The Great Oscar Baiter

Some films are just plain weird folks. No one wants to talk about it, but it’s true. Sometimes there’s a film which no amount of discussion can ever properly explain. Oh sure, you can try. But at best you’ll just come across looking foolish, and at worst you’ll find yourself killing the magic. There are some films out there which are better left to their own devices, not to be explored, but to be enjoyed. Such films are meant to be experienced more than understood. And in the case of a film like Ouverture, that experience can be bizarrely rewarding. (via Letterboxd) Ouverture (or Overture or Nyitány, depending on who you ask and what language you speak; I choose to use Ouverture because I believe the translated title is meant to be a pun on the French word for egg) is a 1965 Hungarian short directed by Janos Vadasz. Put plainly, it's a documentary short about the development of a chicken within its egg all the way up to its hatching, compressed to just under nine minutes thanks ...

One of the nice things about this blog is the wide variety of films I get to discuss. Any film nominated for an Oscar is valid, and thanks to the broad group of categories (not to mention the questionable taste of the Academy members), there are all sorts of interesting and quirky films I’ll get to talk about one day. Did you know Cecil Kellaway got an Oscar nomination for playing a leprechaun? Or that Face/Off, The Rock and Con Air are all Oscar nominees? And don’t even get me started on the films that the Makeup branch recognizes. ( Norbit, anyone?) Still, not every film can get nominated for an Oscar, and eventually some films will fall outside of my purview. One such film is the 2009 film 9, which is not to be confused with the 2009 film Nine, which DID get nominated for a few Oscars, although by all accounts it shouldn’t have been. No, I’m referring to the animated 9, directed by Shane Acker and starring Elijah Wood and Christopher Plummer. It wasn’t a great film (and the ad ...

While for most holidays I like to try and coordinate it so that we cover a short that’s somehow related to the day, I can’t always be expected to do that. So for those of you expecting a 4/20-related short today, I’m sorry to disappoint you. David Fine and Alison Snowden’s George and Rosemary has absolutely nothing to do with marijuana. And unlike plenty of shorts I could talk about (ie, pretty much everything released in the 60s), I’m not sure that this is one of those films where the experience is enhanced by drugs. Or maybe it is, I certainly don't know. Whatever the case may be, let’s take a sober look at the 1987 film, George and Rosemary. (via TV Tropes) Unlike the previous Fine and Snowden film we looked at, George and Rosemary is a love story. (Also unlike this film, George and Rosemary is good.) It's a tale as old as time; George and Rosemary are a couple of lonely old souls who live across the street from one another. Unbeknownst to Rosemary, George has been harbo...

In case it isn’t abundantly clear by now, I really love stop motion animation. Hell, I love animation in general, but stop motion holds a special place in my heart. There’s something about the level of hard work and ingenuity you can feel in every frame that just elevates it to a new level. Which isn’t to imply that other forms of animation lack that; hand drawn and computer animation are often impressive in their own right, and even the “cheapest” looking animated films often represent hours upon hours of hard work. But with stop motion, it just feels different. You can’t cut really cut corners with stop motion; there’s a reason that low budget knockoff studios never attempt it. Even the worst piece of stop motion is a labor of love, and the handiwork of its creators is always clear on screen. (Sometimes literally, as in the case of claymation films where you can often see the thumbprints on the puppets.) All of this to say that while Canhead might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s ...

They say that all good things must come to an end, and unfortunately that includes the Golden Age of Tom and Jerry. There exists some debate as to exactly when that was. But for the purposes of our blog, we’ll just go ahead and say that it was when they received their final Oscar nomination. Still, if the good old days must come to an end, at least you can end them on a high note. And while Touché, Pussy Cat! might not be an example of the series at its best, it’s still a good time regardless. (via Letterboxd) As you can probably guess from the title, Hanna and Barbera's 1954 film Touché, Pussy Cat! is a follow-up to their previous Tom and Jerry short, The Two Mouseketeers. I guess technically you could say it's a prequel, as it tells the story of how Nibbles came to join the Mouseketeers. Of course, this is Tom and Jerry we're talking about, so canon is not exactly something we have to concern ourselves too greatly with. By contrast, cannons are something which should a...

Today’s short poses something of an interesting philosophical conundrum for me. You see, Patrick Osborne’s Pearl is no ordinary film. Released in 2016, Pearl is the first VR film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Which is all well and good, but I don’t own a VR headset. So while I am able to watch Pearl, I’m not able to experience it in the way the filmmakers intended. So can any review I write be entirely fair? Of course, every other short I’ve covered was meant to be seen in theaters, and that’s rarely been the case for me. And I guess it doesn’t matter either way, because Pearl is a perfectly lovely film with or without VR! (via Wikipedia) If the name Patrick Osborne sounds familiar to you, it's because he won himself an Oscar the year before with Feast , which we covered here ages ago. And while Pearl didn't win the Oscar (that's what happens when you don't have the power of the Mouse behind you), I think I like this one a little better. It tells the story...

On November 18 1932, the 5th Academy Awards were held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. It was not a particularly interesting year for the Oscars ( Grand Hotel is one of those competently made yet thoroughly uninteresting Best Picture winners that’s difficult to have much of an opinion on), but there were some fun bits of trivia. For instance, Fredric March and Wallace Beery were the only men in history to tie for Best Actor, Disney’s Flowers and Trees became the first animated film to win an Oscar, and the Academy introduced the first categories for short films. We’ve already covered a couple of that year’s nominees ( Mickey’s Orphans for Short Subject- Cartoons and Swing High for Short Subject- Novelty), but never any of the winners. Well that changes today, in the third category for shorts that year, Short Subject- Comedy. It’s time to talk Laurel and Hardy. It’s time to take a look at The Music Box. (via TV Tropes) An interesting, if not terribly surprising, b...