Shorts International and Magnolia do a great job getting out the Oscar nominated shorts each year. The show of all ten nominees (not including the doc shorts) opens here in Los Angeles on February 6, will make it to at least 60 US markets in the next few weeks, and will be available on iTunes on February 17. (Pixar’s Presto is already available and is the current top selling short on the site.)
This time of year, the shorts categories are always the hardest to handicap. First, for lack of seeing the films. But then, add in that the group voting is limited to Academy members who have seen all five films. So you never know.
For me, the call of which the best of each group is not terribly challenging. I like Presto a lot, but in Pixar is The King and they can afford to lose a few awards now and again. What is wonderful about the film is that it is much more WB Termite Terrace than anything else they have ever done over there. Fun. Slick. Top notch.
But in Animated, my personal winner is the less polished, more weird This Way Up by Smith + Foulkes, who use a fascinating visual palette to tell the story of a father & son morticians who are, literally, more than 100% committed to getting their charge to her final resting place. Wow.
In Live Action, it’s an easy call for Manon of the Asphalt, Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont’s 15 minute intimate, lingering, romantic, sexy, whisper of a tale that manages to not feel like a short, but like a complete telling of the moment in a life they seek to explore.
Ms. Marre seems have moved from acting to being a Second A.D. and then to First A.D. for films you might know, like Caramel and La Mustache. Mr. Pont seems to have worked as an animated for Phil Nibbelink & Simon Wells before becoming a successful comic book/graphic novel illustrator and jumping into shorts with Ms. Marre.
The film has a familiar French film feel… but the small brush strokes belong to these two and I suspect that, if they want it, they have a significant feature career coming soon.
Does it say something about me - or about the Obama Era (hee hee) - that my two favorites involve mortality?
A full list of the nominees after the jump…
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/02/and_the_best_os.html