The Great Oscar Baiter

I might have to turn in my millennial card for this, but I have never watched an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. I know, I know, I’m sorry! Just wasn’t something that got much play in my house growing up. Still, I do know a very important piece of Courage trivia- did you know that before it got turned into an animated series, its pilot was an Oscar-nominated short? Yes folks, 1996 saw the release of The Chicken from Outer Space, and with it, the birth of an animated icon. (via TV Tropes) Directed by John Dilworth, The Chicken from Outer Space follows what I must assume would go on to be a typical premise for the series, with a strange monster arriving at Courage's farm, and said cowardly dog trying to protect his owners from the threat. Created for Cartoon Network's What a Cartoon! Show, the short was meant to act as a pilot for the series which followed. So hey, it was successful in one front at least. (I'm still unsure as to how television animation is eligible ...

There’s a lot to be afraid of this Halloween- evil clowns, zombies, dentists who offer to buy back your candy- but is there anything scarier than death itself? Well, it depends on who you ask. Peter Pan, for instance, would call death an awfully great adventure. And I think Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith might agree, if their 2008 short This Way Up is anything to go on. (via IMDb) Despite being a relatively well seen short by our standards, there really isn't a lot of information available about This Way Up, aside from the fact that it's British. And really we could figure that out from watching it. (It's got a very British sense of humor.) The film follows a father/son pair of morticians as they struggle to transport a coffin to the graveyard after their hearse is crushed by a falling boulder. Their misadventures lead them across the countryside, with their woes growing more ridiculous and more dangerous with every twist in the road. There really isn't much more to it t...

I honestly can’t believe we’re here. The final week of our Year in Shorts. There were times when I didn’t think I could keep it up, but I’m very glad I did. And I’m very grateful for everyone who’s been here for their journey, either from the very beginning or just stumbling upon it today. Just as a film isn’t really a film without an audience, a blog without readers isn’t worth much of anything. Anyway, enough of that nonsense. Since our last week of shorts is ALSO the week leading up to Halloween, we’re gonna spend the next seven days having some fun by watching some seasonally appropriate shorts. And we’re kicking it off with one of the spookiest shorts I’ve ever seen- Paul Berry’s The Sandman. (via IMDb) Released in 1991, The Sandman has nothing to do with either Neil Gaiman's epic comic series (which began two years earlier) OR the badass Metallica song (which, coincidentally, was released that same year). Instead it is inspired by a short story by E.T.A. Hoffman, aka the guy...

Fellow Oscar Baiters, I have a confession to make. Despite proclaiming myself as a big fan of animator Don Hertzfedlt, there are many of his films which I haven’t seen. And that, unfortunately, includes the final two entries in his World of Tomorrow trilogy. I meant to fill in that blind spot when the time came to cover him again, but no matter how much I pushed this day back, time and money would not permit me. So it is with a heavy heart that I admit defeat and will only be covering the first chapter in his trilogy, released in 2015, in order to make sure I give it the proper coverage it deserves. After all, it IS the only entry in the series to receive an Oscar nomination, and this is the Great Oscar Baiter, not the Great Whatever the Hell I Feel Like Watching Baiter. Why the other two failed to get one is a topic we may discuss another day. But for now, let’s look at the wonderful weird world that is Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow. (via Wikipedia) World of Tomorrow is simult...

Well, it’s finally time. I’ve been teasing it since the beginning of the year. As you may remember, the 72nd Academy Awards had an unusually strong lineup for Best Animated Short, with one major exception. We’ve covered a quirky piece of history, an artsy film about the connectivity of humanity, a side-splittingly funny bit of creative stop motion, and one of the most visually stunning films we’ve watched to date. But today we cover the exception. So let’s look at 3 Misses. This is going to be a rough one folks. (via IMDb) Directed by Paul Driesen and released in 1998, 3 Misses is another fairly obscure short for us, and for good reason! It tells the stories of three damsels in distress (the titular misses), and the hapless men who try to save them. Said damsels consist of a woman falling off of a skyscraper, a lady in the Old West tied to the railroad tracks, and none other than princess Snow White. All the men rush to the rescue, only to be beset by all manner of obstacles in an ir...

Over the course of our Year in Shorts, we’ve covered a great many Disney films. As a matter of fact, we’ve looked at nearly every Oscar-nominated short produced by the studio. Yes, there have been a few blind spots and omissions (notice how we haven’t talked Winnie-the-Pooh yet), but it’s safe to say that ANOTHER Year in Shorts will be decidedly less filled with Disney. At any rate, Rugged Bear is the last Disney short we’ll be talking about this year. And isn’t it lucky that we’re going out with a Donald Duck cartoon? (via Wikipedia) Jack Hannah's Rugged Bear has a lot in common with one of the first Donald Duck shorts we covered, No Hunting. Both shorts were 50s releases, ( Rugged Bear came out in 1953), which means they both utilize that 1950s Disney aesthetic which regular readers will remember I'm a huge fan of. Both films revolve around hunting season, with Donald taking the role of the hunter. And both shorts take a somewhat atypical approach to a Donald Duck cartoo...

Back in December, we covered Jimmy Picker’s Sundae in New York , a pretty terrible short about Ed Koch singing “New York, New York”, redeemed only by its decent claymation. Well today we’re talking about Jimmy the C, another claymation short, this time about Jimmy Carter singing “Georgia on My Mind.” And guess what? It's ALSO directed by Jimmy Picker. Say what you will about the man, he certainly has a consistent vision! (via TV Tropes) Released in 1977, Jimmy the C is... well, it's pretty much exactly how I described it in the opening paragraph. There's not really a lot to explain regarding this short, nor is there much to set it apart from Sundae in New York. I guess the animation is slightly worse, but that's not really a surprise; it would make sense for Picker's animation to improve after six years, right? Nevertheless, that's a point against it. But in Jimmy the C' s favor, it must be said that at least this film just uses an already existing versi...