OVP: Live Action Short Film (2012)

OVP: Best Live Action Short Film

The Nominees Were...

Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura, Asad

Sam French and Ariel Nasr, Buzkashi Boys

Shawn Christensen, Curfew

Tom van Avermaet and Ellen de Waele, Death of a Shadow

Yan England, Henry

Like I mentioned previously, the Short Films are not part of the official OVP (click the above button for  clarification if you're a huge Shawn Christensen or Yan England fan and stumbled across this blog, and welcome, and also, thank you for latching onto relatively obscure celebrities-a noble pursuit).  The reasoning behind that was that it would be next to impossible to track down every short film and documentary, and while I know the overall OVP is an impossible pursuit, I didn't want to get sidetracked with missing films from the Nineties.

That said, I do want to acknowledge when I can the short films and documentaries that receive nominations, and I have a pact with myself (and you) that whenever I finish a short or documentary category, I won't wait until I'm finished with the year-I'll hand over the write-ups right away.  And so, as I literally just finished the Live Action Short films of 2012, I figured this would be a great time to give you my opinions (for the record, there are a couple of past years that I've finished up for the short films, and I'll be throwing those out onto the web this week).

The first film that we encounter is Death of a Shadow, which has the good fortune to star international heartthrob Matthias Schoenaerts, who gave a lot of good luck to Bullhead a couple years ago when he landed it an Oscar nomination.  Like Bullhead, Death of a Shadow didn't take home Oscar gold, but unlike Bullhead, sadly, it shouldn't have been competing to begin with.  The film has an awesome concept (Schoenaerts is a collector of the shadows of people as they die), but it doesn't have nearly enough emotional payoff.  Part of what makes short films so tricky is that you have to quickly, and legitimately, establish a connection with the audience within the span of a half hour-this film desperately needed the full two hours to get its story across.  I can handle the lack of explanation about the reasons for collecting shadows, but there isn't nearly enough interaction between Schoenaerts lovesick collector and the two-timing girlfriend for whom he's willing to give up his life.  Without this, the story's late sacrifice rings more confusing than magnanimous, and I was left in the cold.

Like Death of a Shadow, Henry suffers from not having enough time, though I have a feeling that two hours wouldn't have improved Henry.  While Death of a Shadow at least had an innovative concept, Henry is simply a poor man's Amour.  Yes, you will cry at the end, but not because you were moved by the film; rather, it will be because you got distracted while watching it and slowly will think about loved ones whom you know will someday succumb to some form of dementia.  It's a forgettable film about a difficult subject.

Curfew, at the center of the ShortsHD production, was a welcome relief after two huge disappointments.  The film, from Shawn Christensen (yes, somehow the guy who wrote Taylor Lautner's Abduction also now is an Oscar-winning filmmaker), is the only American entry, and a marked departure from the other films.  For starters, it's telling a story that usually gets into feature length films (the disfunctional brother/sister relationship, suicide, drug use), and yet it feels complete and perfect in its short run.  The movie manages to really establish a connection with the audience through its two principle characters, a suicidal man named Richie who must take care of his niece Sophia when her mother has nowhere else to turn.  The film relies a little bit on cliches, but has such a bubbling chemistry between Christensen and the young actress who plays his niece (Fatima Ptacek) and has a beautiful scene in a bowling alley involving a series of head-bopping extras, so you don't find that you care if the ending is rather standard.

Buzkashi Boys was a tad bit confusing (I had no idea what a Buzkashi was, and once I learned, was a bit horrified by it and kind of wondered why PETA wasn't protesting the film).  It's a story about two young beggar children who dream of a better life for themselves, and for one of them, it ends tragically (it's like they made it in an Oscar bait factory, and sadly, it reads just as mechanically as if it fell off an assembly line).  That said, the cinematography is spellbinding (Duraid Munajim, who worked on Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, can be credited with the handy lens work), and that's at least something, even if the film is not.

The final film in the lineup is Asad, which seems to be the most similar to Tuba Atlantic a year or two ago, in that it deals with some heavy situations (in this case, Somalian refugees, and the cast is made up entirely of actors who have fled Somalia) but gives it quite a few lighter moments.  The film isn't nearly as good as Curfew but arguably outranks the rest of the movies, if only for its cheeky ending-the little boy who goes out fishing comes back with a lion (not quite in a Life of Pi way, for the record), and I'll just leave it at that.  However, a one-note joke at the end of a serious and heavy-handed movie doesn't 100% jive well, and I can't say that this is Oscar-worthy in itself.

Other Precursor Contenders: As is its prerogative, the BAFTA's went with an entirely different lineup, choosing Swimmer as its victor over The Curse, Good Night, Tumult, and The Voorman Problem.

Oscar's Choice: One sort of wonders if Buzkashi and Asad split the "children in a third-world country" vote, leaving Curfew to take the trophy.

My Vote: If you couldn't already tell, this was an easy victory for Curfew for me.  I kind of wonder if Christensen will be good enough to sort of pull a Martin McDonagh and make an impact for himself in feature-length films (McDonagh I believe is the most recent Live Action Short winner to turn around and get another nomination in feature length films, for his wickedly awesome script for In Bruges-correct me if I'm wrong in the comments).  Ranking the other four, none of which impressed me, is a bit of a crapshoot, but I'd go with Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Death of a Shadow, and Henry at the end.

Also in 2012: Animated Short