Best Animated Short - 2013

Well, I've finally done it. I've seen all of the nominees this year for Best Animated Short. Unfortunately, I had to do it by going to one of the showings sponsored by Shorts HD, thanks to the fact Mr Hublot is not yet available online. I probably would have gone anyways even if I was able to get to Mr Hublot in advance, but now everybody else that does film reviews for a living and those with far more insight into film and animation than I do would have their reviews out. I guess the only thing that sets me apart is that I've done reviews on the 81 other years of the category, but I doubt anybody will take care of that.

But anyways here comes my last full review of a set of nominees until next year's nominees. Unless I somehow get a chance to watch The Shepherd and Hypothese Beta or Lorenzo.

Feral

It is a cold winter night, and a pack of wolves hungrily kill and devour a doe when they noticed the presence of something else. It is a human child, naked and howling like a wolf. One brave wolf goes over to investigate the intruder when they are scared away by a gunshot blast. It is a hunter who stumbles across the scene. After some initial resistance, the hunter takes the boy in. He cleans up the boy and enrolls him into a school. The boy tries to assimilate, but while you can take the boy out of the wilderness, can you take the wilderness out of the boy? The idea of the feral child, a child raised in the wilderness while isolated from human contact has been around for centuries, perpetuated by stories like Tarzan, The Jungle Book, and George of the Jungle. Daniel Sousa is the latest to tackle the legend, and it's fairly safe to say nobody has quite done so in the way that Sousa did in Feral. The first thing that is striking about Feral is the film's minimalist style. The film has a distinct lack of detail, particularly in the facial features, which are mostly obscured. Things like the boy's clothes appear out of nowhere. The film doesn't use a lot of color, with a lot of grays and blacks. Whatever colors are present are generally very muted. However, the film's minimalism becomes a part of the film's advantage. By obscuring most of a character's facial features, the ones that do appear are heightened, such as the boy's dark eyes when seeing the city for the first time, or in his teeth when trying to form a smile. The colors and shadows are also used as almost a symbol. The boy spends most of the film white, possibly to show the character's purity from the wretchedness of humanity, symbolized by the darkness that envelopes all of the other human characters. Sousa then uses some changes in the boy's color to depict some of the changes and conflict going on in the film's heart. In fact Feral is highly symbolic. While there is some semblances of narrative, there are also a lot of ambiguous images involving wolves and a windmill. If you want a relaxing film that can be easily understood, Feral is not your choice. However, there is some beauty in the film. While the backgrounds can be very sparse, there are other moments where it has the look of an oil painting. And the music by Dan Golden is terrific and gives the film its haunting feel. Feral isn't exactly the easiest film to watch, but it can be highly rewarding.
Where Can I Watch It?
You can certainly go to one of the showings of all of the Oscar nominated shorts, or you can get the film on Vimeo, $1 to rent and $2 to buy!

Get a Horse!

One beautiful day Mickey Mouse goes out for a walk when he sees his friend Horace Horsecollar pulling a hay wagon full of musicians. After dealing with his reluctant clothes, he excitedly goes to join the party. Along the way they are joined by Clarabelle Cow and Mickey's girlfriend Minnie. While the group is having a great time, Peg-Leg Pete comes by and is stuck behind the band. He sees his old flame Minnie and captures her. When Mickey and Horace fights back, Pete throws them out of the screen and into a whole new world. Mickey Mouse is Disney's most celebrated character and one of the most recognizable in the world. Despite this, Get a Horse! is Mickey's first theatrical appearance since Runaway Brain back in 1995, although he's been in a couple of television animations that's all part of a resurgence of interest in Mickey Mouse that seems to have been going on since Epic Mickey was released back in 2010. Get a Horse! appears to be the culmination of the efforts. Given the fact that it played before Frozen and would be the most seen of the nominated films, it seems pretty safe for me to say that the film merges the black and white animation style from the pre-Band Concert days with modern day computer graphic (CG) technology. This makes for an interesting dynamic where characters in the CG world interact with the 2D world being projected onto a screen. The characters even travel between world through holes in the screen. The animation is handled very well with action going on simultaneously in both worlds, and in some cases the 2D world has a CG look when seen through holes in the screen. Overall Get a Horse! feels like a tribute to both animation's past as well as its future with its seamless use of both styles. However, at its heart Get a Horse! is a slapstick film, very much like many of the old Mickey Mouse cartoons. There are chase scenes and pratfalls which remain pretty much the same even when done in the unique 2D and CG style. The slapstick is decent, although it can be quite sadistic at times. I prefer the visual gags that are in the early parts of the films, such as the homage to It Happened One Night. Some of the references to modern technology feel a bit forced. Many of it are clearly meant for 3D, and do we really need to hear a female moviegoer complain about her nachos twice? I also feel like the CG character design has a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse kind of feel. The film is also notable for featuring some original voice sample from back in the 1930s and 1940s including Walt Disney as Mickey Mouse, Billy Bletcher as Pete, and Marcellite Gardner as Minnie. However, some of Pete's lines were obviously lifted from the 1940 Mickey Mouse film Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip*, which can be quite distracting if you've seen the older cartoon. Still, Get a Horse! is a clever and interesting film that is a welcome part of the Mickey Mouse canon.

