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.