The Academy Awards are a very big deal to moviegoers and fans, as well as to the film community. The short subjects get very short shrift. I understand that short shrift is better than no shrift at all, but the 10 candidates for Best Short Subject — five Live Action and five Animation — go on screen today in a single collaboration that gives fans the opportunity to see everything at one time.
And as a group, they're terrific. . . .
Individually, my favorites were the Norwegian "Tuba Atlantic," which spoofs and admires Norwegians and their attitudes at the same time in a very funny 25 minutes, in the Live Action category, and a charming, loving view of books and literature in a 17-minute American film, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," among the Animation entries.
Other nominees in the Animation division are "Morning Stroll," from England; "Sunday," from Canada; "Wildlife," also from Canada; and "La Luna," another from the U.S. Additional Live Action finalists are "Pentecost," from Ireland; "Raju," a German-Indian collaboration; "The Time Freak," from the U.S. and "The Shore," from Northern Ireland.
A 70-year-old Norwegian hermit, living in a fjord-side hut, is told he has six days to live and is sent Inger, a teen-age blonde from the Jesus Club. She's in training to be an Angel of Death, to help people board the boat over the River Styx in their final days, but her last two subjects survived. She's carrying Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) written in her school composition book, checking them off as Oskar moves along the path. But Oskar is not going quietly. He has a machine gun he uses against gulls, sticks of dynamite to blow up fish so they are better bait for the birds and the title instrument to contact his brother, who left for New Jersey 30 years earlier. Director Hallvar Witco has other tricks up his sleeve, too, all the way to a chorus of "Anchors Aweigh."
Morris Lessmore loves books, and directors William Joyce and Brandon Oldenberg have put together a beautiful little story about the other lives of books. The animation is delightful, the tale equally so.
The animated films also include the charming "La Luna," in which a small boy is exposed to a magical moon by two older men, perhaps a father and grandfather, or a father and uncle. "Morning Stroll" involves a man and a chicken whose paths cross. "Sunday" and "Wild Life," the Canadian films, are rather pessimistic in their outlook, though both are set many years in the past. The latter, set in 1909, deals with English sporting-life types in western Canada in 1909. The comparison with a comet comes from directors Amanda Forbes and Wendy Tilby, who liken the paths of the newcomers to a comet, whose erratic path narrows until it falls into the sun. "Sunday" displays how dull Sunday must have been for a small boy living in the country with only church and the passing trains to intersect with apparent excruciating boredom.
On the live action side, "Pentecost," which opens over the familiar strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," is a funny little tale of an Irish boy whose father insists he be an altar boy while the son wants to be a soccer (football) fan. The priests, who want the Mass to look good because a higher-ranking priest will be visiting, provide pep talks as if then boys were about to play a game rather than be involved in a church service. "Go out and have the Mass of your life!" says one to the assembled lads, and Peter McDonald's film is special.
"The Shore," from Northern Ireland's Terry George, is another tragedy, with lovers and
and families carrying on feuds because of misunderstandings, and "Raju," a co-production between India and Germany, looks at what might very well be an adoption scam. The world twists differently in "Time Freak," a U.S. film where someone invents a time machine that does not go very far. It's clever and enjoyable.
The great thing about shorts, in my opinion, is that a single movie-going experience can touch so many different styles and subject matters, all of them interesting and well-made. And if one is not to my liking, well, like streetcars, there will be another one along in a few minues.
Oscar-Nominated Shorts opens today at the Tivoli.
— Joe