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Last Year's Nominated Shorts
Best Animated Short Film
"The Cathedral"
Dir: Tomek Baginski
"The ChubbChubbs!" (Columbia)
Dir: Eric Armstrong (*)
"Das Rad"
Dir: Chris Stenner and Heidi Wittlinger
"Mike's New Car" (Buena Vista)
Dir: Pete Docter and Roger Gould
"Mt. Head"
Dir: Koji Yamamura
Best Live Action Short
"Fait D'Hiver"
Dir: Dirk Beliën and Anja Daelemans
"I'll Wait for the Next One...
(J'Attendrai Le Suivant...)"
Dir: Philippe Orreindy and Thomas Gaudin
"Inja (Dog)"
Dir: Steven Pasvolsky and Joe Weatherstone
"Johnny Flynton"
Dir: Lexi Alexander and Alexander Buono
"This Charming Man
Der Er En Yndig Mand)"
Dir: Martin Strange-Hansen and Mie Andreasen (*)
(*) Denotes winner
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Casting Clay
Harvey Krumpet director Adam Elliot apparently grew up on a shrimp farm in Australia together with "two brothers, one sister and two parrots."
He has been roundly praised for a trio of animated shorts "Brother," "Uncle" and "Cousin," all focusing on bizarre, highly flawed characters cast in clay.
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Power games on the squash court, claymation Tourette's and kitties on toast in "Oscar Shorts," playing this month at the Siskel.
Somewhere down the line in audience interest at the Academy Awards with Best Use of Concealing Makeup and Sound Mixing for Films Featuring Chimpanzees are the awards for Best Short Film Animated and Best Short Film Live Action.
Partially it's because the Awards ceremony is populated with overly verbose and self-important celebrities who insist on thanking everyone, but especially their third grade teacher's pet ferret Mister McGillicutty. Partially it's because at three hours and counting, you have to choose your battles. But mainly it's because unless you're a film critic, a filmmaker, or a hyper-rabid film enthusiast, you’ve probably never seen the nominated films.
The Siskel Center offers a chance for you to change all that from February 27th – March 4th, when it shows a large percentage of the nominated short films as part of its Oscar Shorts presentation.
Here's a rundown of the showings, with brief reviews on the series' highlights:
Squash
Richard Linklater's "Tape" was one of 2001's finest efforts, bringing three old friends together in a small, dingy hotel room to confront the demons of their past and the conflicts of the present. French Director Lionel Bailliu explores similar territory in "Squash," an intriguing, engaging tale of a man and his abusive boss embroiled in a brutal squash game with both pride and employment at stake.
The film's dialogue is as aggressive and disarmingly truthful as anything from a Neil LaBute movie and the action is driven masterfully by the bounces and rhythms of the game. All too often short films end up resorting to artificial or premature finishes, but "Squash" leads the viewer through a well-developed plotline full of psychological complexity.
The Red Jacket
German director Florian Baxmeyer tells the story of a small Yugoslavian boy who comes across a Red Bayern Munich soccer jacket discarded by a grieving father. The film features almost no dialogue and while the story is hardly new (the "Red Violin" for example), both the little boy (Nikola Jankovic) and the cinematography are worthy of note.
Harvie Krumpet
A bit of an odd short, this one. The official Oscar site says that this is the story of an "ordinary man" who hits a string of bad luck, but don't you believe it. The only thing ordinary about the film's goofy doomed little animated protagonist is the flesh-colored clay used to represent his oft-revealed skin. Besides suffering from Tourette's Syndrome at an early age, Krumpet overcomes everything from being struck down by lightning to testicular cancer – extraordinarily adult themes for a claymation piece. The film's treatment of suicide, Alzheimer's disease and Thalidomide children is a bit baffling, but ultimately the combination of wondrously childlike imagination and grown-up realism make for an effecting short piece.
This is Australian animator Adam Elliot's baby and you can't help but wonder when he'll release his first feature-length project.
Also showing:
Nibbles
A Canadian fishing tale focused on all the stops along the way.
Perpetual Motion:
An animated short combining cats, jelly and toast.
Torsion:
A choir in Sarajevo encounters a farmer and his injured cow.
For the complete program, visit
www.oscarshorts.com.
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Written by Richard Sharp
Review Date: February 27, 2004
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