OVP: Animated Short Film (2012)

OVP: Best Animated Short Film

The Nominees Were...

Minkyu Lee, Adam and Dog

PES, Fresh Guacamole

Timothy Reckart and Fodhia Cronin O'Reilly, Head Over Heels

David Silverman, (Maggie Simpson in) The Longest Daycare

John Kahrs, Paperman

Though technically they aren't part of the OVP, as tracking down the many, many short films that have been cited by Oscar would be an exercise in futility, when I get the opportunity to encounter them, I'm writing up a review (plus, this is sort of a "land that time forgot" sort of Oscar blog considering that on any given day it could be 1929, 1948, 1972, or 2010, or possibly all four if Netflix is being sporadic).  And because it's not technically part of the OVP, we don't have to wait until I finish up 2012 to write up this official ballot-semantics!  Here's a look at this year's five nominees:

Adam and Dog: The film is the tale of a man, from the looks of it the first man, and how he found man's best friend amongst the Garden of Eden.  The film, like all of the other five, is completely silent, though this story is perhaps one of the best known in the history of civilization, so words may not be necessary.  While the story is straight-forward, the animation is beautiful, and I love the crazed look on Adam's face as he's leaving the Garden of Eden.  All-in-all, a nice entry, but not necessarily my favorite of the five.

Fresh Guacamole: Clearly a fun and rather ingenius concept, the film, by far the shortest of the movies at only two minutes, borrows heavily from PES's 2008 short Western Spaghetti to show the guacamole making process with delicious, but inedible objects, with everything from dice to grenades involved in the cooking process.  Though fun, it's not entirely fresh considering that they did the exact same concept a few years ago.

Head Over Heels: One of the best things about the animated short Oscars is the way that they manage to cover all forms of animation (even when they skip over it in the full-length category).  Here, we have a claymation story about an aging couple that have drifted apart.  Of course, as this is an animated short, we are left with a twist-they both are in a gravity-defying world where one can walk on the ceiling and one on the floor.  When their floating house lands, the wife can escape from their troubled, dismal existence, but the husband cannot for fear of flying away.  Of course, we get a happy ending in the film with the husband and wife finding a solution (shoes nailed to the ceiling) so that they can once again be together.  It's a cute concept, though it left me a bit cold-the claymation seemed a bit rudimentary when you compare it to the magic of, say, Nick Park.

Maggie Simpson in the Longest Daycare: For those of us who were wildly disappointed a few years ago when Surf's Up took out The Simpsons Movie in the Animated Feature race, we got a bit of a consolation when the Simpson clan finally got a shot at Oscar this past year.  The film, a parody of one of the story episodes of the Simpsons from a few years back (I've seen every episode I know my references) puts Maggie back in the Ayn Rand School for Children, and we see her trying to break free creatively, only to be crushed (seriously, what is Paul Ryan seeing in worshiping this woman?) continually, in particularly by her nemesis, Baby Gerald (he of the unibrow and constant grimace) in her attempts to save a caterpillar turned butterfly.  It's a wordless affair (it does star Maggie, after all), and a fun one-the Simpsons can do sight gags better than anyone, and I particularly loved the tribute to Pagliacci.  The film was one of two on this list to be seen widely prior to the nominations, as it appeared theatrically before Ice Age: Continental Drift.

Paperman: The final nominee, this one from Disney, was widely known to most of us as it was shown before Wreck-It Ralph in theaters.  The film is a beautifully shot love story (in primarily black-and-white) about a boy who meets a girl in what appears to be a north Manhattan train station, and then falls in love, but fate (and the quickly slamming doors of a subway car) separate them.  As luck would have it, he sees her in a neighboring skyscraper, and tries to get her attention by throwing paper airplanes into the open window she's sitting next to; this, of course, leads to some hilarious sight gags and fails miserably, and he eventually must choose between his soul-crushing job and the woman who is his destiny.  As this is Disney, you know where he goes, but that doesn't stop this from a being a delightful, joyous affair, and one that seems almost from Pixar with its loveliness.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Gruffalo's Child, Dripped, and Abiogenesis have the (dis?)honor of appearing alongside the five nominated films in the ShortsHD theatrical releases of the films (also, if they're handing out Honorary Oscars at the Governor's Ball, they could do a lot worse than giving a trophy to ShortsHD for their splendid devotion to this neglected area of film), so you have to assume that they were close.  BAFTA honored a completely different set of movies with nominations: Here to Fall, I'm Fine Thanks, and the victorious The Making of Longbird.  The Annie Awards chose to honor Paperman with its top trophy, and included The Longest Daycare amongst eight nominated films.

Films I Would Have Nominated: They always show additional films for the animated shorts, and of the three, Dripped, so inventive, seems like the one that I would have most wanted included, and probably would have slipped into fourth amongst the eight films viewed.  Otherwise, I think they largely went with the right batch.

Oscar's Choice: Paperman, giving Disney a one-two punch both here and in the Animated Feature race. I suspect that Adam and Dog, with its inventive animation, had to be a close second.

My Vote: Rather easily goes to Paperman, which is a throwback to the classic Disney of old, and feels a bit iconic already.  I'd follow that vote with Maggie Simpson, Adam and Dog, Fresh Guacamole and finally Head Over Heels.