest into the unknown/the soul); Duet (yet another riff on the eternal love triangle: boy-girl-dog); and Histoires de bus (Bus story) (slice of school-bus-driving life). Like the nominees: all pleasant enough.
Case in point: Parvaneh is about a young Afghan immigrant to Switzerland, who lacks proper ID and is too young to wire home the money she has been (under)paid for her sewing. She trusts her money to someone we clearly see as manifestly untrustworthy (there was an audible groan in the theater), but guess what (spoiler alert)? The girls become friends, and everyone learns. Still, the film is irresistible, in part because the moon-round face of the title role's Nissa Kashani is irresistible.
La lampe au beurre de yak (Butter lamp) appears to have no agenda beyond making us smile, and it succeeds effortlessly: a photographer hangs backdrops of various landmarks--Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, a temple famous enough that I'd know its name if I were Tibetan--and shoots ordinary folks in front of them. Again, the faces carry the day.
The Phone Call has more heft, even if it revolves around a set piece: woman on suicide hotline trying to keep depressed caller alive. What keeps the film alive is the work of two great English actors, Sally Hawkins and (never seen) Jim Broadbent, plus writing that seems more real than this trope usually gets.
Boogaloo and Graham is about a young mum and dad, their two sons, and the boys' pet chickens. Heft is added here by time and place: Belfast, during the Troubles. But that's really (spoiler alert again) an illusion-of-danger red herring in the most conventional film of the program.
I have no idea which of these films will win the Oscar®, and it wouldn't be a gross miscarriage of justice for any of them to take it, but my pick, with room to spare, is the last and the longest, Aya. The setup is the hoariest of romantic comedy tropes: boy meets girl under conditions of mistaken identity, and the film is comic, and it is romantic, but if it's a romantic comedy, it's unlike any member of the genre I (or you) have ever seen. Aya (Sarah Adler--blessed with yet another face to die for, and an actor's instincts in using that face to communicate everything and nothing wordlessly) is at the airport (in Tel Aviv?) to pick up we-don't-know-who. Through a rather Rube Goldbergian machination, she finds herself holding a sign suggesting that she's the driver for Mr. Overby (Ulrich Thomsen), a Danish pianist bound for a music competition in Jerusalem, where he is to be a judge. Inexplicably--but not unbelievably, and this is the miracle of what she does with her face: is she attracted to him, or just to the idea of doing something on impulse?--she does not disabuse him of his natural mistake, and drives him to his destination. En route, they begin, barely, to know each other. This one I will not spoil, except to say that the conclusion is simultaneously immensely satisfying and un-. It's the one short I saw all day that I'd call genuinely brave. So I guess it has no chance to win.
As always, these films are so short that we get to see a few extras as lagniappe: Sweet Cocoon (the trials and evanescent rewards of pupal metamorphosis); Footprints (a gun-totin' vengeance quest into the unknown/the soul); Duet (yet another riff on the eternal love triangle: boy-girl-dog); and Histoires de bus (Bus story) (slice of school-bus-driving life). Like the nominees: all pleasant enough.
2014 Oscar®-nominated live-action shorts
Crit
I think I liked all the live-action shorts better than any of the animated, though a cynic might fairly point out that the two programs share a certain safeness. I wonder whether the nominees have in general become more family friendly in the past few years, since they have become readily available to families?Case in point: Parvaneh is about a young Afghan immigrant to Switzerland, who lacks proper ID and is too young to wire home the money she has been (under)paid for her sewing. She trusts her money to someone we clearly see as manifestly untrustworthy (there was an audible groan in the theater), but guess what (spoiler alert)? The girls become friends, and everyone learns. Still, the film is irresistible, in part because the moon-round face of the title role's Nissa Kashani is irresistible.
La lampe au beurre de yak (Butter lamp) appears to have no agenda beyond making us smile, and it succeeds effortlessly: a photographer hangs backdrops of various landmarks--Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, a temple famous enough that I'd know its name if I were Tibetan--and shoots ordinary folks in front of them. Again, the faces carry the day.
The Phone Call has more heft, even if it revolves around a set piece: woman on suicide hotline trying to keep depressed caller alive. What keeps the film alive is the work of two great English actors, Sally Hawkins and (never seen) Jim Broadbent, plus writing that seems more real than this trope usually gets.
Boogaloo and Graham is about a young mum and dad, their two sons, and the boys' pet chickens. Heft is added here by time and place: Belfast, during the Troubles. But that's really (spoiler alert again) an illusion-of-danger red herring in the most conventional film of the program.
I have no idea which of these films will win the Oscar®, and it wouldn't be a gross miscarriage of justice for any of them to take it, but my pick, with room to spare, is the last and the longest, Aya. The setup is the hoariest of romantic comedy tropes: boy meets girl under conditions of mistaken identity, and the film is comic, and it is romantic, but if it's a romantic comedy, it's unlike any member of the genre I (or you) have ever seen. Aya (Sarah Adler--blessed with yet another face to die for, and an actor's instincts in using that face to communicate everything and nothing wordlessly) is at the airport (in Tel Aviv?) to pick up we-don't-know-who. Through a rather Rube Goldbergian machination, she finds herself holding a sign suggesting that she's the driver for Mr. Overby (Ulrich Thomsen), a Danish pianist bound for a music competition in Jerusalem, where he is to be a judge. Inexplicably--but not unbelievably, and this is the miracle of what she does with her face: is she attracted to him, or just to the idea of doing something on impulse?--she does not disabuse him of his natural mistake, and drives him to his destination. En route, they begin, barely, to know each other. This one I will not spoil, except to say that the conclusion is simultaneously immensely satisfying and un-. It's the one short I saw all day that I'd call genuinely brave. So I guess it has no chance to win.
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