Animated Shorts Nominees 2012

2012 Nominees for Best Animated Shorts

The winner of the Best Animated Short for 2012 was Paperman which I really enjoyed. I had the opportunity to find and watch the other nominees (courtesy of YouTube) and I think I am glad I did not have to cast a vote because it would have been tough.

I had two other favorites that I thought would have been worthy of the Oscar. Head over Heels used claymation (think the California Raisins) and told the story of a couple that has been together a very long time. You can tell this by the way they seem to tolerate each other, they who their weariness in the actions and expressions. Adding a level of complexity is the upside down living situation they have, one lives on the ceiling and the other lives on the floor (head over heels, get it?), so there are frequent disagreements about how pictures should hang and how furniture should be placed. The husband makes a peace offering, but due to the whole gravity thing and a misunderstanding, it gets rebuffed. The ending is very sweet and hopeful. I thought it was a great story (again no dialog) and I really liked the animation, the tones are kind of muddy, more earth tones, not a lot of bright colors, but I think it worked.

The other one that I watched (twice actually) was Fresh Guacamole which used stop-motion animation. It basically demonstrates how to make guacamole, except instead of real vegetables, household objects are used (toy grenade instead of an avocado, tomato-shaped pin cushion instead of a real tomato). It sounds bizarre and it is, but I was compelled to watch, and then I watched another short by the same artist (PES) and then I signed up for his YouTube channel. It probably didn't win because it was not provocative enough or 'deep' enough, but it's worth watching, and bonus, it's less than two minutes long.

Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare was as you might gather from the name, a Simpsons short. I don't usually watch The Simpsons but from what I have watched, the animation style was pretty much the same. The big difference, I think, was there was no dialog, plenty of ambient and natural sounds, but no speaking (I don't think Maggie speaks anyway, but Marge drops her off and picks up from daycare and doesn't utter a sound). It was pretty fast paced (especially compared to the next short I'll review which seemed endless) and I found myself trying to follow all of the jokes found in the signage and there was lot. The soundtrack was also used to great effect. Maggie matches wits with a kid who gets sick pleasure from smashing butterflies. Maggie sets out to protect a caterpillar soon to be butterfly. There's a chase and a narrow escape, anything else would give it away. It was clever and fun to watch, but could not compete with Paperman or Head Over Heels.

This last short was my least favorite short that I have seen in a while. Adam and Dog stylistically reminded me of old school Disney animation (in fact there were former Disney animators who worked on it), but the story? I don't know where that came from. It's long and ponderous (which should tell you everything you want to know because it was really less than 30 minutes) and I did not find anything to recommend it. It is set in some prehistoric or perhaps biblical time (I would not have used biblical, except I found that information on Wikipedia). The dog rambles around, exploring the vast forest/jungle and then finds 'Adam'. They hang out a little and then go their separate ways, but the dog finds his friend again. At this point I will note that Adam is sans clothes, as in wearing nothing but what the good lord gave him. The drawings are not explicitly detailed, but if you have young kids who notice those things, and you don't want to have to explain anything, you may just want to skip it since it's not very good anyway. Well, Adam and the dog get along just swell, until Adam meets a woman (Eve? I say with some certainty but not completely). Adam and his new girl have other things on their minds besides playing fetch with Rover. After what I could only infer as having carnal relations, Adam and the woman appear changed, disfigured, malformed almost. Quite frankly, I stopped caring at this point and was just looking at the timer for how many hours, I mean minutes, I had left. No question I thought the animation was well done, a complex use of 'light' in the settings, but the story/message? Eh.

I did find all of these on YouTube, so you can check them out for yourself.