This year’s nominated animated shorts, presented by ShortsHD across the country and online, seem to have a darker tone than previous years, at least from when I started seeing them. In fact, one of them is strictly R-rated and has tons of warnings beforehand, so younger audiences can leave the theater. It is also screened last instead of with the other nominees. Most of the other shorts don’t seem very kid-friendly either unless you have really mature kids.
The 5 nominated shorts this year are:
“Sanjay’s Super Team,” from Pixar animation, was released along with The Good Dinosaur. It’s a somewhat autobiographical short about the director, Sanjay Patel, as a young Indian boy who is more interested in western superheroes than his father’s daily meditations to the Hindu gods. That all changes after Sanjay is suddenly whisked away to a Hindu temple where he’s put in the middle of a battle between good and evil, with scenes that would put any superhero movie to shame. It’s one of the few sweet and inspirational shorts among this year’s crop.
“World of Tomorrow” is a slightly dystopic piece, told in simple stick-figure drawings, about a little girl named Emily who is suddenly visited by one of her many future clones who has come to tell her ‘original’ self about what lies ahead for her, the human race in general, and the world. It’s the longest of this year’s animated shorts, and while it may seem funny and almost ridiculous in parts (since Emily Prime probably understands nothing of what Emily Clone is telling her), the future as told by Emily Clone is indeed pretty sad and one of perpetual meaningless existence.
“Bear Story,” a short by Chilean filmmaker Gabriel Osorio, is a beautifully intricate CGI piece about a bear who uses his mechanical genius to create a miniature wind-up toy theater that he peddles around town with, performing for spare change. The mini-theater re-enacts his life story of how he used to live happily at home with his wife and son before everything is suddenly ripped away from him when he’s captured and sold into slavery at a circus. Everything is re-created perfectly with detailed dioramas and whimsical miniature metal puppetry that whirl and click with clockwork precision. One could get lost by the mechanics alone, but the theater’s story is quite heart-wrenching to see.
“We Can’t Live Without Cosmos” is a Russian short about 2 friends who have grown up and trained together like brothers to fulfill their childhood dreams about becoming cosmonauts. After going through the rigorous space program together as partners, only one is chosen to go, leaving the other behind. Their separation is traumatic to the one left behind. Again, this is another short which will have your heart ripping to pieces in the end.
“Prologue,” the one R-rated short shown at the end of everything else to let the kids escape the theater beforehand, is a delicately pencil rendered piece that looks as if it might have been rotoscoped. Four warriors, two with their full manhood in display, are fighting one another with swords, bows, and shields. They eviscerate each other in a bloody violent battle that seems to have no point other than for the sake of killing one another. One warrior even lunges his sword up another’s nether regions. There’s really no plot to this piece, and I never figured out what the meaning of this piece was until I read the Wikipedia entry about it. It supposedly is linked to Lysistrata, the ancient greek play about how Greek women refused to have sex with their husbands and lovers to end a war. You would never get that by watching this short. It comes off as a needlessly violent piece which I guess is the point of the whole thing.
Along with the 5 nominated animated shorts were 4 honorable mentions by the Academy which seem a lot lighter than the nominated entries.
“If I Was God” is a Canadian short told in claymation about the daydreams of a boy in biology class dissecting a frog and wondering what he might do if he had the power of God, starting with perhaps bringing the frog back to life, creating monsters, punishing the bullies in his life, and winning the girl of his dreams. The short is a bit biographical since it draws upon the memories of filmmaker Cordell Barker, and it is a bit Tim Burton-esque in feel.
“The Short Story of a Fox and a Mouse” is the cutest and the fluffiest of all the shorts and one of the few bright spots in this year’s dark assortment. It’s a CGI rendered tale of a fox and a mouse just playing with each other in the snow. Their play is suddenly interrupted when 2 owls spy upon the mouse and decide they want him as dinner. What follows is an unlikely tale one would ever see in the animal world. The character designs are wonderfully cute and playful with bright colors and touchable textures. It was the best short in the bunch in my opinion just for the cuteness and fluff factor.
“The Loneliest Spotlight” is a Bill Plympton short narrated by Patton Oswalt about the tale of a lone traffic signal dangling at an almost deserted crossroad, told from the perspective of the traffic signal himself. The animation is simple and wiggly like all Plymptoons, and Oswalt’s narration really makes the traffic signal lonely yearnings feel human.
“Catch It” is a fast and fun CGI piece of a group of lemurs fighting to claim a prized fruit from a vulture. It becomes a classic game of pass-the-football/fruit between the lemurs and vulture with the usual cartoon antics in between.
I really hope this dark tone does not become the trend for future animated shorts.
