Madagascar, carnet de voyage – This short has a great style to it, presenting itself as pages of an actual journal, but taking that 2-dimensional imagery and spreading it into 3 dimensions… but then there’s no real substance to what’s being shown. I haven’t checked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was simply taken from an actual scrapbook of someone’s trip to Madagascar—it probably was—with a few snapshots animated slightly and a few travel montages shoved in between, but without any obvious purpose to any of it. I’d like to see more of the style, but with a point.
The Lost Thing – Similarly, this short has more style than substance, but even with its message (or what I took as such) left only in the subtext, the story is a simple enough tale—guy finds a creature on the beach and takes it home, then has to find it a home when its presence doesn’t work at his house. There’s some nice visual cues here, a lot of exposed pipes and strangely fascistic architecture, stuff befitting a post-apocalyptic or dystopian future, though there isn’t much time spent on the meaning of all of it. It reminded me of The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello from a while back, a lot of time spent on visuals and a need for… not more story, necessarily. There is a certain denouement in this one that makes the throughline complete, but the world seems much more fully realized than we are allowed to see. And, this last is both a very good thing and a very bad thing, a very sad thing in that I want more but there just isn’t more to be had.
Let’s Pollute – A surprisingly amusing and intelligent film, the shortest of the nominees (or maybe tied with Madagascar). Let’s Pollute steps past a sarcastic tone to rather brilliant satire, putting a very big message about pollution, about conservation, recycling and all that comes with those into a very small package. Produced cheaply and with a very simple 2-dimensional style, Let’s Pollute comes across at once as an educational video (albeit with the opposite message to what one might expect) and a subversive tract that would feel right at home among the documentary nominees.
The Gruffalo – The longest of the animated shorts this year, that should give this one an edge. But, aside from a bit of cuteness (which I would guess comes straight from the children’s book, but I’m not familiar with the original), there isn’t anything too exciting going on here. The look isn’t anything special; the creatures especially come across closer to 2-dimensional than 3-dimensional, while the environment plays more 3-dimensional. It’s entertaining, but it’s not anything that hasn’t been seen before.
Day & Night – Now, Pixar’s mix of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional imagery here, while probably not too innovative, comes across as something very new, using sound effects in place of dialogue (except for a few key lines of radio broadcast that give a very clear theme to something that otherwise seems like nothing but a fun visual romp). And, that parenthetical gets at the key to this short in my opinion, that surface fun skittering over a very serious topic, but getting in and out of that topic without much of a notion of meditation on it, but giving that extra beat to make it obvious to anyone paying attention. It’s a brilliant mix of visual style and content. None of these nominees really combines both as greatly as I’d prefer, but Day & Night has an obvious flare (thank you, Pixar) that leaves the others behind.
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