ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED SHORTS: LIVE ACTION

NA WEWE

THE CRUSH

Boys of all ages, sizes and different situations, dominate the live action short nominees this year. The Crush and The Confession tell coming-of-age stories about 8-10 year-olds; a last wish from a 15 year-old terminal cancer patient is the story of Wish 143; twenty-somethings behave like teens in God of Love; and in Na Wewe a boy is terrified as he's being sorted out for execution in Burundi's tribal warfare.

Who knows how this year's nominees ended up being so boy crazy. But, resemblance aside, these films offer emotional variety and complexity. And some lively, worthwhile viewing.

GOD OF LOVE  Luke Matheny  USA/18 min

Cool, fifties black and white cinematography mix with a jazzy, bohemian band and a comic story of unrequited love.  Raymond, lead singer and dart champion (yes, it works) loves Kelly, the drummer, who only has eyes for Fozzie, the guitar player, who doesn’t love Kelly back and, well, you get the idea. It’s when Raymond magically recieves a set of “love darts” he uses to make Kelly fall in love with him that the fun begins. All the silly illogic of who pairs up with who comes to be more enjoyable than most feature romantic comedies. A shout out to cameraman Bobby Webster for creating a hip, beat look to all the goings-on.

NA WEWE (YOU TOO)
Ivan Goldschmidt  Belgium/19min

                                                                                                        
Burundi 1994. Passengers on a bus traveling a country road fall right into the middle of the civil war between the nation’s Hutus and Tutsis tribes -- basically impulsive, irrational kids with guns, real guns. Everyone seems to get more frightened by the minute as gunmen try to sort who among the passengers is a Hutu or Tutsi. Goldschmidt is good at building the tension, and showing the confusion and fear of  both sides. In a nice added touch, he has a white man sitting in the bus just watching the whole scene.

THE CONFESSION  Tanel Toom  UK/26 min

Many Catholics have questioned the why of having young children go to confession. In its twisted, entertaining way, this short takes up that question. A couple of ten-year old boys commit a crime, because, because, well, they really have nothing to confess and you can't go to the priest with zilch in the way of sins. Things go from fun  to cruel and then, as if sliding on their own momentum, to horror film like deadly. Winner of best foreign film at the Student Academy Awards.
  

THE CRUSH  Michael Creagh  Ireland/15min

Michael Creagh directs his young son Oran in this mysteriously comic tale of an elementary school boy who falls in love with his teacher. The story goes along predictably until the young lad challenges the teacher's stunned boyfriend to a duel. Then the pace picks up and Creagh keeps you guessing as to what's going to, and what truthfully, happens.

WISH 143  Ian Barnes  UK/24 min

David suffers from terminal cancer and wants to have sex before he dies. Out of frustration, and good will, a with-it priest tending him in the hospital sets things up. Director Barnes and lead actor Sam Holland keep things from descending to pathos with a stream of steady humor and witty lines. There are some real funny bits spaced throughout. With an ending that's as true to what has gone before as it is sad and sweet.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED SHORTS -- ANIMATION

THE LOST THING

One great thing about the Academy Awards is how they provide much needed

notoriety to the booming market of short films. Every year

hundreds and hundreds make the rounds at film festivals all over the world,

and as a lover of shorts of every genre, I see as many as I can.

And The Academy does a terrific job in nominating the best.

            DAY AND NIGHT       Teddy Newton  USA/6min

PIXAR's decade long excellence in animation keeps rollin' as their features and shorts seem to get nominated, and win, every year. When bright, energetic Daytime meets dark, moody Nighttime an instant struggle between crescent moons and sunshine, rainbows and fireworks results as one tries to understand the other. An uncredited Wayne Dyer in a concluding voice gives you a clue as to the message. As a lead in to Toy Story 3 this is probably the most seen of the nominees; an edge with voters.

                             MADAGASCAR, CARNET DE VOYAGE                            
Bastien Dubois    France/11min

This visual diary takes us page by page through the African island nation with drawings that shift from pencil to water colors to realism. We ride through the country, walk through village, watch people go about their lives, and watch them watch back. Points of view shift quickly as the pages turn, creating the feel of being on the island yourself. Adding to the feel, video animator Dubois uses the rich, vibrant reds, oranges, and banana yellows that are so much a part of the island. High spirits through the closing credits, which are basically another short in themselves.

LET'S POLLUTE  GeeFwee Boedoe  USA/6min

"Don't Delay, Pollute Today."
This satire of those lame educational films from the 50s and 60s is from ex-Pixar animator Geefwee Boedoe with help from Day and Night's Teddy Newton. They've recreated that old-time, on the cheap animation to perfection and the energetic images keep the obvious message interesting. Good thing, too, for this short's shortness is a plus. Geared for younger viewers.

