February 15: Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (2011 -- Various)

After we watched the live-action nominees, Linda, Carlos and I stepped out for a beer to talk about work and movies before coming back in for the nominated animated shorts.  While we responded to different things in the live-action shorts, we were pretty much on the same page for our favorite here:  The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. I'd be very surprised if it doesn't win the Oscar.  In another year, a film like  Luna or Sunday/Dimanche  would have a good shot at it, but  Fantastic Flying Books is in a class by itself.

★★★★ Patrick Doyon: Sunday/Dimanche -- This is a fun little Canadian movie that evokes small-town, family-centric, flat Canada through the fantasy eye of a kid.  Dream, reality, imagination, and a taste of childlike deadpan humor meld in this fun animation.  You gotta love the crows....and the fish.

★★★★★ William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg: Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore -- There is more creativity in thirty seconds of this film than I've seen in many feature-length movies.  Starting out in a hurricane in New Orleans with more than a few glances to The Wizard of Oz, Lessmore moves to a land of color and books where Joyce and Oldenburg manage to breath real life into bound sets of paper.  Life on this side of the rainbow suggests life in Snow White's kitchen with all its magical help, but in addition to the inventive animation and rustling soundtrack, Lessmore has a touching story that moves to poignancy at its end.  And a life lesson.  This is an amazing film.

★★★★ Enrico Casarosa: Luna -- Pixar's nominee in this category has a lot of heart, too.  Luna is a fairy tale about the moon and its phases, but it's also about a boy and his relationship to the men in his family.  And the way the men relate to each other.  And the coming of age of the boy.  Luna accomplishes all this in a short seven minutes, an outstanding, if at times cliched, achievement.  There's no question though about the inventiveness of the visuals here.

★★★ Grant Orchard: Morning Stroll -- I've never been a fan of zombie movies or Adult Swim animation, but I did enjoy seeing Orchard defamiliarize those genres in this short film and reduce them to style conventions.  It's about time.

★★★ Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby: Wild Life --  In this understated, intelligent Canada animation, a Brit heads to frontier flatland Canada to make his fortune.  There's a social as well as historical comment here.  I kept thinking of Into the Wild while watching this short because, though the interspersed comet lore lends this a complexity lacking in the Alaska film, the face-off between nature and culture is familiar.

February 15: Oscar Nominated Live-Action Shorts (2011 -- Various)

I checked out this program with Carlos and Linda, and it was good to see what's happening in short films.  I never encounter these movies in my daily life.

We had a range of opinion on them.  Carlos liked my least favorite, Pentecost, and Linda responded to Shore, a film I had a little love for.  I most enjoyed Tuba Atlantic though.  Clearly there is something for everyone here.

★★★ Peter McDonald: Pentecost -- I find this Irish film more clever than anything else.  It's draws a parallel between altar boys who celebrate mass and a team that plays football.  We hear the priest exhorting his boys to fight the good fight.  The film doesn't go much further than that conceit, though it's humorous and warm.

★★★★ Max Zähle: Raju -- This German short packs a lot into its short run:  It gives you Calcutta in just a few shots, it portrays an entire relationship in just a few scenes, and it advocates against illegal adoption practices overall.  The lead child is cute, big-headed, and big-eyed, while the lead actor has  strikingly handsome good looks.  There is a lot packed into this short.

★★★ Terry George: Shore -- This is another effective Irish film, and like Raju, it packs a lot of info into just a few minutes.  Here we see a complex relationship among three people who have decades of history, and there is a strong sense of local color with the men living on the shore.  And there must be something about Irish humor because, like in Pentecost, humor plays a big role, though one such scene gets too much of the limited time available in the film.  It's easy to respond to the warm affirmation that this movie leads to.

★★★ Andrew Bowler: Time Freak -- I like this American film; it's a clever take on time travel and uses that spin for both humor and character development.  It's very juvenile but very fun for that very reason.

★★★★★ Hallvar Witzo: Tuba Atlantic -- This film from Norway is my favorite of the group.  While quirkiness doesn't always appeal to me, it's hard not to like these characters, and the technique here is as fun as the issues are heavy.  A grumpy old man realizes a life ambition and reconciles with his brother at the end of his life, while an archetypal teenager grows.  A little.  There's a lot in this film that resists pigeon-holing.  And it all happens in a bleak Norwegian landscape with distinct local color.  I'm sure I'll sometimes think of the Death Angel from this film when I hear the sound of a scooter.