Home and a variety of animated shorts including Munro (1960), Granny O'Grimm, La Maison en Petits Cubes

Some things about this blog are pretty random, and then other times, I have a plan or theme. In this case, this entry is all about animation. It finally dawned on me that Youtube.com might have some of the animated shorts I needed to see. Voila! Without further ado, I'll start with a feature film that hasn't been nominated yet, but it may be, and we'll go from there.

10/31/15 Home, not yet nominated, 2015

Home is an alien-meets girl film, starring Jim Parsons as Oh, a naive, but eager Boov; Rihanna as Tip, a young girl who moved to the US with her mom from Barbados; Steve Martin is the egotistical and incompetent leader of the Boovs, Captain Smek. The Boovs seem to be in a constant state of running away from the Gorgs, a seemingly violent and aggressive race of aliens. Captain Smek leads the Boovs to Earth, but first all of the humans need to be picked up and sent to Australia (it seems to take less than the normal 24+ hour flight, so that's a bonus, right?), but Tip manages to hide from them until she meets Oh, who has been ostracized from the Boovs because he sort of gave the Boovs' location to the Gorgs. The story follows Tip and Oh as they try to find Tip's mom (played by Jennifer Lopez). Along the way, Oh learns a little more about human ways and feelings (in some ways Oh is not all that different from Sheldon Cooper, Parsons' alter ego). Tip gets frustrated at Oh's lack of a sense of urgency to find her mom. There is some fun music, provided by Rihanna and JLo, there are some touching moments and an interesting twist at the end of the movie. So, did I like it? Yeah, I did, did I love it? I don't know. I guess not. I think it might be me; I used to love animated movies, run to the theater and now, I wait until they're on DVD. Maybe it's because the kids I used to take to see the movies are growing up (I'll need to find new friends with little kids, I suppose), or they just aren't that fabulous. Probably a combination of the two. Occasionally I'm asked what recent animated movie I really like and in the last couple of years I always come back to The Boxtrolls. That movie was very well done in so many ways. So, any way, I'll sign this entry "Scrooge'.

1960, Best Animated Short Film
Munro
I found this gem on youtube (actually all of the shorts listed below were on youtube if you want to check them out). Even though this short was done back in 1960, it seems timeless in portraying the incompetency of bureaucracy, whether it's military or governmental; I expected the script to be written by Franz Kafka. Munro is a little boy who is drafted into the army; he dutifully reports for his physical, all the while protesting that he's only four years old. Eventually he is recognized to be a child and goes back to his mother (you do have to wonder where his parents were throughout this, but perhaps this also reflects some of the writer's feelings about adults in general). Take a few minutes and find this online.

1997, Geri's Game, Winner for Best Animated Short Feature
Geri is playing a game of chess against himself. He takes off his glasses when he's on the other side, and as he is on the verge of check-mate, his other self, does the old switcheroo and turns the board around. This allows his 'real' self to win.

2007
La Maison en Petits Cubes,  Winner for Best Animated Short Feature 
Despite its French title this was actually done by a Japanese animation team; the animation looks hand-drawn as opposed to computer animation. It seems like a moving watercolor painting. There's no dialog, just a soundtrack. The film opens with what seems like a lake, but there are houses in it. We discover the unnamed main character in the top level of his house as the water begins to take over again. That's when we the extent to which the man has gone to stay in his home, as the many levels of his house are revealed. It kind of reminded me of the plot line in Tangerines and Ivo not wanting to leave his home, no matter what destruction crossed his threshold. It had a poignancy that I appreciated without beating me over the head or using overwrought emotions. It was beautiful in its simplicity.
Lavatory - Lovestory
This Russian entry has a bit of a cheekiness to it that was a total about face to La Maison en Petits Cubes. You may correctly infer that the film has something to do with a love story in a lavatory. It appears to be a lavatory in a bus or train station with a female attendant, even for the men's restroom. The woeful and lovelorn attendant reads her newspaper as the customers go in and out, but mysteriously, someone puts a small bouquet of flowers in her money jar. She tries to find who it is, and is somewhat frustrated by her efforts. She is determined and eventually meets her lavatory love. There is a sense of fun in the animation style that matches the narrative; I find that I mostly prefer the hand-drawn style than anything that resembles stereotypical computer animation (the 'hand-drawn' look may very well be achieved through computer animation, but I still like it better).