THE GRUFFALO
Jakob Schuh, Max Lange  UK/Germany/27 min

Adapted from a 1999 picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, this animated bedtime story was a huge hit on British TV. About the antics of a sharp and skillful mouse who avoids predators in the woods with tales of a make believe monster, he has to be even smarter when the monster, The Gruffalo, becomes real. With a visual nod to Maurice Sendak, the voice talents of Helen Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, and John Hurt and, rare for a short, a memorable score by Rene Aubry. A wonderful production youngsters will enjoy.

THE LOST THING
Shaun Tan,  Andrew Ruhemann
Australia/UK  15min

This short's complex imagery mixes Joan Miro's surrealist paintings and the novel 1984, if you can imagine.Yet the story is simple -- when a young lad finds a "thing" while looking for bottle caps on a beach, he  takes it home to figure out what to do with it. No one seems to notice or care about "thing," including the boy's parents.

Tan not only wrote the picture book on which this animated short is based, he also worked on WALL-E (there's Pixar again). The Ruhemann- Tan team create eye-riveting landscapes that convey complex and contradictory moods -- a sort of melancholic hopefulness -- yet you never lose track of the story.

This is the best of the nominees and has my vote as the winner. Worth repeated viewings so will be a good buy on DVD.

THE COW WHO WANTED TO BE A HAMBURGER
Bill Plympton  USA/6min

This short made the last cut, but wasn't
nominated. I'm including it because I'm a big fan of Plympton's Plymptoons since seeing his 2008 three-minute animation Santa, The Fascist Years. His child-like imagery and fairy-tale style belie a subversive agenda about capitalism, advertising, and their influence on the young and impressionable. A calf watching hamburger ads  naturally wants to be the best hamburger ever. He even works out to get bigger and stronger. Then he finds out how misleading the ads were and is forced to face the true finality of his decision. An effective message, nicely told.

THE RAZZIES: SOO, SOO MUCH MORE FUN THAN THE OSCARS

THE GOLDEN RASPBERRY AWARD

February  -- my favorite time in the film year, when one movie cycle

  ends and another begins. And it all starts with the awards.

No, not that tumescent, self-aggrandizing masturbatory hard-on that has 

become The Academy Awards. Good grief, no. It's the other ceremony, 

on the Saturday before the Academy Awards. The one where jesters gibe and joke 

and farcically challenge the movie industry to stand up for that rare and 

almost unknown Hollywood commodity – reality.

It’s Tinsel Town’s “You Suck” award -- The Razzies --

where The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation hands out 

its moldy raspberry “dis-honor” for The Worst Achievement in Films. 

JENNIFER ANISTON PULLS A RAZZIE HAT TRICK WITH
THE BOUNTY HUNTER: NOMS FOR
WORST SCREEN COUPLE(WITH GERARD BUTLER);
WORST ACTRESS;AND WORST PICTURE

No big song and dance,prime-time TV telecast. No parade of stars striking an air of pretentious affectation on the red carpet. No celebrities posing in fifty-thousand dollar gowns, smiling with twenty-thousand dollar teeth, or glowing in five-thousand dollar fake tans, make-up and hair. The Razzies don't even have a red carpet. 

Besides, if it costs one person nearly a hundred thou to glam it up for a single showing on the red carpet, even I could look good for that kind of money.

THE LAST AIRBENDER. NOMINATED IN ALMOST EVERY CATEGORY:
WORST USE OF EYE-GOUGING 3D; WORST RIP-OFF; WORST SCREENPLAY AND
DIRECTOR; AND WORST PICTURE

What The Razzies focus on is us, the audience. They acknowledge what we think about what we're

seeing on the screen. They take the spotlight off those who make the movies and pay respect to those of us who actually fork over the dough to watch them.

ASHTON KUTCHER HAS A BANNER RAZZIE YEAR;
TWO NOMS FOR WORST ACTOR IN
VALENTINE'S DAY & KILLERS

That's a perfect sentiment for movie 
people like me. This award, 

handed out by J.B. Wilson since 1981, 
pays homage to what I spend too much 
time doing: seeing lousy movies. After 
years of unbearable stuff like THE CAT
 IN THE HAT, TRANSFORMER movies (TheTrannies),
TWILIGHT movies, VALENTINE'S DAY or anything with Adam Sandler or Madonna, The Razzies make it nice by reminding me how others share my pain. So when you see a "what the hell was that" big-buck, stinko movie, or feel ripped-off by paying double for another 3D scam; every time you leave a theater feeling you've wasted your time, remember,The Razzies are there for you.

THE SEX AND THE CITY 2 GALS ALL GOT WORST ACTRESS
NOMS ALONG WITH WORST PICTURE

Let's hope some stars will get 

with it this year and show up to receive
their award. Last year Sandra Bullock, ever 

the good sport, stood before a 

crowded auditorium to accept her 

worst actress award for All About Steve,
and was hilarious handing out a wagon 
full of free DVDs to the audience. She 
was so down to earth, so much fun, and 
so charming, the word spread,her 
acceptance speech went viral, and her likability 
quotient sky rocketed.


So check out the website, www.razzies.com, and join the fun.

By the way, to see a movie where Jennifer Aniston does a good job acting,

check out the blog post from last August which discusses her movie

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