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REVIEW: OSCAR SHORTS
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| | From the Oscar-winning Australian animated film "Harvie Krumpet."
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Short change
Short films are no longer a nostalgia act — interest at festivals and the energy of talented young filmmakers are responsible for a resurgence of great short works, including some of the ones gathered in this program of Oscar nominees.
By ANDREA GRONVALL
Offoffoff.com
Halfway through the last century, technology and the economics of the movie
business more than anything else dictated the disappearance of short
subjects from the big screen. In the Thirties and Forties — prior to the
advent of television — it was common practice for exhibitors to book
cartoons, newsreels, comedy shorts and/or adventure serials along with the
main attractions. With TV's ascendancy, filmed newsreels were supplanted by
live daily news broadcasts, and studios found they could wring more profits
from shorts by syndicating them to TV: animation was increasingly relegated
to Saturday mornings, and comedies and serials became fodder for
after-school programming. When megahits "Jaws" and "Star Wars" set the
stage for today's blockbuster production mindset, the imperative was to
run as many theatrical showings back-to-back as possible. That left room
for only coming attractions and the occasional public-service announcement
for some star-sponsored charity.
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| OSCAR SHORTS |
Includes individual films: "Harvie Krumpet" by Adam Elliot; "Nibbles" by Chris Hinton; "The Red Jacket" by Florian Baxmeyer; "Squash" by Lionel Bailliu; "(A) Torzija" by Stefan Arsenijevic
Related links:
Official site
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Cinema Village
22 E. 12th St.
(212) 924-3363
Opens March 19, 2004
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Except in specialized venues, shorts got shortchanged. But, like so much
else, what's old is new again.
Shorts are re-emerging to a growing public awareness, for a number of
reasons. The graduating classes of film schools each year unleash fresh
troops in an assault on Hollywood; their projects are an integral part of
film festivals — Sundance in particular showing some of the best. Shorts are
the wannabe filmmaker's calling card to the industry; in 1995 George Clooney
gave a boost to two then unknown animators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, by
talking up their vignette, "The Spirit of Christmas," set in a fictional
mountain town called South Park. "Saturday Night Live" had returned short
films to late-night television; now cable became not only home to outrageous
or politically provocative animation, but live-action shorts found room as
interstitial material as well. The Internet has given a big grass-roots
boost to the form, and shorts are also finding their way into DVD
anthologies.
And far from last is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which,
via its Oscar awards, not only gives live-action and animated shorts an
industry presence and global exposure, but has also in recent years, through
its telecast's hilarious opening parodies of nominees all played by Billy
Crystal, renewed interest in the comedic possibilities of the form.
Bringing it all full-circle is the annual theatrical release in select
markets of a program of several Oscar-nominated shorts: at last, a return to
the big screen, if only for a limited run.
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| | From the Oscar-nominated German live-action film "The Red Jacket."
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This year's Oscar shorts program consists of three live-action and three
animation entries — only one, the 2003 Student Academy Award-winning animated
short "Perpetual Motion," is from the U.S. Kimberly Miner packs a lot of
laughs into just two minutes with her whimsical speculation about cats,
gravity and jellied toast. It's a terrific example of less being more.
Canadians have long been leaders in the field of animation, and Chris
Hinton's "Nibbles" adds to their track record. What it lacks in dialog it
more than makes up for in raucous sound effects and sight gags, as a family
fishing trip turns into a culinary tour de force. Careening from one
roadside restaurant to the next, father and son chow their way across the
country — even their car gets into the feeding frenzy. This wicked send-up
of Western consumerism goes a long way toward explaining why anyone goes
fishing in the first place.
The live-action short nominees on the program are each one way or another
about war. In German director Florian Baxmeyer's "The Red Jacket," a
Hamburg father loses his son in a car accident. Overcome by grief, he
wanders to a park, clutching the boy's prized sports jacket, and then tosses
it in a trash bin — where it's recovered and recycled for charity, eventually
landing in the hands of a lad in Sarajevo. The garment, which couldn't save
its original owner, proves to be a talisman for its new wearer. About
midway through it becomes evident which way the story is going; nonetheless,
the resolution is satisfying.
The Slovenian entry, Stefan Arsenijevic's "(A) Torsion," is also set in
Sarajevo: a choir huddles amidst grenade and bomb blasts awaiting the
all-clear for passage underground to a foreign city, where they are due to
perform. They take refuge in a barn, and suddenly are called upon by a
farmer to help them rescue a frantic cow that's trying to give birth, but
her calf is twisted inside. It's a cliche that music hath charms to soothe
the wild beast — also that necessity is the mother of invention. The film
suffers from an inadequate payoff after all the angst.
One can't say that about the French nominee, "Squash," directed by Lionel
Bailliu. A corporate boss and his junior colleague meet on a court and
proceed to play one very mean game. But squash is just the form of the
competition — the real game is cat and mouse, as the killer boss tries to
entrap his protŽgŽ into an admission of inappropriate sexual behavior.
Their volleys become more charged and so do their words and actions,
escalating into violence. If David Mamet were French, he'd make something
like this.
The other Academy Award winner of the bunch is the Australian animated short
"Harvie Krumpet," directed by Adam Elliot and narrated by Geoffrey Rush.
Sometimes droll, sometimes inspired in its lunacy, the movie is by turns
bawdy and compassionate. Its goofy hero is a Polish-born bumpkin (with a
trace of the idiot savant) whose family moves to Australia during World War
II. Like a vulgar version of "Forrest Gump," Harvie manages to surf the
currents of postwar culture and make his way through the world. Along the
way THE great issues — love, death, the accidents of history and the meaning
of life — are addressed, and if the movie doesn't quite have a happy ending,
at least its title character finds contentment, and all in the space of 22
minutes.
Most feature-length films don't even attempt that in five to six times as
many minutes. And that may be the best case to make for viewing these
shorts — there is great beauty and artistry to be found in small films that
are made economically, even if the marketplace is still not sure how to
exploit them.
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MARCH 27, 2004
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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