*Interestingly enough, footage of Disney and Bletcher doing voice work for Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip is visible. It's interesting to see the two actors at work. You can find the footage here.

Where Can I Watch It?
You can certainly go to one of the showings of all of the Oscar nominated shorts, or you can go to the theater and watch it in front of Frozen, help it beat Despicable Me 2 to become the highest grossing animated film that came out in 2013. It's going to be on the Frozen DVD once it comes out, whenever that will be.

Mr Hublot

Mr. Hublot is an anxious, diminutive fellow with numerous compulsions to combat his various subconscious obsessions. One day he sees a robot dog getting thrown out onto a curb across the street. Mr. Hublot initially tries to ignore the dog, going on with his own hectic life, but his concern for the creature eventually gets the best of him when he felt the dog was getting thrown into a trash compactor. The dog was fine, and Mr. Hublot takes it in, but it prove to be too much for the nervous man, especially once he finds out the dog would not stop growing. Obsessive compulsive disorder is one of the most frequently cited anxiety disorder in the general population. It could be a debilitating condition where the afflicted have unnatural fears that could be alleviated by their unreasonable compulsions. Nowadays any particular quirk is being touted as OCD. We all have our quirks and compulsions, but there's a fine line between getting bothered by little things and having your life affected by the constant fears and worries. That's what I found really interesting about Mr Hublot. It is a film touted as being based on the works of French artist and sculptor Stephane Halleux who has a distinctive steampunk style, and stars a character with OCD. I had no idea who Halleux was, but I do know about OCD. And it seem like the film captures certain elements of the disease well. The first half of the film features the titular character living in on his own, and does capture the counting compulsions and the anxiety aspect of him. That gets even more amplified when the robot dog enters his life. One particularly stirring example is when Mr. Hublot goes out to rescue the dog, but has to turn off the lights. You can sense the conflict between the different sources of anxiety of the guy. The robot dog is another great character. It may be a robot, but it acts just like a dog, even in the way it grows to gargantuan proportions. The story itself is a bit on the light side and can probably accommodate a film half of its length, but the extra time really does help to flesh out the characters and their eccentricities, and the story is very heart-warming. The animation is fantastic. Not only do they have the character animation to capture Mr. Hublot and his quirks, but the computer generated animation also includes a lot of details that really immerses us into Halleux's steampunk world. There are a lot of great techniques as well, from a sped-up shot that takes us into a regular day in Mr. Hublot's life and the use of the Reverse Vertigo / Jaws technique. The soundtrack includes a few witty songs from a singer known as Li-Lo* that has some interesting lines such as "Too bad for him." Mr Hublot may not be the deepest film on the block, but it is a highly enjoyable and well executed film.
Where Can I Watch It?
You can certainly go to one of the showings of all of the Oscar nominated shorts, but it is also available online for the time being on YouTube. I doubt it's an official version so it'll probably get removed soon.

Room on the Broom

The watch had a cat and a very tall hat and long ginger hair she wore in a plait. She also travels on a broom. On one particularly windy day the wind was giving her a bit of a hard time, as it blew off her hat and her bow. She goes down to find them, and along the way meet a few new friends. These new animals all want to join them on the broom. The kind-hearted witch agrees to the arrangement, much to the cat's chagrin. But is there enough room on the broom? Julia Donaldson is one of the most famous children's book authors in Britain. Her heart-warming rhyming tales have made her a sort of a British form of Dr. Seuss. One of her most famous works was The Gruffalo, which was adapted as a television program in Britain by animators Max Lang and Jakob Schuh. The adaptation was a massive hit in Britain and was nominated for an Academy Award when it came stateside. A few years later, Max Lang adapted another one of Donaldson's famous popular books, Room on the Broom, for a television series, and got himself another Oscar nomination. Room on the Broom is a sweet little tale about friendship. Like The Gruffalo, it is a 25-minute film based off of a simple little picture book. As a result there are a lot of filler moments that slow the film down. However, there are a couple of nice additions that may not have been in the original storybook (although I may be wrong on that.) The film presents a nice contrast between the kind-hearted witch and her more possessive cat. While the witch is eager to accept these new friends, the cat is is unhappy with the arrangement. That makes for a lot of funny moments of the new friends pestering the increasingly annoyed cat. Furthermore, the idea that the new friends are out of place in their environment is well explored in the film. In one of the most touching scenes, the green bird is shown shunned by all of her fellow blackbirds, forcing to live an isolated incident until she meets the witch. It adds a lot of emotion in the tale. There are also some nice visual humor including throwbacks to the mother squirrel and the snake from The Gruffalo to help keep things interesting before the exciting last 1/3 of the film, but ultimately it still drags at times. The ending is delightful and really plays along the wonderful ideal that friendship is magic. The animation is similar to The Gruffalo in that it has characters designed using the computer to appear like claymation and set before real life sets similar to what the Fleischers did 80 years earlier. The voice cast is full of big stars such as Gillian Anderson as the witch and the Oscar nominated Sally Hawkins as the bird, although those characters have few lines, and the majority of the voice work is served by Simon Pegg as the narrator. The music by Rene Aubry is also catchy, although I preferred his more haunting work in The Gruffalo. I didn't really enjoy Room on the Broom the first time I saw it, but it has since grown on me, and it is a great film for kids.
Where Can I Watch It?
You can certainly go to one of the showings of all of the Oscar nominated shorts, or you can get it on DVD. It is also available online, but

