Animated and Live Action Shorts - A Day at the Uptown Theater

It has become an annual event for a friend and me to see the live action and animated shorts in Uptown in Minneapolis. It's a day out, we have lunch, and today we had an adult beverage. It's fun to chat about the movies immediately with another human instead of this one-way mirror known as a blog. Don't get me wrong, I love the blog, but sometimes a real time debrief is very fulfilling. I have the best of both worlds, because now I get to post my musings.

Animated Shorts

Sanjay's Super Team from Pixar is unique in that it has a young Indian boy and his father as the characters, not including the Indian gods that engage in a super hero type battle against evil. It's a story about generational gaps and the clash of cultures that many families of different backgrounds experience. It was fun and touching, very typical Pixar. We both agreed it was good, but not great, and we didn't think it's the winner.

World of Tomorrow left us both scratching our heads, thinking what's the point. It's a 'the future meets the present' with a little girl meeting her future self. It was seventeen minutes and it seemed like it was forever. This was our least favorite.

Historia de un Oso (Bear Story) was our favorite and my choice to win. The animation was really good, I think it was stop action, and it kind of reminded me of the style used in The Box Trolls. A bear has a musical diorama that he plays for money; the diorama and the story it tells are obviously more complex than could actually be shown in a diorama (but if we question that, then we should we question the ability of a bear to make said diorama in the first place). There is a family of bears, but then the father bear is taken away and made to perform in a circus. He finally gets out and is reunited with his family. There are some parts that might be a little intense or serious for a child, but something about it captivated me more than the other nominated films.

We Can't Live without Cosmos is an entry from Russia, and my first thought as it started was that this was an unusually joyful movie for Russia. Of course, that didn't necessarily last the whole time. We see a group of cosmonauts going through exercises and one pair in particular is at the center. They don't have names, and they don't speak, but we get the impression they are great friends, competing against one another, but also pushing each other to the limits. In a lot of ways, they seem like two big kids, goofing around behind the backs of their more severe trainers. When it comes time to send the rocket up, only one of the men goes, the other is the alternate. Disaster strikes, and something happens to the rocket soon after it is in space. The astronaut left behind is distraught and inconsolable, clutching the last picture the two of them took together. The two friends are eventually reunited in a very sci-fi way, that was very sweet. This was one of our favorites as well.

Prologue was the last entry and our least favorite. And once the penises were out, my friend was convinced I planned it (same friend who witnessed the animated sex last weekend). The animation style was pretty cool, but the story was meh. It appeared to be set in Viking/Celtic times, with naked and semi-naked men killing each other. This left the women and children behind. War is bad.

There were a few other shorts included, some were okay, one we really liked was called Catch It and it featured a family of meerkats competing with a vulture for a piece of fruit. It was almost like a Roadrunner/Wiley Coyote or Tom and Jerry cartoon (I mean that in a good way). It was fun, the animation was bright and colorful and the ending was hilarious. This would have been our pick for the winner if it would have been nominated.

Then we went to lunch.

Live Action Shorts

I have to say people are idiots. We were lucky enough to sit next to a guy who could not stop sighing and clucking (well, my friend got to sit next to him); then there was 'Squeaky Shoes', squeak squeak as he walked or sat or whatever. Just sit and be quiet. This is not the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Okay, I'm better now. We really liked all of the shorts in this category; our one quibble would have been to put the first one last, and you'll see why in a moment.

Ave Maria is set in Israel, in the West Bank. At first I thought this might be very serious and heavy, but it wasn't and it was the lightest and funniest movie in the group. A Jewish family is driving when their car inexplicably crashes into a convent of nun who have taken a vow of silence. The crash is blamed on the mother-in-law or the wife, depending on whom you ask. The nuns, being disturbed in their afternoon meal, send the young novice out to see what's going on; the Jewish family is in a hurry to get home before the Sabbath, but nobody will come and get them, so they turn to the nuns for help. There were some laugh out loud moments, and I think what I liked so much was that these two groups of people both had to step beyond the confines of their culture and religious beliefs: the nuns broke their vow of silence and the Jewish family had to work on the Sabbath in order to get home. It was positive and a feel good movie.

It's emotionally downhill from here.

Shok is an Albanian film based on true events during the Kosovo War. Oki and Petrit are childhood friends and Oki just got a new bicycle. His friend Petrit has been selling cigarette papers to Serbian soldiers, which is a very dangerous things because they are ethnic Albanians. One of the Serbs takes Oki's bicycle and he blames Petrit for getting them into that situation. The Serbs expel the Albanians from the village and it doesn't end well. The narrative was set up so that you kind of knew something was going to happen, but when it did, it was still like a punch in the stomach. This was very powerful and beautifully filmed. I'm not sure exactly where it was filmed, but it was stunning.

Alles wird gut (Everything will be okay) was probably my least favorite film of this group. Michael Baumgartner picks up his young daughter, Lea, from his ex-wife's house. He is clearly very agitated as he waits for Lea to come out, and it doesn't get better when her step-father comes out to say goodbye. Michael and Lea go shopping to buy Lea a present (who knew they had Toys 'R Us in Germany?), and then off to an official looking building for an emergency passport. The foreshadowing is not very subtle. Then they go to an amusement park and then Michael sells his car, and they rush off to the airport. Their flight to Manila is delayed which causes Michael to get more distressed and by this time Lea is ready to go home and begins questioning her father. He, in turn, gets very angry and aggressive with her. Michael tells Lea he is doing this because he can't lose her, and fears her mother will not let them see each other anymore. Lea actually takes on the role of the grown up, trying to calm him and tell him it will be okay. I didn't hate it, but I thought the ending dragged out for what seemed like an eternity. The little girl was very good, but I don't expect this to win.

Stutterer is about a man who stutters when he speaks out loud, but when he has conversations in his head (as we all do) or online, he speaks flawlessly. He has been having an online relationship with a woman, but they have never met or spoken. He panics when she tells him she will be down in London for a few days and asks if they can meet. He hesitates, but eventually, agrees and it turns out she is deaf, so they don't have to speak; coincidentally, he is learning sign language. Eh, it was okay.

Day One presents the viewer with conflicting emotions and the potential for disaster. My heart was in my throat for a few seconds. Feda is the new interpreter on a US Army base in Afghanistan/Iraq (it's not really clear), and it's induction by fire. Almost as soon as she arrives, she must accompany her unit to look for an enemy bomb maker. Unfortunately, nothing goes as planned when the man's pregnant wife gets knocked down or falls down and goes into labor. It's a difficult process (thankfully it did not go the way I thought, which would have been horrific) and Feda has to assist because it would be inappropriate for the doctor on scene to be alone with the woman without her husband's permission. Early in the film, Feda makes it clear that she was not interested in having children, but she is obviously moved by the power of childbirth and the beauty of the newborn baby. The juxtaposition of the bomb maker and what he does with the love for his wife is touching; it humanizes people in something that has become very dehumanized. This is based on the director's experience as a platoon leader and his interpreter. This was very intense, and that's why I said, and my friend agreed, Ave Maria should have ended the evening, just a little light note to head into the evening.

I have started a channel on YouTube.com where I have begun compiling Oscar winning/nominated shorts. Still a lot of work to do, but you can check it out here: Oscar Shorts Play list

All in all, the films were outstanding, and even the ones we didn't like so much were still okay. The Revenant is tomorrow, and the remaining documentaries should follow this week. Twenty-eight days to go.