Short films fascinate me. Though their stories are often more intimate, the best shorts feel as conceptually grand as the best feature films.
After watching (and now reviewing) all of the Oscar-nominated short films for 2010, I hope more people seek out short films in the future. Films like The Door are just as powerful and moving as anything you’ll likely see in theaters, which is an accomplishment for a film that’s less than 17 minutes long.
Many people have emailed me, asking me for my Oscar picks for 2010. I’ve hesitated, knowing they would likely take this information to some back-alley speakeasy, hand it off to their bookie, and bet their house, their car and their kidneys on my picks.
I don’t want that responsibility, that pressure. But ultimately, I’ve decided that what you do with your vital organs is up to you. Here are the winners for Sunday’s Academy Awards…
Comedy is hard. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s plenty of genuinely funny people out there, but what’s funny between friends often just lands with a dull thud on screen.
Thankfully, the Oscar-nominated short film Instead of Abracadabra is not only hilarious, but it has a sweetness that sets it apart from all the other nominated shorts.
Would you be surprised to find out that slavery still exists around the world? Probably not.
Would you be surprised to find out that more people (over 27 million) are enslaved now than at any other time in world history? I certainly was.
You know, I’ve seen other reviewers/bloggers lament about how weak they think this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated live-action shorts are. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not.
But at least one of the entries felt more notable because of what it could have been, rather than what it is. And that missed opportunity is the short film The New Tenants.
I won’t pretend to know what makes a truly great film. I think I know what many of the ingredients are, but there’s just something that’s often hard to identify that gives a really powerful film its impact. And sometimes when you’re watching a strong film, even a short, you may not fully “get” how good it really is until a few days after, when you’ve had a chance to think about it.
Miracle Fish is that kind of film.
I apologize for the blurry image above. This is a frame from the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ. The man with the camera is Kenji Nagai, a Japanese journalist filming anti-government protests in Burma.
Moments after this image was captured, Nagai was shot at point-blank range and killed by Burmese soldiers.
Watching the annual crop of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts is always a treat. But this year’s films made me wonder why it is that animated shorts are allowed to be both entertaining and thought-provoking, while feature-length animated films are generally disposable?
Claymation is just another word for artistic insanity. It takes the hand of a sculptor, the timing of an editor, the heart of a storyteller and the vision of a great director.
Nick Park, then, would be a mad genius. He has been nominated for six Oscars for his animated films, and won four. I hope he has room for another.
We live in a branded world. In fact, if you consciously counted every single logo you saw in any given day, chances are you’d be both amazed and appalled. The average American can identify the Apple logo at a glance, but couldn’t tell you who the British Prime Minister is.
But the Oscar-nominated animated short film Logorama turns our product-placement-driven society on its head, creating a world of anarchy, violence and chaos.
