Oscar nominated animated shorts
Reviews of all five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
**Please note: This year’s animated shorts program is decidedly NOT appropriate for children.**
Affairs of the Art
(16 minutes)
A very bawdy and funny piece about a family of artistic weirdos, featuring delightful hand-drawn animation. Narrated by Beryl (Menna Trussler), who wanted to go to art school but ended up in a factory, so now at age 59 she’s doing nude sketches of her husband and body paint portraits of herself. In between she relates growing up with her death-obsessed sister, Beverly, who tormented mice and got involved in pet taxidermy. Hilarious and very, very naughty.
Bestia
(16 minutes)
An utterly chilling story of degradation and alienation. Using stop motion animation where the human figures have a vaguely ceramic, expressionless look to them, Ingrid is a military intelligence agent of some sort in dictatorial 1970s Chile. She lives alone with her dog, carrying out a humdrum daily routine — breakfast, bus ride, playing fetch — that lead to her job at a nondescript house where she partakes in horrors in the basement. The dog seems to be devoted to her, but affection is not part of the cold calculus in her mind. Quietly terrifying.
Boxballet
(15 mintues)
This clever and amusing Russian short tracks the unlikely relationship of Olya, a beautiful young ballet dancer, and Evgeny, a brutish boxer. The dancers are depicted as lithe sylphs, all long limbs, while the fighter looks like a canned ham that’s been washed down the sewer and battered against rocks, his nose a bent, discolored banana. Their story is told wordlessly, as he prepares for his big fight and she must deal with the advances of the creepy, clawed dance master. An offbeat punk rock love tale with great music.
The Windshield Wiper
(15 minutes)
A gorgeous, perplexing and evocative series of vignettes that center on the question, “What is love?” We see various lovers coming together, pulling apart, or passing each other by in modern international cityscapes — a pair on a beach watching a sunset, a lovelorn girl contemplating throwing herself off a building, a jilted lover waiting on a rainy doorstep with a mangled bouquet of flowers. My favorite was a pair of tattooed people swiping left and right on dating apps at the grocery store, never aware their perfect partner is standing a foot away. Not sure what it all adds up to, but it’s very moody and contemplative.
Robin Robin
(30 minutes)
Aardman Animation is mostly known for goofy stop-motion animation like the “Wallace & Gromit” and “Shaun the Sheep” franchises. So here’s a surprisingly sweet story about a robin whose egg was lost, so she was raised by a family of mice. Every night they sneak into the “who-man” houses to steal crumbs — their catch-all phrase for any tasty tidbit. Alas, Robin (Bronte Carmichael), who fluffs up her feathers to simulate mouse ears, isn’t very good at sneaking. Then she runs into an addled Magpie (Richard E. Grant) obsessed with collecting baubles, and also a haughty cat (Gillian Anderson) who wants to put them all in her belly. Gorgeous animation production, lots of heart and even a couple of catchy musical numbers.
