Archive for the ‘Shorts’ Category
Filed under: Shorts, Oscar Watch
Some people say the Oscar telecast would be better if they skipped the shorts categories, since the vast majority of the home audience — and the audience in the Kodak Theatre, for that matter — hasn’t seen any of the nominated films. But as someone pointed out on last night’s show, winning an Academy Award for your short film is the best calling card you can have. Many directors of acclaimed feature-length films got a foot in Hollywood’s door by making an Oscar-winning short first.
So the awards are valuable. That doesn’t change the fact that most viewers don’t have an easy way to view the shorts beforehand. It’s too late for “beforehand,” but BuzzFeed helped remind us that all five of the animated shorts, including the winner, Logorama, are now online. Now you can go back and see if you agree with the Academy voters — and watch five amusing cartoons in the process. (There’s a Wallace & Gromit in there!)
Once you’ve seen them, let us know: Which one would you have voted for? Did the right short win? And wouldn’t it be great if all the nominees were this easily available in advance, so we could play along at home?
Check them out after the jump.
Continue reading Watch the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts, All in One Place
Filed under: Shorts, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics
Late last year, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sarah Polley made a 2-minute short film called The Heart, for The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s healthy living campaign. Starring Sarah Manninen and Jean-Michel Le Gal, the film follows a “woman through phases of her life” as she “explores the chambers of her heart.” Now that the short is just a few days away from release — slated to air on the Canadian station CTV during the Academy Award ceremony — The Globe and Mail reports that Polley is removing her name from the title credits after the discovery that it’s being used to promote Becel margarine.
It is not clear what, if any, knowledge Polley had about Becel’s ties to the foundation (the Globe says they commissioned the film), but according to her press release, she “… was thrilled, as I was proud to be associated with the work of this incredible organization.” “However, I have since learned that my film is also being used to promote a product. Regretfully, I am forced to remove my name from the film and disassociate myself from it.” Polley explained that she “never actively promoted any corporate brand, and cannot do so now.”
Considering just how many moviegoers and fans get irked by product placement, and the ever-increasing ties between product marketing and moviemaking, it’s pretty cool to see a filmmaker put principles over complacency. Then again, this is not a surprise. This is the girl who, as a pre-teen, stood up to Disney when they were against their Road to Avonlea star wearing a peace sign to protest the first Gulf War.
Filed under: Shorts, Oscar Watch
The idea of releasing the ten Academy Award nominated animated and live-action short films in one package into theaters is such a great one that it’s a wonder no one thought of it sooner than a few years ago. As with any collection of shorts, these are always a mixed bag, especially given the Academy’s century-long penchant for awarding “important” films rather than good ones. But lo and behold, there are some wonderful things here, too, and one, The Lady and the Reaper, that is just flat-out excellent.
I will refrain from making any predictions here, as it’s nearly impossible to guess whether the Academy is interested in quality or in the mood for messages. Not to mention that there is one X-factor: Nick Park. Up to now, Park has won every single Oscar he has been nominated for, except one, and that’s only because Creature Comforts and A Grand Day Out competed against each other in 1989 and one of them had to lose. Will the Academy feel obligated to give Park a fifth Oscar? Or has Wallace & Gromit grown a little tired over the years? Personally, I found A Matter of Loaf and Death highly accomplished and enjoyable, but fairly minor; it’s not much different from the last entry, A Close Shave.
Continue reading Review: The 2010 Academy Award Nominated Short Films
Filed under: Animation, Disney, Shorts, Family Films, Home Entertainment
My niece brought me a book to read when I was visiting her last week, an adaptation of the Disney short The Three Little Pigs, complete with illustrations. After we finished reading, I said, “Do you know there’s a movie of this?” and betting heavily on the power of YouTube, sat her down at the computer with me to find it. YouTube came through, and my niece loved the movie. In fact, my mom came in about halfway through, exclaimed she hadn’t seen it in 20 years (we used to have it on VHS back in the day), and watched it with us, delighted.