Oktapodi

This is just a fun, silly entry that is set in what looks like Santorini, Greece. An octopus is taken away from her mate (very possibly for someone else's meal) and her mate (I'm presuming on the gender of each octopus) escapes to rescue her. That's where the adventures begin, as the truck with the octopus flies through the hilly and angular streets of the village. It was fun, but didn't make any great impression on me.


Presto is a Pixar film that shows a magician in a contest with his magic hat and rabbit. I have the Marx brothers on my mind and it could have been a Marx brothers skit from 60 years ago. It was clever and fun, and sometimes you like to see the rabbit get the best of the magician, so that was kind of nice. Again, fun to watch, but it nothing too deep (and that's probably okay, but I think I need something to move my needle).

This Way Up
An English father and son pair of undertakers go through all kinds of extreme conditions to successfully complete the burial of their elderly 'customer'. This was also fun to watch, very little dialogue, but the story is conveyed well enough by the action. 


2008, nominated for Best Animated Short Film
The winner for this year was Logorama which was a very well-done (computer-animated) film that poked vicious fun at different logos and branded characters.

French Roast is also computer-animated but resembles stop-action and is set in a French cafe where a patron finds that he is without his wallet. He somehow thinks that if he just keeps ordering espresso he'll be able to figure out a way to pay (I don't know how). A little old lady sits next to him and as she goes to the restroom, he discovers she has a bit of money and he thinks his troubles are solved. Of course, it's not as easy as that, especially when the little old lady is not everything she seems. The lesson here may be don't judge a book by its cover. I liked the strange twist.

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
Speaking of strange and twisted, don't let Granny O'Grimm put your kids to bed and don't be fooled by her Irish brogue, this woman is demented. Granny is putting her granddaughter to bed and tells her version of "Sleeping Beauty". It seems that Granny may have some unresolved issues. Okay, a lot of unresolved issues. There is something familiar about the animation style and the way the characters are portrayed (especially Granny) and perhaps it's the artists and I am unable to determine where I have seen it before. It's another CGI movie, but I like it when that is not the first thing I think about when watching a movie, but the humor and the story. It was pretty funny. I would actually like to hear Granny O'Grimm's take on a few more fairytales (kind of reminds me of "Fractured Fairytales" from "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show".

2009
Let's Pollute, nominated for Best Animated Short Film
The Lost Thing was the winner for this year, and I really like that film. Let's Pollute uses an animation style that is very similar to Munro, but a narrative style that is so ridiculously heavy handed, I wanted to go out and pollute just to be difficult. You may guess from the title that Let's Pollute is about how pollution has developed over the past century or so, since the industrial revolution, and how we can help increase pollution. Yes, satirical, but there is no subtly like in Swift's A Modest Proposal. It was 6 1/2 minutes long and it was annoying. But at least it wasn't 7 minutes.

2010
Wild Life, nominated for Best Animated Short Film
 I wasn't really sure how I felt about Wild Life after I watched it. Part of me thought well, what an idiot, he deserved it, but then a part of me thought I was little harsh and judgmental. An unnamed young man from England makes his way to Albert, Canada in 1909 and he was provided for by his family back in England. Apparently, this was not an uncommon occurrence and there was even an name for men and women like him, "remittance man" (or "woman"). We see the man spending time in the local saloon or maybe enjoying the nature on the open plains. Except, something happens. A Canadian mountie is seen at the young man's property, and it seems quite mysterious. It appears that the young man had a suitcase (perhaps heading back home?) but he stopped to enjoy the beautiful night sky, but then did he freeze to death? It is clear that he was never really prepared to live out in the Canadian wild (at least it was to me). So, that's where I get conflicted. I don't know, I think it's worth seeing, but I feel confident that the winner for the year, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore was the correct choice.