ON THE SILVER SCREEN: ANIMATION APPRECIATION (THE OSCAR NOMINATED ANIMATED SHORT FILMS OF 2013)

By Brian Lafferty

February 1, 2013 (San Diego) -- Every year around this time, the Landmark Ken Cinema - the venerable go-to theater for niche movies - treats San Diego to its annual showing of the year's Oscar nominated short films.  This year boasts a mostly impressive slate of animated shorts (my review of the live action shorts can be read here). 

Adam & Dog by director Minkyu Lee is set in the Garden of Eden.  The main character is Dog, who wanders the lush paradise until he meets his first human, Adam.  The two bond until Adam falls for Eve.  Dog, feeling neglected and hurt when Adam and Eve leave him, searches for them.  The visual design looks influenced by anime.  The two-dimensional flatness of the forests, fields, and cliffs, combined with their simple desaturated color palette's give it a My Neighbor Totoro-like simplicity that is a pleasure to experience.  The absence of dialogue only further enhances these feelings, as felt in the scenes where Adam first meets Dog, when Dog learns to bark and fetch, and when Dog joins Adam and Eve after they've been banished.  It's for these reasons, and the emotional wonders they work, that Adam & Dog is my pick to win Best Animated Short Film.

Fresh Guacamole made me scratch my head in bemusement the first time around.  Granted, this is the first time I'm reviewing Oscar nominated shorts, but part of me wondered what made the Academy think this odd little film was worthy to contend for a statuette?  Then I saw it again and I could see maybe why.  A stop-motion film in the vein of the works of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, this is the shortest of the bunch, running a little less than two minutes.  A pair of human hands takes a pineapple grenade, slices it open, and then scoops out contents that resemble a combination of wasabi and Play-Doh.  The cook then dices a tomato pin cushion and a baseball - peeled like an onion - to make dice.  There's more, but I think you get the picture.  Fresh Guacamole is quirky and did I mention it's odd?  Director Adam Pesapane lobs a volley of "what the" moments that causes heads to shake, mouths to open agape, and eyes to widen.  Even more bizarre: Pesapane's jerky stop-motion animation somehow creates a universe in this guacamole looks rather appetizing.

Head Over Heels, also stop-motion, takes a little bit to get.  A husband and wife live in a house that floats in the sky.  They've grown apart to the point where the husband lives on the floor and the wife lives on the ceiling.  Of the five shorts, this one is the most visually impressive.  Every frame set in the house's interiors is skillfully constructed.  Top to bottom, left to right, each portion of the frame is filled.  In addition, the compositions are visually and mentally stimulating as well as symbolic; every time the eyes go from looking from the husband's right-side up world on the floor to the wife's upside-down world on the ceiling renders, the challenge of frequent adjustment aptly illustrates the great divide in this couple's marriage. 

Moviegoers with kids may recognize Maggie Simpson in "The Longest Daycare," which played before Ice Age: Continental Drift during its theatrical run.  I figure this to be more of an obligatory inclusion than anything else.  Maggie Simpson is dropped off at the Ayn Rand Daycare Center, which is divided between smart kids and those with average intelligence.  She's deemed not smart enough to stay with the former group.  The Average Intelligence group is a depressing sort put in a depressing-looking room.  Maggie finds solace in a caterpillar in the midst of metamorphosis, which she must protect from the mean Baby Gerald's mallet.  The pop culture references that the show has always been known for are largely absent save for the introduction, reminiscent of the Warner Bros. and Disney animated shorts that plastered the smiling faces of Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck on the screen; Maggie simple stares blankly, pacifier in mouth.  The Longest Daycare is depressing and not suitable for kid moviegoers.  It's weakly executed as well, with more meanness and despair than humor.

Paperman also made its way into American theaters last year.  Preceding showings of Wreck-It Ralph, it features a bored office worker who meets a good-looking woman on his way to work.  He sees that she works in the office directly across the street from him.  He tries to get her attention by throwing a couple hundred paper airplanes, which all miss their target.  He despairs, but never fear, fate is here to the rescue.  Paperman's black, white, and grey palette is appropriate; it's a representation of the man's drab work life and it's, well, the color of paper.  Again, it's an obligatory choice the same way every Pixar short is nominated.  But it's high on genuine emotion, and the ending is magical and romantic in the Disney tradition, but in a very urban setting.

The Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films of 2013 is now playing at the Landmark Ken Cinema along with the Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films.  My reviews of the live action shorts can be read here.

Brian Lafferty welcomes letters at brian@eastcountymagazine.org.  You can also follow him on Twitter:  @BrianLaff.