The Great Oscar Baiter

A long time ago, in the first month of our Year in Shorts, we looked at Your Face , a strange and hypnotic short by animation legend Bill Plympton. And since October seems to be the month of closing off full circles, it only stands to reason that we’d look at Plympton again, with his other Oscar-nominated short, Guard Dog. (via IMDb) Released in 2004, Guard Dog is the only film brave enough to answer the most important question of our time- why the fuck do dogs bark at everything? This is especially pressing to me, as my dog barks at every god damn thing with little rhyme or reason. Well it turns out they have our best interests at heart, or so says Bill Plympton. As it turns out that dogs are incredibly paranoid, and view every little thing in their world as a deadly threat to their owners. Guard Dog follows a particularly high strung dog, who assumes the worst of every perceived threat, his imagination escalating to more and more absurd acts of violence. It's not the most co...

Earlier this year we looked at Ryan Larkin’s Walking , a rather strange and highly influential short. I mentioned at the time that my first impression of Walking was not a positive one, but that time and context helped me appreciate it more. And perhaps the most important ingredient in that newfound respect was today’s short, Chris Landreth’s animated documentary, Ryan. (via Wikipedia) Although once considered one of the best animators of the 60s and 70s, Ryan Larkin fell on some hard times, struggling with cocaine and alcohol addiction, affecting his career and personal life. Larkin faded into relative obscurity, but fate intervened when he was selected to be a committee member for the Ottawa International Film Festival alongside animator Chris Landreth. (If Landreth's name sounds familiar, it's because we've covered him before. Stylistically, Ryan has a great deal in common with The End, albeit married to a more grounded story.) After learning Larkin's life story,...

One of the great things about the shorts categories is discovering all the famous people who are Oscar winners or nominees thanks to their work on them. Did you know that Peter Capaldi is an Oscar winner? Or that Jeff Goldblum and Peter Riegert were nominated for their work on short films? And while Tim Miller might not be as famous as those guys, you’re definitely familiar with his work. He’s the guy who directed the first Deadpool and SHOULD have directed the second if it weren’t for the fact that Ryan Reynolds inexplicably didn’t want Kyle Chandler to be Cable. Why wouldn’t you want Kyle Chandler to be Cable? Why wouldn’t you want Kyle Chandler to be anyone?! Kyle Chandler is the best. But I digress. The point is that Tim Miller (executive producer of Sonic the Hedgehog himself) has an Oscar nomination, for co-writing and producing the 2004 short film, Gopher Broke. (via Wikipedia) We've discussed this before, but the way the Academy determines who gets nominated for short fil...

Although they may not have had as much Oscar success as the Germans, the Spanish people have nevertheless had a respectable presence at the Academy Awards. From the works of Luis Buñuel to the award-winning performances of Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, Spain has done pretty well for itself over the years. And that success extends to the short categories as well, such as Nacho Vigalondo’s 7:35 in the Morning. (via Wikipedia) Vigalondo is probably best known in the United States for directing a segment in indie horror anthology The ABCs of Death and Colossal, that Anne Hathaway movie I keep meaning to watch but never get around to. My own experience with the director comes from his work on the "Pooka!" episode of Hulu's Into the Dark, which was one of that show's better episodes. It's fairly clear that Vigalondo is a man with a dark, dry sense of humor, which is something that definitely comes across in this short, which you can watch here on Vimeo. Like many...

We here at The Great Oscar Baiter are great fans of New Zealand triple threat Taika Waititi, and thankfully it seems the Oscars are following suit. Although it’s perhaps not surprising that the Academy didn’t nominate What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople or even Thor: Ragnarok (the Visual Effect category was pretty competitive in 2017!), it was still nice to see Waititi get the recognition he deserved last year with Jojo Rabbit. But although Best Adapted Screenplay may have gotten Waititi his first Oscar win, it wasn’t his first nomination. That came over a decade prior, with his 2004 short Two Cars, One Night. (via IMDb) Following the story of three kids left in the parking lot while their parents drink in a bar, Two Cars, One Night is certainly a lot more low key than Waititi's more recent work (with nary an imaginary Hitler or prancing Jeff Goldblum in sight). Still, the short definitely features a lot of his familiar staples, from the breezy, naturalistic d...

There are a lot of movies which were nearly made that I desperately wish I could bring into existence. One such film is Fantasia 2006, the canceled third installment in Disney’s Fantasia series. And while unfortunately that movie was never made, there were a handful of segments developed for that project and released separately. Today’s short, Lorenzo, is one of them, and if it’s any indication of what the rest of Fantasia 2006 might have been like, we missed out on something really wonderful. (via Wikipedia) Directed by Mike Gabriel and produced by Baker Bloodworth (whom I mostly bring up because how can I not bring up someone with the name Baker Bloodworth??? ), Lorenzo tells the story of a vain cat who makes the fatal mistake of taunting some sort of tailless cat wizard. Said cat wizard then places a hex on Lorenzo's own luxurious tail, bringing it to life, and well... chaos ensues. (via TV Tropes) There is a lot to love about Lorenzo. The choice of music is great, with ...