You can find a number of Disney’s Silly Symphony shorts online, but The Three Little Pigs may be my favorite. The 1933 film won an Oscar for “Best Short Subject, Cartoons.” Depression-era audiences must have enjoyed seeing the pigs fight a literal wolf at their door, the song is infectiously cute, and there are a few sly moments of humor. When the pigs are all in the brick house (I hope I’m not spoiling anything for you here), check out the pictures of “Mother” and “Father” on the wall. The original version of the short was criticized for employing negative Jewish stereotyping in the Big Bad Wolf’s Fuller Brush Man costume. I’m embedding a revised version where the costume was changed; the original sequence is also available online.
You can watch The Three Little Pigs right here, after the jump. And if you want a better quality version, it’s available for sale through iTunes, as well as on several Disney DVD compilations of early short films. Warning: you may find “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” sticks in your head afterward for a while.
Filed under: Animation, Shorts, Trailers and Clips
I was glad I opted to watch the opening night shorts program at this year’s Sundance Film Festival because it was packed with four fantastic short films. One of those (arguably the favorite of the bunch) was an animated film called Logorama, written and directed by the French duo of François Alaux and Herve de Crecy. Now nominated for a Best Animated Short Oscar, Logorama takes place in a world full of corporate and brand logos (in which roughly 2,500 appear), and it follows a few different stories that all intertwine with one another. Honestly, it’s bloody brilliant, and I guarantee it’ll be the best thing you watch all week.
At Sundance, a bunch of us wondered how these guys could get away with making something like this without facing hundreds of lawsuits, and then we wondered whether legal matters would ever stop it from existing in some form online. Perhaps someone with a law background could chime in here, but in the meantime you simply must head after the jump to watch this film. My favorite part is the Joker-esque Ronald McDonald, but it’s also the tiniest details that truly make this film a work of art. You may normally not pay attention to the short film categories at the Oscars (partly because they’re not as widely distributed as the feature films), but after watching Logorama I think you’ll be rooting for it come March 7th.
Check it out after the jump and let us know what you think.
Continue reading Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short ‘Logorama’
Filed under: Comedy, Shorts, Fandom, Trailers and Clips
Years ago, there were elimination dances. They weren’t like the National Bandstand dance-off at Rydell High, where it all came down to stunning Travolta moves. Rather, a caller (announcer) would call out random, arbitrary disqualifications — such as “anyone wearing a red hat” — and the couple would have to leave the floor. Remembering the old days, writer Michael Ondaatje took the idea to its most illogically funny extreme with his book Elimination Dance, detailing a caller who comes up with strange disqualifications that somehow hit the mark.
It wasn’t long before the book was made into a short film full of Canadian talent. Bruce McDonald directed and co-wrote with Don McKellar, who also starred alongside oft-collaborator Tracy Wright, with the whole thing edited by Leslie, My Name is Evil helmer Reginald Harkema. Tracy and Don meet just before the elimination dance begins, and on the floor, they dance along happily while others get shoo’d off for mistaking a penis for a loaf of bread, losing a urine sample in the mail, going to court to be a character witness for a dog — you get the idea.
It’s ridiculous in that Saddest Music in the World sort of way, and the perfect diversion during the Wednesday slump. Hit the jump to watch the short for yourself and beware: It’s NSFW with brief nudity.
Filed under: Sundance, Shorts, Home Entertainment
Director Spike Jonze’s 30-minute short film I’m Here, which played as part of the Short Films program (number 1, in case you’re here and want to catch it), will be airing on IFC sometime later this year, according to EW. The ink probably hasn’t dried on the deal yet, or it’s waiting to be written, but this is a fantastic little short film that needs to be seen by a wider audience.
Jonze admits he was partly inspired by Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree, and it’s a lovelorn robot tale starring Andrew Garfield and Sienna Guillory, which you can read all about right here on Cinematical. Or, if you really want to build up some anticipation for this, check out the trailer here. I’m glad the IFC is putting shorts on their channel, and I hope they pick up a few more from the festival, including the incredible Logorama, and the extremely awesome Six Dollar Fifty Man. Come on IFC, in for a penny, in for a pound.
