The Great Oscar Baiter

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it again- reference humor is a tricky business. Most of the time, it's a short term gain but a long term loss. Occasionally you’ll get lucky and wind up with something amusing in its own right, but let’s be real- most of the time these films just suck. But what if the reference you build your film around is truly timeless, a legendary actor from classic Hollywood? Well luckily the 1994 short film The Big Story is here to answer that question for us. Turns out it would still suck! (via Film Affinity) At a whopping two minutes long, David Stoten and Tim Watts' The Big Story is another short which will take longer to read about than it will to watch. Although even then, that might be pushing it, because there's really not a lot to say about it. The thing is just one extended reference, with three stop motion versions of Kirk Douglas (representing three different phases of his career) arguing in a newspaper office about the titular big story. I...

Content Warning- Today's short contains homophobia and a scene of attempted suicide. Happy Pride Month, fellow Oscar Baiters! While we may not be able to celebrate Pride the way we might like this year, there’s still a lot of great ways to commemorate the occasion. Like, for instance, watching queer-themed movies nominated by the Oscars! There are quite a lot of them out there (and some are much older than you’d expect), although there aren’t a whole lot of queer shorts, unfortunately. At least not that I’ve seen, unless you count my interpretation of Tom and Jerry’s dysfunctional relationship as canon. Still, there is one short which will allow us to celebrate pride, and it won an Oscar! So let’s look at Peggy Rajski’s Trevor. (via Wikipedia) Released in 1994, Trevor follows the eponymous character, played winningly by Brett Barsky, a thirteen year old in the 1980s with a flair for the dramatic; we've all been there, Trevor. The film, told through a series of diary entries w...

One of the wonderful things about animation is its ability to bring the impossible to life. But an underrated aspect of the medium is the way it can do the same for the very possible. Take Bob’s Birthday, for instance. Nothing about this short screams that it NEEDS to be animated. It could have easily been done in live action. And yet the fact that it wasn’t just makes it all the more special.  (via TV Tropes) Directed by Alison Snowden and David Fine (remember them?), Bob's Birthday is a 1993 short once again released by the National Film Board of Canada. It tells the story of Bob (naturally), a dissatisfied dentist whose wife Margaret is planning a surprise party for his 40th birthday. Bob's Birthday does double duty as not just an animated short but also the pilot for an animated series, Bob & Margaret. It's not hard to tell, as Bob's Birthday does play out like an above average episode of sitcom, starting out with some funny setup before turning into a tota...

Today’s short is another fairly obscure one. Not only does it not have a Wikipedia page (at least not one in English), it doesn’t have a TV Tropes page either! Usually I can rely on a short to have at least one or the other, but no dice this time. As such, any information I’ve found on it has come from my own exhaustive research, which mostly consisted of reading the end credits and then Googling anything pertinent about it. My hard work paid off, and I can therefore tell you that today’s short, Vanessa Schwartz’s The Janitor, started life as a track by the music and storytelling group Celestial Navigations. Fronted by the late character actor Geoffrey Lewis (who also wrote the darn thing), “The Janitor” was first released in 1988. And as near as I can tell, Vanessa Schwartz must have liked it so much she decided to build a short around it. Was it worth the effort? Only one way to find out! (via Letterboxd) In one of those odd little wrinkles, The Janitor, despite being listed as a 1...

When it comes to controversial Oscar choices, they don't come more hotly contested than the decision to award Best Picture to Forrest Gump. While that movie was certainly popular upon release, and remains well loved to this day, you don't have to look very hard to find someone to tell you that Pulp Fiction was clearly far more deserving of that honor that year. I'm certainly one of them. (Still other people will tell you that The Shawshank Redemption was the TRUE Best Picture of 1994, despite the fact that it's really only marginally better than Forrest Gump ). The debate rages to this day, and probably will until the sun dies. This stands in stark contrast to the total lack of debate surrounding that year's category for Best Animated Short. Admittedly that category attracts very little controversy (or attention) in general, but even among Oscar enthusiasts I can't imagine there are many people who won't agree that Bob's Birthday rightfully took home...

Something unexpected which this Year in Shorts has sparked in me is a desire to get into animation. Not professionally mind you (I don’t think I’ve got the talent or inclination), but it’s something I’ve recently realized I’d love to be able to do just for my own sake. I haven’t made up my mind on whether or not to pursue it yet, but it’s definitely something I’d consider. And if I went for it, among my many influences would be Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, director of today’s short, The Monk and the Fish. (via MUBI) Released in 1994, The Monk and the Fish has a pretty simple setup- a monk spots a fish and becomes obsessed with catching it. While at first this results in some classic cartoon hijinks (imagine a more low key Looney Tunes short), it soon turns into something much weirder and weirdly profound. While the story may be a little episodic at times, the short still shows a keen understanding of the importance of comic escalation, as well as the comedic value of a sudden...