And the Oscar For Best Animated Short Film Goes To . .

Details

Category: Film

Published on Monday, 03 February 2014 17:58

Written by Janet Walker

With The Academy Awards quickly approaching the nominees for the Animated Short film category are bringing together a group of delightful and difficult choices to the screen. Watching each of them, it does becomes a battle between the faithful, "Get A Horse" from Walt Disney to the modern, "Mr. Hublot" with "Room on a Broom" flying in to mix up the pot.

 ANIMATED SHORT FILM NOMINEES - Estimated Running Time - 110 minutes in total

 "Feral" (Directors Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden, USA/Non-dialogue).

A wild boy who has grown up in the woods is found by a hunter and returned to civilization.

 "Feral" is unique in that it is almost animation in abstract as the scenes fade together with the black and white characters changing as they are forced to change.

 "Get a Horse!" (Directors: Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim, USA/English).

Mickey Mouse and his friends are enjoying a wagon ride until Peg-Leg Pete shows up with plans to ruin their day.

 "Get a Horse!" begins with a nostalgic look at the genius of Walt Disney, the great Mickey Mouse archived cartoon vault, from his the early days of magical animation.

Without fast forwarding, John Lasseter and his team of brilliant animators have modernized the pure animation art form and really made it brand new. 

As Mickey finds himself out of the loop, he is forced to use his ingenuity to rescue his love, Minnie who is trapped in a different era and dimension.

"Get a Horse" offers the best of both worlds original Mickey and his gang in black and white, and modernized into sharp, crisp 3-D animation and color. Fun!

 "Mr. Hublot" (Directors: Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, Luxembourg/France/Non-dialogue).

The eccentric, isolated "Mr. Hublot" finds his carefully ordered world disrupted by the arrival of Robot Pet.

With charming and endearing neurosis, mild OCD, "Mr. Hublot" putters around his home, working as a two handed accountant, arranging his photos, his life is by the clock. A man of routine, he begins anew when faced with the decision to rescue a abandoned toaster dog, thrown away by a heartless owner, from the brink of death and facilitates the first real decisions he has faced in years. 

"Mr. Hublot" is an appealing and engaging story, with attractive and oddly fascinating animation with a picturesque view of life, as Parisians expect life to become in the future.  

"Mr. Hublot," is quite enjoyable, sweet, a delightful film.

 "Possessions" (Director: Shuhei Morita, Japan/Non-dialogue). 

A man seeking shelter from a storm in a dilapidated shrine encounters a series of household objects inhabited by goblin spirits.

The animation in "Possessions" is captivating from the beginning as the sound of the heavy rain, lightning and thunder roll across the screen. The thunderstorm drives an ancient Japanese warrior into a lonely and apparently abandoned shrine.

As the warrior hears whispers on the wind, "Possessions" opens into a kaleidoscope of colors, imaginings and spirits lead by a purple frog who doesn’t like the rain either.

 "Room on the Broom" (Directors: Max Lang and Jan Lachauer, voices by Simon Pegg, Gillian Anderson, Rob Brydon in UK/English).

A genial witch and her cat are joined on their broom by several friends as they set off on an adventure. "Room on the Broom," heavy in voice talent, is probably considered the closest to what movie goers expect in an animated film.

"Room on a Broom," tells a quaint story, has a moral, and provides lessons for children as all guests on the broom are suddenly working as a team, learning to share, offering a talent unique to them.  

The animation is sharp and although "Room on a Broom" doesn't venture out of the tried and true it is a cute, amusing film.

 The nominees for Best Animated Short Film are all wonderful. See them if you can.