Oscars 2012: Best Documentary Short

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1.THE TSUNAMI AND THE CHERRY BLOSSOM

2. SAVING FACE

3. INCIDENT IN NEW BAGHDAD

4. THE BARBER OF BIRMINGHAM: FOOT SOLDIER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

 GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS

I think it’s fair to say at this point that I won’t be seeing all of the Oscar nominees this year: For some unknown, inexplicable reason, God Is the Bigger Elvis is not able to be shown in theaters due to licensing restrictions (say what?). Super-lame.

As for the other four documentary shorts, it’s time to go halfsies, because two are pretty great and the other two are mediocre-to-bad. Let’s start with the letdowns, shall we?

The Barber in Birmingham reflects on James Armstrong’s participation (but not really) in the Civil Rights Movement. This classy older gent, an Alabaman barber, is adorable as he fondly remembers cutting MLK Jr.’s hair four times (though he admits the legend never actually spoke to him) and… that’s about it. Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday’s film also touches on other “foot soldiers” who were children during school integration and who fought for the right to vote. The commentary is vague and the tone is celebratory in the most hagiographic sense. The subjects are worthy, but this doc doesn’t do them justice by remaining on the surface.

Incident in Baghdad represents the ubiquitous Iraq or Afghanistan doc that we clearly must have each year, whether in the short or feature-length category (see last year’s superior Restrepo). James Spione covers the notorious incident in Baghdad when a group of U.S. soldiers was caught on film slaughtering civilians and two journalists by gunfire. The (wiki)leaked footage was shown via all varieties of media outlets to the outrage of the American public. This short details US Army Specialist Ethan McCord ‘s PTS and anger towards the military for his involvement in the attack (he saved two small children who were near-fatally burned in one explosion, but not their father). It’s compelling material to a degree, but then again, how many times can we return to the same subject in essentially the same way?

Saving Face details the shockingly common act of men disfiguring and shaming Pakistanian women by throwing acid on their faces. It’s heartbreaking to look on these women who, until recently, had no legal recourse to make these men, usually their husbands (or their husbands’ families) accountable for their horrific actions, and Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s film follows one plastic surgeon from London (originally from Pakistan) in his attempt to help these women “save face.” Ultimately an inspiring piece in which one incredibly brave woman refuses to give up on bringing her husband-attacker to justice – he denied his actions despite eye witnesses and continued to threaten her while he was behind bars – and proves to be the first successful case of trying and convicting such an attacker. It’s important to note, however, that  the filmmakers don’t make saints of these women: many, when asked how they would like to see the men punished, violently assert that the men should have acid thrown on their own faces. The film offers no judgment; the surprising comments are recorded at face-value for what they are: the ugly effect of an “eye for an eye” ideal.

So rarely does a documentary offer both insight and artistry, but that’s exactly the case here: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom is not only remarkable for its choice in subject – the  earthquake in Japan – but for its poetic beauty. Lucy Walker’s short recounts many individual stories of loss: one older gentleman, visibly grief-stricken, is astonishingly elegant in his heartbreak as he describes the moment his life lost meaning — reaching out for his dearest friend as he’s swept away in the flood. But just when you think this is your standard natural-disaster doc, a shift occurs: the man’s despair transforms into profound peace as he begins to speak tenderly of the cherry blossoms. A national treasure, the cherry blossom trees are so beloved by the Japanese that there are annual cherry blossom “viewing parties” in which people travel from all over to gaze upon the beautiful blossoms that continued to thrive and bloom despite the wreckage that surrounded them. Symbolizing the resilience and the beauty of the Japanese, Walker creates a gorgeous and moving analogy between the pain and despair of the tsunami and the hope and inspiration of the cherry blossoms. The cinematography  itself– blossoms falling slowly and softly like snowflakes around girls and men alike, gazing up in wonder — is breathtaking. This is the documentary to see even if you don’t care for documentaries: devastating, beautiful, heartwarming, inspiring. This is what filmmaking should be.

Oscars 2012: Best Live Action Short Film

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

 

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

1.THE SHORE

2. TUBA ATLANTIC

3. RAJU

4. TIME FREAK

5. PENTECOST

Thankfully, Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane’s Pentecost tied for shortest runtime at 11 minutes, though I wish it was shorter. An Irish lad can’t seem to do right by mum and dad — he just keeps mucking up his alter boy duties. Though he lacks the appropriate piety, he loves him some football (that’s soccer, to you Yankees). Naturally, then, the filmmakers think it’ll be a hoot to create a visual analogy between the sport and the religious ritual — huddling before a mass/game, the pep talk by the priest/coach, etc — and while I’m sorry to say it got a quite a few laughs when I saw it, it all comes off as rather juvenile. Catholicism and football aren’t exactly innovative themes for an Irish film, now are they?

