OSCAR'S SHORTS

                      Whoa? Pixar's "Partly Cloudy" Not Nominated? 

The short-film genre is thriving. In recent years these independent filmmakers have been flooding film festivals and pumped up their own brand of world-wide distribution through the internet. It's part of the business to get those big screen showings at festivals; they serve as calling cards and resumes. And all the shorts listed below have won top prizes in festivals such as IFTA, The Jimmy Stewart Crystal Heart Memorial Award, AFI Award, etc. (Except "The New Tenants," which hasn't won anything except an Academy Award). But it's on the net where they thrive. And why not? It gets them the most eyes.

I see hundreds of shorts every year and they're an exciting grab bag of energetic films unbound by Hollywood standards and expectations. By definition, they're less than 40 minutes, and most range from 6 to 20, so if one's not to your liking, well, you haven't wasted much time and can move on. Many of the shorts I see equal or even surpass those selected by the Academy. But no complaints; all ten of this year's nominees are worth seeing. So this week the MLB lists the 2 Award winners and 2 of the best nominees in each category.

WINNER: LIVE ACTION SHORT

THE NEW TENANTS (US, Joachim Back)

Dark, dark, dark and funny, funny, funny in ways that take hold, wrap around the short form and gives its all. The most talked about short at the screening I attended. Okay, the movie has talent most short filmmakers dare not dream of: Vincent D'Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan for starters; then there's Oscar nominated, Roman Polanski cinematographer Pawel Edelman. 

But the script is so good, the dialogue such a hoot, and director Back moves things along so seamlessly that we go right along with the comic mayhem. As one roommate talks to another via Tarantino irrelevant societal rants and the other tells him to shut up, it's so crisp and on the mark we laugh as if we're in the apartment with them. The jokes, and the bodies, pile up, and everything just naturally falls together.

WINNER: BEST ANIMATION SHORT
 LOGORAMA (France, Francois Aluax, Herve de Crecy, Ludovic Housplain)
A barefaced, all-out giddy attack on corporate control and consumer culture that reaches the heights of "Brave New World" satire. These three French animators create a world of non-stop, full throttle advertising, where every building, rooftop,moving vehicle,animal, and person is an ad or a logo. So of course it's set in Los Angeles, and the plot, if it matters, is about a thug-goon Ronald MacDonald taking hostages. Every frame fills the eye with dozens of ads and logos in colors so neon bright and in such high contrast you can't take it all in. My favorite: an earthquake ripping through the city and into the hills as collapsing mountains reveal hidden logos. Even space vehicles take the hit, sprouting logos as they soar through the vast emptiness of the solar system. 
Gotta make sure any possible Aliens buy Pioneer.

NOMINEES: BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
THE DOOR (Ireland, Juanita Wilson)

At first look we're in "The Road" territory: scattered people trying to survive among civilization's ruins after a cataclysmic event; bare, sparse colors on the cinematography palette, and a family barely surviving through the trauma (in"The Road" the mother drifts off to commit suicide). Wilson took the memoir of a Chernobyl survivor (Monologue About A Whole Life Written Down on Doors), shot it in Russian, and came up with this subtle and moving short about a young family being forced to evacuate a radioactive town.

MIRACLE FISH (Australia, Luke Doolan)
Won for best cinematography in a short, but what got me hooked was the subjective use of sound. As an 8 year-old boy who's being bullied in school tries to take refuge and be left alone, Doolan shifts styles from documentary-like, to horror fantasy (shades of
"The Shining") to a sudden, shocking ending. We hear only what the boy hears, not only intensifying our experience, but setting a tone that perfectly sets up the different visual styles. Watch closely, the fish predicts events to come.

NOMINEES FOR BEST ANIMATED SHORT
A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (Great Britain, Nick Park)
It's not exactly fair to have the new Wallace and Gromit episode among the nominees -- like pitting Pixar against all other animation studios. Director Park has put together a parody-noir, if you can imagine such a thing, and makes it consistently funny through great claymation imagery and directing, not to mention a script that builds on one mystery-story cliche after another. Except here the femme fatale is, ahem, a bit too curvy -- and in a rage at all the bakers for making her that way.

A scene Park hilariously repeats is loyal pet Gromit constantly getting a view of her fleshy ankles. And, as he plays private detective, Gromit sneaks through the evil one's front door, up the stairs and into the bedroom. Shadows, spidery lattice work on the windows, a creaky staircase and a creepy, half-open bedroom door are all pulled out of "Psycho" and you laugh at yourself for giving in to the tension. The shenanigans include hot air balloons, crocodiles, and a giant fart joke. All of it terrific.

THE LADY AND THE REAPER (Spain, Javier Recio Gracia)
Antonio Banderas gets a producing credit in this frenetic gem about a lonely, elderly woman waiting to die so she she can join her deceased husband on the other side.                                                                                                                                                                .

A big chase ensues as a Gaston-like doctor (muscles, great hands, a huge ego, and the nurses swoon over him), keeps saving her from death as the Grim Reaper keeps grabbing her from the edge of life. Imagine Salvador Dali meets Looney Tunes. Fast, funny, and totally unpredictable.

The Best Foreign Language Film Oscar

Merry Christmas Trench War Style

I've caught three of the five nominees for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Film:
"White Ribbon," "A Prophet," and "Ajami." Though I prefer "White Ribbon," they're all good enough to be Oscar worthy. The other two, "The Secret in Their Eyes" and "The Milk of Sorrow," I hear from trusted sources, are just as good.
An exceptional year with so many superior films. Trouble is few American movie-goers bother to see the best from abroad in a theater. And the Academy sure doesn't help with a convoluted submission and nomination process that promotes "American Friendly" movies over the many superior films that pass through the festival circuit gaining critical raves.

