Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films

The Oscar-nominated short films are playing in select cities around the country. In New York I saw them at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village.

The first of the Oscar-nominated live action short films was Pentecost, a light Irish comedy about an altar boy who just can’t resist the urge to ruin Sunday mass. After a supposed accident in which he caused the priest to fall by swinging the incense ball too close to his face, he’s given a second chance by default to be part of the altar boy elite ‘squad’ to perform a mass given by the Archbishop upon his return to this small town. Taking place in the late 70s, the boy is threatened with never being permitted to watch or listen to football again (and Liverpool has the European Cup final coming up!) The boys are given a pre-game talk that amounts to a sports team pep talk. Directed by Peter McDonald, it’s light, amusing and somehow distinctly Irish.

Oscar-nominated Animated Short Films

The Oscar-nominated short films are playing in select cities around the country. In New York I saw them at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village.

This year Pixar’s almost annual entry in the Academy Awards’ Animated Short contest is a sweet little film called La Luna directed by Enrico Casarosa. It’s a touching little tale about a young boy venturing out to sea on a rowboat with his father and grandfather as they throw anchor and hoist a ladder up the moon, climbing up with brooms in hand to sweep away the beautiful and twinkly stars that give the moon its glow. The film is bright and gorgeous and embodies nearly everything that Pixar has used to make a name for itself. It is one of the two best entries this year.

84th Academy Awards Predictions

I'm making these predictions still with two weeks to go before the ceremony. There remain several films I haven't managed to see yet, mostly in the technical and short film categories. My goal is to have seen everything except 1 of the documentary short films, and probably two of the foreign language films. It will require great focus and a lot of time, but I'm aiming high. With that in mind, I might revise my final predictions before the 26th, but this is how I'm calling it at the moment. Any updates will be noted as such.

You can find the full list of nominees with links to any reviews I've written here.

Picture - The Artist
Director - Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Actress - Viola Davis for The Help
Sorry Meryl, you won't be winning again.
Supporting Actress - Octavia Spencer for The Help
Actor - Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer for Beginners
Adapted Screenplay - The Descendants
Original Screenplay - Midnight in Paris
I'm not really sure any of the other nominees will really connect with Academy voters. Woody is a sentimental favorite who hasn't won an Oscar in more than 20 years.
Film Editing - Hugo
Cinematography - The Tree of Life
Art Direction/Set Decoration - Hugo
Costume Design - Hugo
Musical Score - The Artist
Without the musical score, this movie is almost nothing.
Original Song - "Real in Rio" from Rio
Makeup - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II
Sound Mixing - Hugo
Sound Editing - Hugo
Most voters don't know the difference between these two categories and tend to vote for the same film, especially one that is likely as popular with the Academy as this one is.
Visual Effects - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Animated Feature - Rango
Still with two films to see in this category I feel confident in this prediction.
Documentary Feature - Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
I've only seen two so far, but this is my prediction.
Foreign Language Film - A Separation
Animated Short - The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
I haven't seen any of the films. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is on YouTube, but I'm waiting to see the full program next week. La Luna is Pixar's (nearly) annual entry in this category, so even though Cars 2 didn't make the cut for feature animation, at least they got on the board in this category.
Update 16 February: I've seen all the nominees and my choice is the strongest of the five nominees. La Luna is about as excellent, but I'm sticking with my original pick.
Live Action Short - Time Freak
Again, I haven't seen any of the films in this category, but based on what I've read...
Update 16 February: I've seen all the nominees now and I think Time Freak really is the strongest of the three nominees, so I'm sticking with it as my prediction. But voters may go sentimental and do-gooder and vote for the lost child weepie Raju.
Documentary Short - Saving Face
I haven't seen any of these films.
Update 16 February: I've now seen four of the nominees and have changed my prediction from  Incident in New Baghdad. Voters may choose that doc about a day of bloodshed in the Iraq war. It plays to the stereotypical liberal Hollywood mindset by featuring an ex-soldier speaking out against the war. But I think voters will go with the doc that moves them most and I was most moved by Saving Face, so I've changed my prediction to that.

Oscar Trivia 2012

General

- Among all nominees, the most nominated is John Williams (47th and 48th nominations this year). He is followed by Woody Allen (22nd and 23rd nominations) and Meryl Streep (17th nomination).


- Among all nominees, the individuals with the most Oscars is sound designer Gary Rydstrom with 7 wins followed by composer John Williams with 5 and visual effects artist Joe Letteri with 4.

Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris) Movie Review

Animation as a medium can be a wonderful and often beautiful way to tell a story. It’s a shame that more filmmakers don’t use it. Here in the United States animation tends to be thought of as a children’s medium and it is generally used solely for such. Feature film animation was the exclusive purview of Disney until the late 1990s when Pixar (acquired by Disney) and DreamWorks started producing their own imaginative, though still childish, films.

However, in recent years we’ve been seeing brilliant work from foreign filmmakers who specialize in animation being recognized here and almost every year since the inception of the Animated Feature Oscar, a foreign film with adult oriented themes has been nominated. There’s been the dark earth-toned work of Sylvain Chomet in The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist, the Iranian film Persepolis, Waltz with Bashir from Israel. Two years ago a little known (in the USA) Irish film called The Secret of Kells made the Academy’s cut and received a nomination. This year they’ve gone outside the box again – the exclusion of Pixar’s Cars 2 – and nominated two films, one of which has not yet been released in the United States.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory Movie Review

From left: Joe Berlinger; Jessie Misskelley, Jr.; Damien Echols; Jason Baldwin; Bruce Sinofsky at the film's premiere in NYC.

The third and most recent entry in the Paradise Lost documentary series, titled Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky has a much more focused plan of attack. Much more than its predecessors, it seems somehow more professional, more bona fide, which I suppose is a reflection of the fact that they’ve incorporated contemporary documentary film techniques to tell their story.

Kung Fu Panda 2 Movie Review

Kung Fu Panda 2, the sequel to the hit computer-animated action comedy from DreamWorks Animation, follows the standard rules of sequels. It is bigger in scope, louder, and more boisterous. And it expands the cast list, already overflowing with celebrity voiceovers, to include even more. Part of the fun is trying to identify that voice you recognize but just can’t place. In addition to the stars of the first show, Dennis Haysbert and Jean-Claude Van Damme appear as kung fu masters from another province and Danny McBride is here as a badass wolf.