Thu, Feb. 23rd, 2012

scarlettina: (Movie tix)
Went to see this set of short films on Sunday night with [livejournal.com profile] ironymaiden. The program included not just the nominated shorts but some that were recommended. I'm listing here my impressions only of the nominees for one reason: It's taken me nearly a week to get around to reviewing them and if it takes too long a) it will no longer be relevant and b) it seems to be keeping me from writing about anything else here. So here we go:

Dimanche/Sunday (trailer): More or less exactly what it says it is: the story of one boy's Sunday--visiting the grandparents and keeping himself busy with dangerous hobbies and flights of imaginative fancy featuring a bear. Done with fairly simple lines, I thought this was perfectly fine but not extraordinary. Its key feature for me was that the boy entertained himself by smashing pennies on a railroad track. Thus are the prejudices of this reviewer.

A Morning Stroll (trailer): Everyone needs their Sunday morning walk, including an unflappable chicken, for decades, in all sorts of environments. In its three parts (for three different historical eras), it features three different styles of animation, each appropriate to the period it's portraying. It's not really a story so much as it is a testament to one chicken's fortitude in adversity. The trailer doesn't do this little gem justice, and it's hard to figure out what's going on by watching it, but--trust me--the short is charming and well worth seeing. (This one won best animated short at the Sundance Film Festival.)

Wild Life (trailer): An English gentleman decides to make a go of it in the Canadian plains in 1909. He . . . doesn't do very well. This one is done in a painterly style with distinctive characters all around the main one--who isn't terribly distinctive at all, which may be part of the point. It's a fairly light treatment of its subject (see the trailer to see what I mean), a sort of documentary of one man's attempt at frontier living, but in the end I found it a little grim.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (full film): A man is carried away by a twister to a place where books can fly and have lives of their own, and it introduces him to a whole new world and a new role in life. This film went viral a couple of weeks back and completely captivated me with its look and feel and its message of the reaffirming power of story. I was delighted to get to see it on the big screen. For writers and book lovers, it's the ultimate love letter to books. This one should be the winner, from my perspective. We'll see how the Academy feels. (For what it's worth, TIME magazine picks this one as the winner, too.)

La Luna (clip): Pixar's entry into the animated short category. An Italian grandfather, father, and son row out to the middle of the ocean, erect a ladder, and climb to the moon, where they have some maintenance work to do. This short is distinctive for its lush and vivid look, and the very recognizable personalities of its three characters. I love the treatment of stars here, and the whole film's general sweetness. For me, it's "Lessmore"'s only real competition, and I bet the voting will have been close on these two.

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