Time Freak ties my favorite football flick at 11 minutes, and it’s a little bit cuter, though no more clever. This feels like the post-grad film school project — like last year’s winner, God of Love, only not as charming or stylistically well done. Andy Bowler and Gigi Causey’s silly one-joke short follows one Brooklynite (it’s never said, but you know he is) who invents a time machine and obsessively goes back to the same morning — that morning — in order to alter the minutia of his actions: tries to be kinder to the dry cleaner who promises his shirt and doesn’t deliver (but ends up yelling at him every time), stubbornly insists he’ll say just the right thing to the cute yoga girl he’s crushing on (but he only sounds like more and more of an idiot). You get the point.

Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren’s Raju is self-important with social commentary about a German couple adopting a — ultimately kidnapped — Indian boy and too slickly empathizes with their inner struggle to-return-to-his-birth-parents-or-not-to-return (the Lifetime-y twist  is surely something A. Jolie would endorse). The adorable boy could be the live version of La Luna‘s tot, all saucer-sized eyes and shy silence, but what the piece has going for it is its reliance on the visual — those gorgeous colors, throngs of people, bustling markets — over the audio (the minimum dialogue). In fact, it flows quite nicely — I could even handle the kidnapping plot point — until the wife says, repeatedly, what you already know she’s thinking — and was certainly best left unsaid (Isn’t he better off with us? We adopted him legally! He’s ours!). Oy.

Tuba Atlantic is super-Scandinavian: a cranky old geezer who gleefully shoots gulls because he has nothing better to do is visited by a naive young thing from the “Jesus Club” to help him die (though she’s never had success before — they always live!) after  he finds out he has six days left to live. Oh, and he’s built a huge-ass tuba on the ground of his tundra-like home so that one day, when a big enough breeze blows through it, the glorious sound will reach his estranged brother all the way in America. Sardonic and sentimental, it’s that winning genre of the serious-but-not-too-serious. If it weren’t for our other Irish contender, I’d think Hallvar Witzø’s wry work was a shoe-in.

Written and directed by two-time Oscar nominee Terry George (Hotel Rwanda, In the Name of the Father), The Shore is this year’s prestige piece in the category, starring the ubiquitous (this award’s season anyway) Ciarán Hinds as a Northern Irishman returning home after 25 years of exile to share his roots with his daughter and make amends with an old friend and flame. George obviously possesses a great love of  his homeland and its people, capturing beautiful wide shots of rolling, green hills and rocky cliffs under troubled skies in between intimate scenes of old and dear friends reminiscing ’round campfires or belly up to the pub bar. The only nominee that feels like a complete film, The Shore subtly explores Ireland’s political troubles by layering them within its complex character relationships, carefully and exquisitely unspooling each like a good ol’ fashioned Irish yarn. A lovely and touching short, it’s sure to win.

Oscars 2012: Best Animated Short Film

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

1. THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR. MORRIS LESSMORE

2. A MORNING STROLL

3. LA LUNA

4. WILD LIFE

5. DIMANCHE (SUNDAY)

Sorry to my friends in the Great White North, but two Canadian shorts bottom out my list. Marcy Page and Bonnie Thompson’s starkly minimalistic-looking Wild Life is a Western of sorts, telling the rather dry story of a proud Englishman attempting to make a life for himself on the Canadian frontier at the turn of the 20th century. This dull — in color and in plot — short is only for the most hipstery of aficionados. Patrick Doyon’s Dimanche boasts an even duller palette of greys and blacks, and simpler animation of circles and sharp lines in its nearly narrative-free telling of one boy’s uneventful Sunday.

Thankfully, there’s A Morning Stroll, which begins with Dimanche‘s color(less) scheme but quickly transforms with energetic neon bursts of color. Based on a “true” story — this is great — in which a chicken is observed nonchalantly strolling down a sidewalk towards its residence, where it pecks on the door and is let inside. Grant Orchard’s 7-minute ‘toon depicts the chicken in the silent, black and white sketch-style of the 1950s, in the technology-obsessed-ADD present day and in a post-apocalyptic zombie-crazed world. It’s the flashiest, funniest and most vibrant of the bunch, and has no real chance of winning. But oh, what fun it is.

