Oh boy, look at me, three in one day. This is what happens when I’m not on a timeline to present shit when it happens but instead am presenting it when I have enough time to present a reasoned… well, when I have time to think for a second about it rather than no seconds.
Anyway, let’s skip the pleasantries. 10 animated shorts got shortlisted, and five of these will be nominated.
Here they are:
Deliberately not putting trailers or anything on here for two reasons. One — too early and too many of them have no form of synopsis or anything out there. And two — this is a category that doesn’t work when you spend time thinking about it. In my experience, it needs to be about gut reactions. What seems like it should be nominated? And then also look at how things are nominated and to an extent who did them. That’s how they vote. So now, just look at what they’re about more than anything. We have a month before we really need to start thinking about this one.
- Bear Story (Historia De Un Oso — An old, lonesome bear tells the story of his life through a mechanical diorama.
This seems charming.
- Carface (Autos Portraits) — No synopsis.
Can’t find anything about this.
- If I Was God… — No synopsis.
He’s been nominated twice, but not in 13 years.
- Love in the Time of March Madness — Melissa Johnson hit 6’4” tall in 8th grade. Although this made her an instant basketball star, LOVE IN THE TIME OF MARCH MADNESS explores her hilarious and awkward true-life misadventures in romance as she dates shorter men and gets cheered or jeered wherever she goes. Blazing with honesty and dark humor, this animated ‘tall short’ about embracing difference is certain to disarm and delight.
This is the one that makes me go, “No fucking way do they nominate this.” But then, they nominated Me and My Moulton last year. So what do I know?
- My Home — Hugo’s mother is back home. The day after, when Hugo wakes up, he finds black feathers all over his house.
Okay. The trailer is interesting. Does mom get fucked by Birdman?
- An Object at Rest — The story of a rock facing its greatest adversary: human civilization.
This was this dude’s thesis film. Would be cool if he got nominated for an Oscar for his thesis. Though this is the Forrest Gump of rocks, isn’t it? Might have been better served if it didn’t randomly have legs. Still, this is well done. It does a good job explaining the relationship between the earth and humans in five minutes.
- Prologue — No synopsis.
This, from the little I could see, looks gorgeous. The director is an animation legend, which may or may not hold sway with this branch. Seemingly they don’t give a fuck about anything. I remember there was that beautiful short last year Duet that was ignored. So who the hell knows.
- Sanjay’s Super Team — Bored with his father’s meditation, a young Indian boy daydreams of Hindu gods as superheroes.
Maybe, but I don’t know. It certainly doesn’t look like a particularly great short. At least not classic Pixar. They actually have left Pixar off now three years running. Including Lava (which wasn’t very good) and The Blue Umbrella (which was incredible). La Luna was fine, but was nominated. And Day & Night was beautiful and didn’t win but was nominated. I say maybe it could get nominated, but I’m not automatically putting it on.
- We Can’t Live Without Cosmos — Two cosmonauts, two friends, try to do their best in their everyday training life to make their common dream a reality. But this story is not only about the dream.
Seems unlikely, from the trailer I saw. Though this guy has been nominated before. So there’s that.
- World of Tomorrow — A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.
Don Hertzfeldt? They never put him on the list. He’s only been nominated once (15 years ago). Damn. Holy shit though. The animation on this looks spectacular. Though I’m not sure if they’ll nominate it because of how weird he is and how much he plays with form and narrative.
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Okay, so first thing’s first — Pixar hasn’t won this category since ’01. So Sanjay’s Super Team — throw it out. Maybe guess it if you think they’ll nominate it. But I feel like they go for visual splendor and heart over anything else. This one doesn’t seem like it’ll be anything outstanding. We’ll see. I’m saying this based on a 40 second clip a week before the movie opens. Maybe it gets on, but I’ll tell you now, it’s not winning.
I have no idea what Carface is, so I can’t say anything about it or rightly say it won’t be nominated.
Bear Story seems like the kind of thing they nominate, so I’ll say probably for that one.
If I Was God seems cute, but I don’t know. 50/50 there.
Love in the Time of March Madness makes me say no way instinctively, but again, with Me and My Moulton — they like autobiographical here. And it’s a female filmmaker, which I want to see be nominated.
My Home — seems like something they’d go for, but I don’t know how weird it is. Too early to tell.
An Object at Rest won me over. This could be nominated, though I can easily see it being left off.
Prologue looks gorgeous, though I have no idea what it’s about. So let’s say probably.
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos seems like a no, but I’m usually way wrong on at least one of these.
World of Tomorrow I’d like to see be nominated because it looks like one of the only interesting ones in the bunch.
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I’m not super crazy about most of these. Feels like a weak year for animated shorts.
Based on what I’m seeing, the ones I’m liking most are:
- Bear Story
- An Object at Rest
- Prologue
- World of Tomorrow
I’d probably want to guess those as 4 of the 5.
I probably wouldn’t say either Sanjay or Cosmos will get on, Sanjay because I want to be contrarian and feel smug if I’m right, and Cosmos because it seems too traditionally animated (it’s the kind of animation you see now on network TV or even on internet videos).
Carface is a complete wild card at this point.
Which leaves three more.
If I Was God — I honestly can’t tell. Maybe they nominate it, maybe they don’t.
My Home — also too early to tell.
Love in the Time of March Madness — the Moulton thing is gonna fuck me up. My gut says no, but last year might make me put that on my list of guesses, and then it won’t be nominated and I’ll feel like a schmuck. I think I’m gonna end up not putting this on and seeing if it does get on, at which point I’ll have a mental note of, “They like autobiographical” for the future. But since I don’t see many autobiographical nominees in the previous decade, and the Moulton director had been nominated before, I’m feeling more comfortable with eventually leaving this off. But we’ll see. I would like to see as many female directors get on here as possible.
Too early to tell. This is a category I typically leave alone until the night before nominations are announced, and then I throw guesses together out of nowhere, say “fuck it” and hope for the best. And then once I have a category I pretend like I know exactly how things are gonna play out.
