A Glimpse at Oscar's Nominated Animated Shorts

by Chris Feil

Is this an off year for the Animated Short category? It’s (shamefully) my first year to catch the entire lineup, but unfortunately that seems to be the general response. If you check out the films in theatres you will also be treated to a few of the shortlisted contenders, but the package sadly doesn’t include the delightful In A Heartbeat. Even if this is also the least exciting lineup of the three Short categories this year, there are still delights to be found in this category, with animation styles the run the full spectrum from hand-drawn to computer generated to stop motion animation. Let’s look at the nominees...

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Blueprints: "The Disaster Artist"

Jorge Molina continues with the 2017 Oscar nominated screenplays...

One of the most overused film tropes out there is the big pep talk that a leader gives his or her team before they get into some sort of defining battle. It’s meant to inspire, motivate, eliminate any form of self-doubt, and give them the necessary strength to embark on their journey. 

But what if the task at hand is the production of what would become one of the canonically worst films of all time? And what if its leader is a proto-European actor with a lot of heart and devotion, but almost no social skills? Let’s take a look at how the writers for The Disaster Artist managed to inject these doomed elements with sincerity...

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Beauty Break: Love in the Tub

Happy Belated Valentines to you and whomever or whatever you love.

Today's Beauty Break is inspired by The Shape of Water which begins with Eliza (Oscar nominated Sally Hawkins) masturbating in the tub and that's also where her fish-man ends up as you can see in this image above.

After the jump please enjoy beautiful photos or film stills of various movie stars in bathtubs...

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Review: Loveless

Seán McGovern on Russia's Foreign Film Oscar nominee opening tomorrow in select US cities 

There's a moment in Andrey Zvyagintsev's masterful film Loveless when a volunteer search and rescue venture into the forest to look for missing boy, Alexey. Tipped-off by the boy's classmate, the team, flanked in their fluorescent jackets, comb over every inch of a massive, abandoned building in the forest. Fixtures and furniture are freezing and rotting in the building. Art deco detailing crumbling around them. Burst pipes, detritus. No sign of life. As I was watching I kept asking what this building was. Why was it built? When? Was it still here? These questions were not even addressed, let alone any kind of answer. And this is Loveless: A fog of cold indifference shrouds these characters and their world of empty-hearted progress. This is a film about loss, and not only the loss of a child...

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Cry Baby Cry, Make the Devil Sigh

 By Salim Garami

What's good?

Yuasa Masaaki is going to have a really good 2018 year. Earlier last month, North American animation distributor GKIDS announced they had acquired distribution rights to his two works from 2017, Lu Over the Wall and The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl, as well as his 2004 cult hit Mind Game. The acquisitions can promise no less than a breakout in recognition in the U.S. for the 52-year-old animator and his studio Science Saru. And yet, it's only apparently going to be riding on the tail of Yuasa's latest release, the Netflix anime series Devilman Crybaby, inspired by Nagai Go's tragic action-horror manga series...

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