The Best Animated Feature nominees prove that having “Pixar” splashed across a tiny ‘toon doesn’t guarantee an Oscar nod. But here we have the frequent Mouse House-collaborator representing with the doe-eyed sentimentality that’s been missing from Walt’s World for quite some time. In Enrico Casarosa’s La Luna, a grandpa and dad instruct a young boy how to clean the moon of its stars. The boy has Precious Moments eyes and a darling sense of humor, the CG stars sparkle and shine and you generally feel warm and fuzzy whilst watching this dedicated trio lovingly perform its daily task. While nominated frequently here, Pixar hasn’t won the shorts category since 2001, so you could say it’s time.

Or you could say that Pixar’s talent has graduated to something better. William Joyce, who was the concept and art designer for Toy Story and A Bug’s Life, has written and directed the most fantastical, if nonsensical, short of the bunch (which you can watch en total here). In the The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a Buster Keaton lookalike is swept away by a Katrina-esque storm to a magical land where piano-playing books have feet and wings and where the world rediscovers the healing joys of the written word. A shaky narrative to be sure, but the combination of 2D and computer animation is stunning and the whimsy of it all is utterly captivating.

Oscars 2011: Best Documentary Short

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1. Strangers No More

2. Poster Girl

3. Killing in the Name

4. Sun Comes Up

5. The Warriors of Qiugang

It’s a tough crowd in the documentary short subjects this year, and by tough, I mean trying: all but one are self-important with tragic gravitas. The sole optimistic nominee, that takes a “we are the world” approach, will likely win simply because of its do-gooder attitude: Strangers No More is so utterly captivating because its subjects are endearing almost to a fault. A loving snapshot of a year in the life of the Bialik-Rogozin School in Tel Aviv, where children from all over the world — war-torn South Africa, Egypt, Chile, etc. — come for a chance at a new beginning, with Hebrew as the uniting language. Of course a film about such burdened and devastated kids could be incredibly emotionally manipulative. But the wonder of this short is that it needn’t employ any trickery to grab its audience by the heartstrings –the wise-beyond-their-years, eager to learn, loving, soulful children do it without any direction whatsover. These kids are inspiring and heartbreaking and an absolute pleasure to spend time with. When a film makes you want to pick up and move to Israel to teach the children… well, let’s just say that’s quite the accomplishment.

From here, though, things just get depressing. Sun Comes Up does muster up some optimism as it follows a small tribe living on an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea that is about to disappear into the rising sea. But the film’s success is also its downfall in that its microcosmic approach to the effects of global warming is both specific enough to intrigue and too specific to have the desired rallying effect on audiences — it all seems a bit too remote, even if all too human. The Warriors of Qiugang, while the most dedicated film (the filmmakers spent an effortful three years creating it), is also the most snooze-inducing (and has some strange little animated sequences that come off as a bit amateurish). A pesticide factory invades a small Chinese village, killing the community both indirectly (its land and crops) and directly (spreading cancer from toxic fumes), and finally causing the villagers to speak out against the local government that continuously ignores their pleas for environmental regulations. Again, a bit of a remote microcosm for worldwide environmental concerns, so more than likely the Academy will ignore it.

This leaves us with two films that will hit a bit closer to home. Poster Girl is the story of army vet Robynn Murray, once the cover girl for an Army magazine (she was considered the model female soldier), now suffering from emotionally crippling PTSD in addition to various physical injuries. The most personal (and personally invasive) story of the nominated films, Murray rips open her psychological wounds and traumatic memories for public consumption. But just when you think it’s verging on too-muchness, the film takes an inspiring turn by showcasing Murray’s life-saving discovery of the transformative power of art: she, and many other vets, create paintings, collages, and sculptures from their old uniforms, soldier manuals, and flags, and in the process rediscover their humanity (which, admittedly, is a bit much as well, but at least it lightened things up a bit). The problematic Killing in the Name, on the one hand tackles the difficult but always fascinating subject of Islamic fundamentalism, both from the perspective of a Jordanian crusader (whose wedding was crashed by a suicide bomber) and an Al-Qaeda recruiter (who coordinated the wedding bombing). What’s so troubling about the film is not the predictable “Americans are infidels, white people are cruel, etc” mantra of the fundamentalists, but the fact that the film allows the focus of many of its subjects to be on the lamenting solely of the Muslims that were mistakenly killed in these terrorist attacks, which is both alienating and creepily disconcerting.

