This is especially true of the animated short films; last year, there were two serious, poignant films and one completely insane one. This year, all five animated shorts were silly, lightweight cartoons. All were entertaining, with interesting animation techniques; none are memorable. I have trouble seeing why any of them were nominated, unless the rest of the eligible films were even flimsier.
Fifty Percent Grey is a sort of goofily metaphysical, computer-animated film that's like a cross between Groundhog Day and, oh, let's say Sartre. It's wryly clever but slight.
Give Up Your Aul Sins features an Irish schoolgirl reciting the story of John the Baptist for a TV crew. It's fitfully amusing, and the sepia-toned animation is interesting, but it reminded me of nothing so much as those dreadful Jay Leno segments where he talks to elementary schoolkids about love or Easter or something. The girl rambles on in the disjointed, breathless way of little kids telling a story and, on top of that, she's got a thick Irish accent and, on top of that, the soundtrack, apparently meant to replicate TV taping techniques of the 1950s, is scratchy -- all of which adds up to near incomprehensibility at times.
What sticks with me most about Stubble Trouble is its background: this film about a hirsute caveman appears to be painted on a cave wall. That and its groovy bongo soundtrack are cool, but the story itself is negligible, and the animation is rather conventional.
I had high hopes for Strange Invaders because it comes from Cordell Barker, who did The Cat Came Back (which I know at least some of you know). Unfortunately, Strange Invaders has none of the dry humor of Cat. It's a rather dull, annoying film about an annoying, badly drawn couple who spy on their neighbors' babies until an alien child plummets headfirst into their home. What would you do if a flaming alien smashed into your house? Of course -- you'd adopt it! This was the only animated film I didn't laugh much at -- I was with the couple's dog, who looked disgusted by the invader and distressed at his owners' adoption of it.
For the Birds will probably win. It's Pixar's entry, a computer-animated vignette about a flock of snippy, cliquish birds and the goofy, good-natured outsider they mock. It's very funny -- the birds are a bit like those round green alien things in the claw machine in Toy Story (which to my mind was the best part of the movie). This is probably the only one of the animated films I'll remember a few months from now.
Very few of the nominees in either category are American, I suspect because other countries, especially European ones, give state support to filmmakers, so they can afford to make short films. There's no profit to short films, so in the U.S., if you want to make one, you either have to be in film school (in which case your work may not be as accomplished as that of more experienced, state-financed European filmmakers) or you have to self-finance -- and if you could put together the financing to do a short film as well polished as a state-supported film, you would probably opt to do a less-polished, feature-length film in hopes of getting it accepted at Sundance and maybe sold to a studio. All of which explains why three of the five live-action nominees are European.
The worst entry is the Polish A Man Thing (Meska Sprawa), a maudlin story about a boy whose father beats him. It's depressing, all the more so because it's ultra-realistic. The subtitles are horribly translated. It's a squalid tale that's not handled particularly well, and it ends so abruptly I think the director must have unexpectedly run out of film.
Speed for Thespians is a clever, creative staging of Chekov's The Bear -- on a New York City bus (rather, several buses, because the actors periodically get thrown off by irate drivers). The three actors are all good, but most entertaining is Jamie Harris (Richard Harris' son) as Smirnov, who interacts with the other passengers. Somewhat disappointingly, the film appears to be staged in the sense that the passengers seem to be actors -- they're credited at the end, and they don't react the way you'd expect "civilians" to. Plus, the camera angles are too well set up for it to be done on the fly. I'd have liked to see the reactions of real people to theater on a public bus, but nevertheless, it's a fun bit to watch.
Gregor's Greatest Invention is a sweet story about a young man who lives with and cares for his grandmother. When her querulous friends try to convince her that she's getting too old to move around, that she's a burden on young Gregor, and that she should move into the nursing home where they live, Gregor tries to invent something to help her get around on her own. It's funny and not as cloying as it could have been. (And Gregor's a cutie!)
If David Lynch worked at Kinko's, he might have dreamed up Copy Shop while contemplating the copiers. A surreal fantasy shot with an innovative technique (it was shot on videotape, then printed out on a computer and shot again with an animation camera), it's about a copy-shop clerk who inadvertently copies himself -- and those copies make copies, until his world is crammed with copies of himself. It's definitely the most creative of all the entries, animated or live-action.