Animated Shorts, & I Don't Mean Enthusiastic Culottes

Finally getting into the groove for Oscar Season, here’s my rundown on the Animated Shorts Category. Of note: all 5 nominees are purely visual works, without a single word of intelligible dialogue.

Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare” - After its start as a short-form bumper during the "Tracey Ullman Show" sparked 23+ Seasons on the telly and one pretty great but snubbed movie, America's quintessential cartoon family has returned to its roots. Thanks to their taciturn toddler taking the reins in their first theatrically-run short, which appeared as a lead-in for Ice Ace: Continental Drift, they have finally nabbed an Oscar Nomination to toss in with their dump truck full of other awards. I chuckled out loud when Maggie’s face appeared in full starburst Disney-esque glory, and the short goes for the heartstrings in the vein of old-school theatrical shorts. It’s quick and cute, and contains lovely little splitquick sight gags, but there's not a whole lot that’s new to fans of the show. The Ayn Rand School for Tots debuted in the classic “A Streetcar Named Marge” episode, which delivered a much more hilarious spoof of The Great Escape and The Birds. 

Paperman - Frankly, this was my least favorite of the nominated quintet. A Disney produced, overly sentimental Brief Encounter story with a few chuckles, which has an Adrien Brody-esque schlub trying desperately to get the attention of a mute Princess Ariel by, well, throwing things at her. I couldn’t get past a conceit ripped straight from The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Brazil (spoiler!) and the unsettling thought that someone thought it would be tasteful to have a man repeatedly throwing airplanes at a New York skyscraper (paper airplanes, sure, but airplanes nonetheless). Maybe I’m being touchy or cynical, but it rubbed me the wrong way. The animation uses a clean black and white pencil quality with a few crayon-on-paper splashes of color (Schindler’s List, hmmm?), but it’s still very much idiosyncratically classic Diz.

(Edit: Unsurprisingly, Diz already shot down the youtube of the full short, so here's a pretty cool little behind the scenes with the making-of technology. I'm not denying these guys are doing interesting stuff, just didn't pay off with me in the end result.)

Head Over Heels - A touching metaphor for the turbulent distance grown between husband and wife, who occupy opposite sides of a house spinning through space; one lives on the ceiling and the other on the floor. (Or vice versa, depending on your perspective.) I felt like it grew past the great idea of its smart, dizzying defiance of physics and got a little off track and overly mawkish. The ending ties things together, but its through-line is rather unfocused.


Fresh Guacamole - A follow up to PES’s excellent "Western Spaghetti", this walks in the same footsteps but pays off better. It is light at only 2 minutes, something that would fit as a bumper in an episode of “Sesame Street” or “Pinwheel.” Outstanding and worth a watch, but not worth the time it would take to describe it when you can see for yourself here:

Adam and Dog - A gorgeous Genesis story following a wild mutt who meets man for the first time, establishing that the friendship between man and his “best friend” is one that is truly primal and has stood the test of time. The highlight here is the lush use of background land- and skyscapes, painted in overwhelming swaths of color that range from impressionism to expressionism. It’s a throwback to hand-drawn, hand-painted animation, and the small animated figures have instant personality, even from a distance, and frolic engulfed in the scenery of Eden. The contrast then makes the first couple’s exile from the garden all the more harsh and striking. I can look past the fact that Adam looked like a character straight from “For Better or for Worse,” this really shined on the big screen and gets my nod. Trailer only.

Review of the Live Action Shorts nominees coming soon!

Limelight (1952) --82/100--

So far I’ve been watching & reviewing a lot of recently released stuff, but my viewing of The Artist gave me the odd inspiration to dip into the archives and check out one of the few Chaplin features that I had not yet perused. Limelight puts on display everything that set Chaplin apart as a true artist, not just a comedian. The man wrote, directed, composed the (gorgeous) music, and starred in pretty much every film he made. I doesn’t quite match his earlier masterpieces (The Circus, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator) but proves that even in his later years he still had a unique gift to make us laugh and deliver a solid sentimental punch.

There are a few detractions, like the odd (Woody Allen-like!) May/December romance between washed-up vaudeville comedian Calvero (Chaplin) and the delicate young ballerina Thereza (a radiant Claire Bloom) that forms the arc of the story. I guess it’s not all that surprising, knowing that Chaplin had a long history as a ladies’ man, and despite the weirdness there are many memorable scenes that rival the the best of that heartbreaking type of romance the Brits did so well in the golden era. Films like Brief Encounter, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Random Harvest immediately spring to mind as Thereza recalls her first chance meetings with a struggling composer. And since I’ve always been a little more of a Buster Keaton nut, the final performance, with Chaplin sharing the spotlight with his longtime “rival,” is an absolute celluloid diamond.

The story of Calvero provides a stirring tribute to his early days on the stage, but is just as much a poignant elegy and in many ways mirrored his own career. Lauded as the greatest entertainer of his generation, he was mostly an afterthought as the the middle of the century rolled around, and he was exiled to Europe (Polanski-like!) after being aspersed as a Communist in 1952. After Limelight, Chaplin would live for another 25 years and go on to make a couple more films (I still need to see A King in New York), but it will always be regarded as his true, glorious swan song.

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For the casual readers that are unlikely to check out the whole film, I encourage you to enjoy out the Chaplin/Keaton collaboration below:

2012-1-10 jmm #5