Tsukumo (Possessions)

In 18th century Japan, a man is wandering around lost in a deep dark forest. A storm breaks out and he loses his hat to the unflinching wind. In the distance he sees an old shrine. He seeks shelter there from the rain, but what seemed to be an old dilapidated shrine turns out to be more than that. He is spirited away to a separate room where he is beset by old umbrellas with creepy eyes. However, he is not entirely helpless, but can his skills help him deal with the rest of the horrors before him? The Japanese people love their ghost stories, and one of their more popular ones is the idea of the "tsukumogami," which states that after 100 years of disuse, inanimate objects develop a soul of their own, which they use to get revenge on the humans that abandoned them in the first place*. Thankfully this is only a legend, because otherwise we'd be haunted by untold numbers of trash ghosts, given how materialistic our society has become. We've got dozens of things that we buy and then never use, from the exercise bikes to receipts that are just lying around. Nevertheless, this is still a part of Japanese legends, and it forms the basis of this film, which is a part of the anthology anime film Short Peace. The film really seems to tell a story about the virtues of reuse and recycle and to not overlook our inanimate objects. The main character works as a sort of an 18th century repairman that can repair things like umbrellas, and it is this aspect of him that helps soothe the savage spirits. This is becoming an increasingly important message in our society, where people really do live by the tenants proposed by the Oscar nominated mockumentary Let's Pollute, including "Waste More, Want More." Tsukumo is a good antithesis of that idea. The presentation of the message is done well, being quite entertaining with its juxtaposition of a creeping sense of horror with moments of gentle humor. Unfortunately the climax was a bit of a letdown compared to the thrills that were present in man's previous encounters with the tsukumogami. The animation style is well done. It utilizes the technique popularized in Paperman using computer generated models but with a 2D look. The 2D look is very breathtaking with vivid colors. However, the 3D models are not quite at the level of Paperman. They kind of have a wooden, unnatural movement and the 3D work isn't quite as seamless. The film is still visually stunning, especially with the spirit in the climax. The sound elements also add to the film's atmosphere, with effective use of sound effects and music to create the sense of mystery and wonder. The voice acting is good, with legendary voice actor Koichi Yamadera (Mew in the first Pokemon movie) playing the main character. Tsukumo is certainly a very interesting film. It may have a very Japanese feel to it, what with the reliance of a very Japanese concept to form the backbone of the film, but its message is universal, and it is possibly entertaining to all.

*Incidentally, the word tsukumo as seen in the term tsukumogami is a homonym that can also mean ninety nine, which probably reflects the 99 years that it takes for an object to become a tsukumogami. It is also the film's title. Possessions probably fits better than Ninety-nine, which would be the literal title.

Where Can I Watch It?
You can certainly go to one of the showings of all of the Oscar nominated shorts, or you can do what I did and import the film Short Peace from Japan, where you can get three other great films, including last year's shortlisted film Combustible. You do need a region free DVD player or a working knowledge of Japanese, because the film doesn't come with subtitles.

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Well, here are the five nominees. They all seem to be evenly matched. Get a Horse! has been the front-runner it seems from the time the shortlist was announced. However, while it has great technique, it is still largely a slapstick film, and the Academy hasn't awarded one of those since it seems like The Chubb-Chubbs back in 2002. And would the Academy be willing to vote for it if they really are going to vote for Frozen for Best Animated Feature? Feral is the film I think it's best, with its deep use of symbolism, but it is a very raw film, with minimalist animation, and may not be the Academy's cup of tea. Mr Hublot is the third of the film it seems everybody predicted correctly. It's a tender and heart-warming tale. The film may not be very deep, but it's substantial enough for the Academy, but would they scorn the film's steampunk atmosphere? Tsukumo and Room on the Broom may not be at the same level as the other three, but even they have their ardent supporters. Room on the Broom may have generated the most laughs at the showings I went to, and not just because it was twice as long as any of the other nominees. It's certainly an evenly matched race. I'm still going to stick with the upset by Feral, but it's possible that Mr Hublot could come up and take it, or they'll end up giving it to Get a Horse! in the end. It's going to be an interesting race.

My rankings (by quality)
Feral > Mr Hublot > Get a Horse! > Tsukumo > Room on the Broom

My rankings (by preference)
Tsukumo > Mr Hublot > Get a Horse! > Room on the Broom > Feral