Tim here, with a look at one of those Oscar categories that always screws up everybody's office pool. It's time for the Best Animated Short Film nominees, now playing in a theater... maybe not "near" you, depending on where you live. But they're supposedly hitting VOD in the next couple of weeks, along with the live-action and documentary shorts. Anyway, let's dive right in!
The Bigger Picture (Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees, UK)
The obvious nod to the animation buffs out there; it's by far the most stylistically unusual, aside from being the only one of the five that openly grapples with adult topics. Two brothers deal with an ailing mother: one lives with her, taking care of her every need, quietly resenting as she lavishes all her praise on her other son. Which doesn't sound like much, though it's told with bluntness and a lack of sentiment that serves it well. The exciting part is the look of it: the characters are painted on the back wall of a (full-size) room, and their arms and the objects they interact with are all three-dimensional. It's breathtaking (literally, as attested to by the gasp I heard from my friend when we saw the films). The mixed-media experiment that calls attention to the flatness of the characters and the tactility of the world around them. And for my tastes, it's easily the best of the five A-
The Dam Keeper (Robert Kondo and "Dice" Tsutsumi, USA)
The longest of the nominees at 18 minutes, it's a stylistically delightful exercise in moving storybook illustrations made by former Pixar staffers, in which a socially outcast pig makes a friend and learns that not all the world is bullying and cruel. It's handsome and detailed with charming character studies, but the message starts to get treacly, rather than just uplifting. Besides which, it's much too long (which is a daft thing to say about anything that runs to 18 minutes). Indeed, I would confidently peg this as my least favorite of the batch, but more thoughts on that in a moment. B-
Feast (Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed, USA)
The Disney short that screened with Big Hero 6, in which an adorable bulldog puppy eats his master's table scraps, and can only tell from the nature of the food being given him what's going on in his master's love life. It's darling and creative: like the Oscar-winning Paperman from 2012, it's a demo for a new piece of software meant to marry CGI and traditional hand-drawn techniques and aesthetics, and the result is a lovely chalky look, like an early 20th Century poster given life. It's also yet another in the run of Disney/Pixar shorts that explore new technology through a by-the-numbers romance, which is starting to get a little old. But the dog is hella charming, and the way it's stitched together to make time bleed through matching cuts makes it sort of like a more condensed, breezier, animated Birdman. B+/B
Me and My Moulton (Torill Kove, Canada)
I had very little affection for Kove's 2006 Oscar-winner, The Danish Poet, and I went into this one with knives drawn. But it's a splendid little comic piece about clear-eyed childhood remembrances, in which an alternation of absurd and distressing moments march through with brisk, acerbic humor, matching perfectly with the bright, solid-color look of the animation (it's the most traditional piece here). The big crowd pleaser of the bunch, at least based on my crowd, but insightful and honest, too, and the cheery look of it is pleasing and memorable, even if it's not really all that challenging. B+
A Single Life (Joris Oprins, Netherlands)
A two-minute gag reel, in which a woman finds she can leap through time based on where the needle is in the groove of a vinyl single she receives on day. The CGI animation is colorful and fun, and the sets are jam-packed with inventive details (it might be the shortest and simplest nominee, but it's also the one that would benefit the most from multiple viewings), while the sense of humor is impeccable droll in its morbid European-ness. Pure delight, with a message about savoring the present moment that matches well with its brevity and apparent triviality. B+
The only one of these that absolutely can't win, I think, is A Single Life. Too short, too flimsy. As for the rest: for many years, I had an infallible method for picking the winner: my least-favorite of the nominees would take the Oscar. That's changed since 2012, but given how overtly appealing The Dam Keeper is, and how much easier it is to appreciate its stylistic complexity than The Bigger Picture or Feast, I think it's got a good shot of taking it. That said, Everybody likes a dog, and Disney's been on fire the past few years. I'm predicting Feast wins, with The Dam Keeper a very sensible runner-up choice.
RELATED: THE ANIMATED, DOC, & SHORTS OSCAR CHART
P.S. if you see the films in the Shorts HD Oscar nominees program, you get four bonus shorts. One of them is Duet, another tech demo about heternormative love, this one by ex-Disney genius Glen Keane. Stunning sketches and a flawless understanding of human shapes; it's failure to get a nomination is baffling.