Oscar Updates: Doc, Shorts, and Animation Charts

The Academy branches have been furiously screening all sort of less heralded fare of late. Tim already talked us through the animated shorts and I'm most intrigued by the Chilean allegory about a bear ripped from his circus life and a film about Russian astronauts. But there's more to uncover!

Heads up that we've updated that shorts, animation, and documentary section of our famed Oscar Charts. Click over and read up on the fascinating competitions.

As with all things Oscar, the shorts categories do get more attention than they once did many moons ago -- particularly with that mini theatrical tour of the nominated films each year --  but it's still not much.

Live Action Shorts
This year we've got barbers shaving cartel leaders, interpreters delivering babies, nuns interrupted, little boys in big wars, father and daughter visits gone awry, and much more in the Live Action shorts category. There's even a title with Q'Orianka Kilcher from The New World (!!!) and Vincent Kartheiser from Mad Men in the mix called Winter Light that bills itself as a "revisionist Western thriller". The ten finalists are quite a mix of types with thrillers, comedies, dramas, war films, and westerns accounted for.

Documentary Shorts
This tends to be the category most likely to trigger massive depressive episodes and this year is no exception: war, ebola, war, honor killings, war, The Holocaust, rape, and did I mention war? I personally can't even deal. Not this particular season.

Animated Features
This category continues to feel sewn up for Inside Out but the real drama is "how many nominees will we get?" since there's less films eligible than usual. If they still go with five, do you think Peanuts can surprise?

Documentary Features
I've been grilling members of the documentary branch over cocktails and light h'ors doeuvres at various parties of late. One charming older gentleman even pulled out a handwritten list of his favorites to read from only to pocket it again as if to torture me from suspense. High profile competitors (Amy, Going Clear, The Look of Silence, Best of Enemies) definitely have fans. Not that that means anything as this branch often surprises with both their finalist list and what gets shut out so nothing can be called "safe". But if something is safe maybe it's Cartel Land which has been name-checked with great frequency. Random shoutouts abound including Iris, Winter's on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Where to Invade Next, and Meru. Sadly I haven't heard one mention of friskier / weirder critical darlings like The Wolfpack or Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog.

See the charts

His & Hers Oscars? Happy 10th to June & Johnny

Ten years ago right about now Reese & Joaquin took the stage in movie theaters with a full sung duet as June and Johnny Cash. Both were Oscar-nominated for their ringed fire as tempestuous country superstar marrieds with Reese going on to win in a strangely non competitive Best Actress year. His & Hers Oscar nominations for lively onscreen marriages aren't anything new of course but they also aren't dependable since one of the partners is often foregrounded while the other is window dressing or is equally brilliant but just not nominated.

But of the ten double nominees who did it best in the intervening years? (I included the divorced couples just to up the numbers). You decide. To make this more exciting, judge the performances FUSED. Who wins your vote then? These are your ten options

Lead unless otherwise noted
2005 Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon*, Walk the Line
2005 Heath Ledger & Michelle Williams (supporting), Brokeback Mountain
2010 Helen Mirren & Christopher Plummer (supporting), The Last Station 
2011 Colin Firth* & Helena Bonham Carter (supporting), The King's Speech  
2012 Daniel Day Lewis* & Sally Field (supporting), Lincoln 
2012 Amy Adams & Phillip Seymour Hoffman (both supporting), The Master 
2013 Bruce Dern & June Squibb (supporting), Nebraska 
2013 Christian Bale & Jennifer Lawrence (supporting), American Hustle 
2014 Eddie Redmayne* & Felicity Jones, Theory of Everything 
2014 Patricia Arquette* & Ethan Hawke (both supporting), Boyhood 

*won the Oscar

What of 2015?

The "His & Hers" teams of married possibilities this year are Eddie Redmayne & Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl (Hers & Hers in that case, though she's pretending to be supporting), and Charlotte Rampling with Tom Courtenay in 45 Years. Neither of those pairs are locked up for nominations just yet. As befits this year with blessed multiple female-centric films, Vikander and Rampling both have more nomination heat than their male actor screen spouses.

Take a Trip Inside "Room"

Available to tour this weekend - if you're in Los Angeles, that is, and attending the 2:10 showing at The Landmark - is a complete recreation of the set from Room.

Perhaps a bit eerie for some, the tour provides an inventive way to experience the attention to detail given to a set as crucial to its film's narrative as the characters that inhabited it. Production designer Ethan Tobman crafted the space for maximum visual accessability with removable wall and floor tiles to nestle the camera while keeping the seclusion and intimacy uncompromised for the actors. Also inside will be the smaller pieces created to lend texture to Ma and Jack's tiny world: artwork, toys, props, and set detail work.

Contemporary production design goes far too ignored with the Academy and the tendancy is to favor oppulent period or imaginative fantasy genres. If the goal is to believably create the world and environment of a film, we don't have to stretch to find awards-worthy work - Skyfall, Synecdoche, New York, the entire David Fincher filmography. The tour is a shrewd way to hopefully stir some conversation for Tobman and shake up the kind of work honored by the branch. What other modern examples are worth considering?

The animated short films Oscar shortlist

Tim here. Today, the Academy announced that it has whittled the initial list of 60 titles eligible for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar down to ten finalists that will go on to compete for the five nominations in January. Like all of you, I imagine, I haven't seen most of these ten, but let's run through them quickly to see what we've got:

Bear Story (Historia de un oso) - Gabriel Osorio, director; Pato Escala, producer (Punkrobot Animation Studio)
This Chilean effort - Cartoon Brew notes that it would be the first Chilean film ever nominated if it makes it - looks to be a toy-esque animal fable done in charmingly plasticky CGI. Trailer

Carface (Autos Portraits) - Claude Cloutier, director (National Film Board of Canada)
A car with, get this, a face, sings "Que Sera, Sera", accompanied by images in thick lines and full color of cars and machines. It never does to count out the NFB, which has one of the most reliable histories of producing terrific animated shorts anywhere in the world. Trailer

The other eight nominees below the jump

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Will Mockingjay Part 2 Change The Hunger Games' Disappointing Oscar History

If next January comes around and brings no Oscar nominations for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 then it will have the unenviable tally of zero nominations from four films. Only The Twilight Saga, Mission: Impossible and Fast and the Furious franchises can claim such a strike rate. There was a time when every film that made over $200 at the American box-office could claim at least one nomination - even Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me! But since Mission: Impossible II in 2000, that has no longer been the case. Still, for Lionsgate’s hugely successful Hunger Games to bow out with nary a single nomination to its name is genuinely surprising.

What’s more, these films are hardly wanting for acclaim and nomination-worthy elements. Salute (or click) for more!

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