Salute your shorts: Oscars edition
Well, folks, there’s only a precious few hours left until Jon Stewart and his prehensile eyebrows ascend the Academy Awards podium. And with most of the Oscar coverage trained on the merciless scrum for Best Picture between No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton and, uh, Juno, it’s easy to lose sight of the littler guys — like this year’s animated short film nominees. Haven’t seen them yet? Here’s a sampler platter to whet your appetite. [Credit goes to the excellent illustration blog Drawn.ca for doing most of the legwork here; thumbnail pics courtesy Magnolia Pictures.]
Même les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
Here’s a rather bonkers French film about shyster priests and cheating death, with a cute micro-twist sprinkled on at the end like visual bacon bits. (Knuckle-dragging philistine that I am, my favorite part was hearing them say “highway to hell” en français.)
Madame Tutli-Putli
Here we find a rheumy-eyed puppet maiden riding the night train to Sadsville, pursued by her own personal demons — and it’s just gorgeous. Canadian animators Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski spent two years either holed up in their studios (they report that “a 16-second shot would take maybe a week” to film) or gathering bits of smashed mirror off the road, which they used to create Madame Tutli-Putli’s ethereal lighting.
Part 2
I Met the Walrus
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatles fan barged into one of John Lennon’s hotel “bed-ins,” jammed a reel-to-reel tape recorder in his face and managed to nab a great interview. Forty years later, animators Alex Kurina and James Braithwaite have taken these clips and bathed them in splashy, frenetic, stream-of-consciousness imagery.
Moya Lyubov (My Love)
Backed by three previous Oscar nominations, animator Aleksandr Petrov wields a lovely technique that involves filming oil paints directly on glass — a tricky medium. The plot of this may love story set in 19th-century Russia might seem a little sterile (it’s not a huge surprise to learn that the majority of Petrov’s work consists of commercials), but never mind; there’s plenty of visual distraction here. (Note: A lot of the effect gets lost in YouTube’s pixel-squishing format. For a crisper vid, see the trailer at Studio Ghibli.)
Peter & The Wolf
Suzie Templeton breathes new life into Sergei Prokofiev’s musical tale with her mesmerizing stop-motion work — her sinewy wolf is disturbingly realistic, as it slinks through the forest, while scrawny little underdog Peter has an intriguingly dark tinge to him.
Bonus Oscarificness
MoviePosterAddict.com has put together a neat little collection of movie posters for (nearly) every single Best Picture winner since the Academy Awards kicked off its first awards ceremony 79 years ago. [via Neatorama]