Unfortunately, none of these altruistic films is aesthetically intriguing, but with all the good intentions and desperately vital subject matters, layering on some artistry would be asking a bit much…right?

 

Oscars 2011: Best Live Action Short

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

1. The Crush

2. God of Love

3. Wish 143

4. Na Wewe

5. The Confession

Let’s break it down, shall we? In this category, we have: an overcoming/fighting a disability/disease short. An artsy-hipstery-student-filmy-overly-self-aware-love-story. A genocidal confrontation about war and acceptance and (the) brotherhood (of man) in central Africa. The Crush minus Alicia Silverstone plus an adorable-yet-creeptastic 10-year-old boy. And a kids-with-killer-instinct film raging with Catholic guilt.

It’s an odd, yet predictable assortment, which is not to say unenjoyable for the most part. The Confession is a beautifully shot, wonderfully acted (by one of the child actors, anyway), terribly scripted guilt trip with one horrible plot twist after another: the boys accidentally kill a stranger and then one boy accidentally kills the other…and then confesses (sort of). Na Wewe is essentially a 19-minute Hotel Rwanda (with a bit of Lost tossed in for good measure — think Mr. Eko) that’s the socially conscious “ethnic” film that sometimes wins all the votes….and sometimes is totally ignored (though the fact that this one ends “happily” with all the Tutsis in one piece gives it a good sentimental shot with the Academy). God of Love is some talented hipster’s NYU thesis film, and it’s an utterly charming (and an unlikely nominee), black-and-white romantic comedy about a lovestruck Brooklyn-based lounge singer who discovers a package of passion-inducing darts (plus it has that quirky brunette from Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson!). [Side note: I looked up the director, Luke Matheny-- who turns out to also be the star of the film -- directly after writing that last sentence and he IS a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and it WAS his NYU thesis film. No joke.]

Which leaves us with the Academy’s sure-to-be-fave and my personal pick. Wish 143 is the King’s Speech of the Live Action Shorts category, which is to say it’s a film about (not) overcoming a disability (disease). And just like The King’s Speech, the only thing noteworthy about the film is its terrific lead performance by Samuel Peter Holland, the 15 year-old hornball with cancer who’s Make-a-Wish is to lose his virginity. This amounts to the most touching scene in the short: when David’s finally introduced to a prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold who will grant his wish, he discovers he really just wants someone to touch (hold) him, because no one else will due to fear of his fragility/mortality. While the film does have a sturdy sense of humor to balance out its bathos, it’s still a little too much for this cynic-critic.

The Irish The Crush won me over because it maintains a starkly charming sense of humor even while purposefully muddling its characterizations. The young boy endearingly/creepily crushing on his teacher starts out as the cutest thing since Freddie Highmore in Finding Neverland and gradually evolves into a possibly obsessed killer. While the stunt-like ending may (unhappily) remind some of a M. Night Shyamalan-esque trick, the film does, in its final scene, masterfully build tension and uncertainly, much like that famous (or famously disappointing) director’s films.

 

Oscars 2011: Best Animated Short Film

Last minute change (2/27/11, 3:40 pm EST):
My prediction is that Day and Night will be the winner.

~ ~ ~

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

1. Day & Night

2. The Gruffalo

3. Let’s Pollute

4. Madagascar, a Journey Diary

5. The Lost Thing

Last year, one of my surest bets was a win for Wallace & Gromit’s latest adventure, A Matter of Loaf and Death. The fact that usually sentimental Academy voters actually bestowed the honor on Logorama,  the flashy, snarky attack on American consumer culture, shocked the heck out of me.  And this year, we have two very similar entries: first up is The Gruffalo, a charming if quaint (and rather boring to this viewer) beautifully CG’d fable about the mouse who cried Gruffalo. The second is Let’s Pollute, an overly-sarcastic, cleverly styled ‘toon (it looks straight out of the 1950s) that encourages us to NOT reduce, reuse, or recycle. It’s over-the-top-ness is a bit much, but that worked well for last year’s winner, so while The Gruffalo may seem the easy, family-friendly winner (hell, Helena Bonham Carter lends voice to one of the squirrely critters, so it’s basically another win for The King’s Speech), there’s no real telling which way the Academy will sway.