So the MLB lists some of this category's lesser-known titles from the past decade. Maybe not Fellini or Bergman, but c'mon, they're on the MLB list so they're definitely worth your DVD time.

JOYEUX NOEL (2005 Nominee)

Watching Diane Kruger in "Inglourious Basterds" brought to mind her other war movie, "Joyeux Noel." True, the title suggests a schmaltzy Hallmark Christmas where photogenic blondes in red sweaters walk through beautiful snowscapes talking about their feelings. But this based-on-a-real-event film about an impulsive Christmas day truce created in the middle of 1914 trench warfare warranted its Best Picture nomination. The French and British in one trench, and the Germans, only 100 meters away, in another, are slaughtering each other in that surreal face-to-face horror possible only in WWI. Later when German Opera star Anna (Kruger) comes to the front to be with her lover, the famous tenor Sprink(Benno Furmann), they sing to their troops in the trenches on Christmas Eve.

The Allies hear the singing, join in, and a Christmas concert takes off in directions that become as natural and humane as they are unbelievable. The movie works and hold our attention because director Christian Carion maintains the tension between the soldiers' mutual distrust and fear based on politically institutionalized propaganda and how easily and quickly they connect with the enemy in the face of that propaganda. And though the ending movingly shows how these soldiers were shamed and punished for these humane actions, we're able to hold witness on to a remarkable historical moment. And moviewise, it's a refreshing antidote to "Inglourious Basterds."

DOWNFALL (2005 Nominee)

Based on the memoirs of Traudl Junge, a secretary working there at the time, "Downfall" is harrowing real look in to Hitler's Berlin bunker while the Third Reich crashes and burns. We see Hitler as those in the last days saw him: smiling at Hitler Youth (the only soldiers he has left), charming the secretaries, and going about his routine.
Bruno Ganz gives a magnetic,physical reality to Hitler. Pill popping, disease ridden, and possibly senile (he was 56), he's motivated only by the machinations of his own delusions. The movie is remarkable for how it pulls you into the bunker. Hitler seems to be seeing visions as he keeps strategizing amid the constant bombing. You hold your ears as his rage-filled hallucinations of victory scream through the corridors. This is one scary movie, for, as all is falling in around him, Hitler is willing to destroy Germany and sacrifice an entire population for the sake of his Reich.
Yet everyone believes and follows, and willingly commits terrible acts. The film, and Ganz, palpably put us in the middle of this group psychosis. You'll be riveted, unable to pull away. And, you'll want to run.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008 Nominee)

For American animated films the past decade has been the best in history. Dreamworks, Disney, and Pixar (mostly Pixar) have never had it better. But our foreign cousins long ago took risks, making financially and artistically successful animations in a genre those studios can't imagine -- the war film.
This Israeli film about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, deals with how the Israeli troops sat by as Christian militias massacred Palestinians living in refugee camps. Filmmaker Ari Folman was a soldier in that war, and he chose animation to tell his story because it's the best way to fully visualize the troubling memories, nightmares, and fantasies he and the other soldiers still suffer from today.

                                                                                                

Did they aid and abet the wholesale slaughter of innocent women and children? How can a cultured and civilized people allow such things to happen? This gripping journey of questioning and discovery ranks with "Grave of the Fireflies (1988) as the best in animated war films. Actually, the best in war films period. "Grave," about two children struggling to survive the firebombing of Japan near the end of WWII, is the saddest, most devastating film I've ever seen.  If, dear blogsters, you try watching these film together on a DVD double bill, buck-up and be prepared. These movies offer images that will haunt your psyche in ways you didn't think movies ever could.

Grave of the Fireflies

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (2004 Best Picture)

Met the Quebec director Denys Arcand at a screening of his "The Decline of the American Empire" in 1986. No directorial craftmanship, a meandering screenplay, a smug and condescending tone, the movie was unbearable. Couldn't believe it was nominated for an Oscar. Braved his next film,"Jesus of Montreal," which wasn't much better, and holy cow, it too received a Best Picture nomination. Skipped every one of his movies since. Then in 2003, those in the know said "Barbarians..."was a must and I stumbled into a funny,wise, and insightful dramedy about an academic intellectual, Remy, who is spending his last days reuniting with friends, lovers, an ex-wife. etc. as he is dying in a Montreal hospital. Remy is a likable, stubborn, and horny, old hound with Marxist philosophies that conflict with his estranged son, Sebastien, a big-money capitalist banker. One of the most interesting aspects of the movie is how Sebastien throws his money around to surmount the Canadian health care system: using bribes to get Remy a private room, more attentive care, and, in a great touch, searching up some heroin to make up for the inadequate pain relief of the morphine he's prescribed. Remy's(Remy Girard) natural appeal holds our attention through all this traffic and neither he nor Arcand let the doings gets mawkish or sentimental.

The intellectual honesty of the screenplay is refreshing; sex,drugs, and rock'n roll are discussed with smart sophistication instead of the usual gonad-laden sophomoric manner were used to from movies.
After that screening in 1986, Arcand spoke and did a Q&A. He was quick-witted and lively, a pleasure discussing movies; all those things "Decline..." wasn't. With this movie the director's true talents have come through.



Next Up: Oscar's Shorts