I am skipping the live-action short films this year. They're just always so torture-porn heavy, and then the winner is always one of the stupidest ones. But you should definitely watch the animated shorts. There are always some gems, and this year is no exception. Plus, for the first time, you can stream them all at home without having to deal with Shorts.tv and their weird distribution model. This year's nominees:
1 Nomination
- Animated Short Film
Director: Peter Baynton, Charlie Mackesy
Cast: Jude Coward Nicoll, Tom Hollander, Idris Elba, Gabriel Byrne
This is gorgeously drawn. I was totally in love with the animation, and I also loved the mole and fox characters especially. They both behaved in intriguing, rather wonderful ways. But this film did not work for me. It's about an orphan boy who meets and befriends a mole while they look for the boy's home. Much of the film's dialogue consists of little bumper-sticker phrases like "you are loved" and "what do you want to be when you grow up? / Kind." And actually, this is all the film is interested in doing: churning out little phrases worthy of wall art at an AirBnB. There is really nothing else to its screenplay. This is sweet, as far as it goes, but it left me very empty. See... the film takes place in a complete social vacuum. The boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse don't live in a world at all. There are only small indications of any outside forces: the snare that someone laid for the fox, the "other horses" who made this horse feel bad, the people who presumably live in the beautifully lit Thomas Kincaid houses across the little creek. So all of this "wisdom" that the horse and fox and mole and boy share with one another is hermetically sealed. They don't actually need to use any of it except with one another, and among one another they subsist only on love and without conflict. So for me, this movie was a series of cute poetic phrases with no relation at all to any real world that they're supposed to be helping the boy navigate. I still kinda think this will win the Oscar. It's beautiful, and at over 30 minutes it feels fully realized. It also boasts some very famous voices. You can watch this short on AppleTV+.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Animated Short Film
My Rating: Unranked
1 Nomination
- Animated Short Film
Director: Sara Gunnarsdóttir
Cast: Brie Tilton, Jackson Kelly, Klarissa Hernandez, Chris Kelman, Laura House, Chris Elsenbroek, Sterling Temple Howard, Mical Trejo, Sean Stack, Dylan Darwish, Pamela Ribon
This was endlessly charming and completely sweet. I fell in love with the characters and was completely taken with the style, the story, and the idea. This is the tale of a young woman attempting to lose her "virginity" in five chapters. She keeps trying to hook up with various guys, and it's a cute, sweet, little odyssey with a whole range of animated styles that look like a girl's diary. It's been animated so that it's sketchy and surreal and corresponds to the narrator's experience. It's funny and lovely, and I kinda think it will win. I am going to predict it, even though it's not the favorite. I know that this film's title received laughs on nomination morning, and the title is funny, but the film is so much more than a dick joke, and I think anyone who watches it will be taken with it. I recommend it wholeheartedly. And you can watch it at Sara Gunnarsdottír's website here: https://www.saragunnarsdottir.com/coming-in-2022
Will Win: Animated Short Film
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked
1 Nomination
- Animated Short Film
Director: João Gonzalez
This is my favorite of the animated shorts. It's beautifully drawn in a pencil-sketch style, and it's a very sweet story about loss and grieving that follows a father and a son who have lost their mother and partner but are loving one another and coping. These ice merchants freeze water overnight high on a mountain cliff, and then they dive into the city to sell their ice in the morning. It's a surreal, magical kind of story. But unlike the hermetically sealed film The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Ice Merchants takes place in a world all-too real. These characters are dealing with actual loss, and there's a larger loss for which the woman's death is a kind of mise-en-abyme, that of our planet's changing climate and the loss and devastation this will wreak on the world. I loved this. I don't think it can win, but it's my favorite of the five. You can watch it on YouTube thanks to the New Yorker here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhj74ZjfaQ8.
1 Nomination
- Animated Short Film
Director: Lachlan Pendragon
Cast: Pendragon, John Cavanagh, Michael Richard, Jamie Trotter
This short film is really really cool. Its message is perhaps a little trite, but its style is so cool that I didn’t mind one bit. In this film, an animated character comes to understand that he's animated. From the beginning, however, the film is showing us the equipment and technology used to animate him, so it's always clear – or almost always clear – that the character is correct. This is amusing and insanely clever, even if I'm not sure it really takes us anywhere. I totally recommend this, though. It's so much fun, and I loved the ostrich. You can watch An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/796231519
Will Win: N/A
This short film is really really cool. Its message is perhaps a little trite, but its style is so cool that I didn’t mind one bit. In this film, an animated character comes to understand that he's animated. From the beginning, however, the film is showing us the equipment and technology used to animate him, so it's always clear – or almost always clear – that the character is correct. This is amusing and insanely clever, even if I'm not sure it really takes us anywhere. I totally recommend this, though. It's so much fun, and I loved the ostrich. You can watch An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/796231519
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked
The Flying Sailor
1 Nomination
- Animated Short Film
Director: Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby
This is the least interesting of the nominees. A sailor's life flashes before his eyes during an explosion. Meh. However, if you're feeling like a completist, you can watch The Flying Sailor on YouTube via the New Yorker here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rj3FG8vFtk.
More posts coming soon:
9. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman
I'd love it if you checked out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!
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