As for the other nominees: Madagascar follows one man’s personal (and rather spiritless) journey through his titular homeland through a variety of animated styles including CG and watercolors. While at first it’s quite lovely to visually behold, soon the ADD-like switch from one technique to another wears thin on its audience, bestowing a bit of a headache all around. The Lost Thing, on the other hand, has a stronger story (though a weak philosophy) as a boy attempts to find a home for a “lost thing” in a somewhat dreary, vaguely futuristic society. While visually striking, it simply lacks the punch of our final nominee, Day and Night. While not my favorite Pixar offering, this short that accompanied Toy Story 3 in theaters,  is exceedingly charming and visually jubilant, cleverly demonstrating that we all have commonalities no matter how different we appear to be on the surface. For its energy and optimism alone, it wins my vote, but it may seem a bit old-fashioned (technique-wise) to voters and lose out to the more visually impressive Gruffalo.

Oscars 2010: The Shorts

Let’s begin with the shorts, shall we? (Not that you saw any of them)

[Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners will be in orange.]

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

1.    The Lady and the Reaper (la Dama y la Muerte)

2. A Matter of Loaf and Death

3.    Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty

4.    Logorama

5.    French Roast

Are you wondering where Pixar’s adorable and utterly charming
Partly Cloudy is?
Me too.

Disregarding that huge oversight by the Academy, this alternately whimsical, clever, and politically overt crop o ‘toons is entirely worthy (for trailers for all nominated animated and live-action shorts, go here). My vote goes to the funny and crisply animated The Lady and the Reaper in which an elderly woman desperately pining for her beloved recently deceased husband tries valiantly (and hilariously) to meet the Reaper despite the cocksure and hysterical efforts of a handsomely chiseled doctor (Bonus: Antonio Banderas produces!). But the Academy rarely fails to reward that loveable claymation duo, Wallace and Gromit, and their yeasty adventures in A Matter of Loaf and Death offer that characteristically British-bent humor that has garnered three previous Oscars for creator Nick Park.

Possible spoiler: the profane and ultra-violent Logorama (at times) cleverly and colorfully sends up dozens upon dozens of universally recognizable brands as it simultaneously ticks off action cliché after action cliché (Car chases! SWAT teams! Earthquakes! Hostages!). While not offering much depth beyond the initial visual lampooning of corporations, voters may celebrate the film’s overtly adult content as a breath of fresh air in a category teeming with quirky, cutely-drawn characters and sentimental themes.  For my money, though, its in-your-face-anti-corporate politics are lazier than the animation is vibrant and inventive.

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

1. The New Tenants

2. Kavi

3. Instead of Abracadabra

4. The Door

5. Miracle Fish

In this year’s wildly various category, Kavi is the sentimental favorite, as it follows the heartbreaking defiance of a brightly optimistic Indian boy as he dreams of playing cricket and freedom from his indentured servitude. But both the Academy and myself maintain a history of favoring clever and unpredictable violence, and Joachim Back and Patrik Eklund are the Tarantinos of short live-action with their self-conscious philosophizing film, The New Tenants. A couple preposterously encounters its vicious new neighbors over and over again while attempting to reconnect emotionally with each other in this brutally absurd short.

Meanwhile, Instead of Abracadbra captures the eccentric humor of a Swedish Napoleon Dynamite (“Chimay!”), the Irish-made, Russian-language The Door relays the muted despair of a family following Chernobyl, and the least accomplished Miracle Fish (Australia) begins cutely with a cherubic boy subjected to constant bullying and slowly builds to an emotionally manipulative moment of predictable – yet still shocking – horror.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

1.    Rabbit à la Berlin
During the decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall, an enormous colony of wild rabbits took up residence in its shadow.

2.   The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
As the GM factory in Moraine, Ohio, prepares to close its doors, its employees face the prospect of joblessness in a difficult economic climate.

3.    Music by Prudence
In the face of incredible odds, disabled Zimbabwean singer/songwriter Prudence Mabhena offers a message of hope through her music.

4.  The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
While dealing with the devastating effects of Parkinson’s disease, Washington’s former governor Booth Gardner leads a campaign to legalize assisted suicide in the state.

5. China’s Unnatural Disaster:
The Tears of Seichuan Province
The terrible earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province in 2008 resulted in the deaths of many children, often due to the collapse of their shoddily constructed schools.

QUICK UPDATE! Saw the short docs this afternoon (3/7/10) and the Rabbits were super-clever and a wonderfully told story through a unique perspective, The Last Truck is easily the most moving (at least for a girl from Detroit), and China’s Unnatural Disaster is incredibly shrill and unbalanced (I felt for the parents of children killed in the earthquake, but the filmmakers really needed to go deeper). This is my ranking, but we’ll see what happens!