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Filed under: Sundance, Shorts, DIY/Filmmaking
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is at Sundance for the fourth time, having previously appeared with the notable films Brick (2005) and last year’s (500) Days of Summer. This year he’s appearing at the festival in Hesher, and he’s pimping his own open-source film project called hitRECord.org. It’s an interesting collaboration between artists, where anyone can be the filmmaker, the composer, the effects artist, or … pretty much anything you want to be. And by artists, we mean you.
Anyone in the world can sign up at the website, and upload their own clips, tweak existing clips, add soundtracks, record new voiceovers, etc. Films can be recorded on anything from a professional grade camera or a cell phone (or anything in-between), and Gordon-Levitt, or RegularJOE as he’s known on the website, hopes to produce a full project that will be released in some sort of money-making format (DVD, VOD, small theatrical run, online, etc) where half of the money will go to the artists who were selected to work on the project, and the other half will go back into funding for hitRECord.
It’s an ambitious project, and you can see one of the completed shorts embedded just beyond the break. If you’re a budding filmmaker with an extremely limited budget but lots of imagination, this might be the short-film generating outlet you’re looking for.
Filed under: Shorts, Exhibition, Home Entertainment
3D isn’t only for the movie theaters and televisions, folks. In commemoration of the first anniversary of their online screening room (yesterday!), the National Film Board of Canada is sending out free 3D glasses and launching two new sections of their site to offer viewers goodies in both 3D and HD. This adds to the 1,400+ titles already available for free viewing on the website.
The 3D section is kicking off with the shorts Falling in Love Again, Drux Flux, Sandde, and Facing Champlain, plus a number of making-of feature for Champlain. On the HD side of things, there’s a little more variety. While Cordell Barker got his latest short, Runaway, screening at Sundance (brief review here), his Oscar-nominated 1988 short The Cat Came Back is on the site, along with flicks that include the 1965 short High Steel, Chris Landreth’s Oscar-winning Ryan, the 2007 Oscar nominee Madame Tutli-Putli, and The Stratford Adventure, which includes footage of the iconic Alec Guinness.
Best of all, there’s none of that darned region-blocking, so everyone should be able to dig into all that the NFB has to offer. Currently, the NFB is offering free Color Code glasses to watch the 3D shorts online. If you live in Canada, the shipping is free, and if you live Stateside, my sources tell me they’re still free … you just have to pay a buck for shipping.
Filed under: Sundance, Shorts, Trailers and Clips
In less than a week from now the 2010 Sundance Film Festival will get underway, and a few of us here at Cinematical (Scott Weinberg, Eric D. Snider, Kevin Kelly, Erik Childress and yours truly) will be heading to sunny Park City, Utah with one mission: to bring back word on what could be some of the hottest (and most worthwhile) independent films of 2010. While we continue our Sundance Primer series through this week and next, we also thought it might be a good time to throw some love at all the short films premiering at this year’s festival (because once things get started, the poor shorts always seem to get shafted). Yes, this year’s short film lineup does include films from Spike Jonze and James Franco — and I’m sure you’ll see coverage of those two all over these internets — but what about the others?
We’ll definitely try to get you some coverage of the shorts once the festival begins, but in the meantime a whole bunch of them have put up trailers online (and, keep this under your hat, but in some cases you can watch the entire film). In order to make it so you don’t have tons upon tons of videos to scroll through, we decided to split this up into two parts. You can check out the first part here, in which we went over the U.S. short films. Today we’ll bring you trailers, teasers and footage from the shorts screening in the following three categories: International Dramatic, Documentary and Animated. There’s not a whole lot out there for the international shorts, so if you’re a filmmaker for an international short and you have a trailer online, definitely contact us and we’ll include it.
Head after the jump to watch the second round of trailers …
