By: Henry J. Fromage –
My first viewing of the year comes courtesy of The Animation Showcase and the shortlisted Animated Shorts I’d not yet seen.
1. Cardboard
These first couple are the kind of shorts that often draw nominations or even win this category. This one is about a pig widower and his two adorable piglet sons who find out the beautiful motor home they thought they were moving into is a bit seedier and sandier than they expected- but that’s no match for an open mind and a great imagination. A cute, well-animated, if not exactly mind-blowing entry. Three Beers.
2. Forevergreen
This is another sweet but familiar short, this time about an anthropomorphic pine tree who raises a young orphan bear cub, but when it grows up and tastes the sweet, deadly taste of chips for the first time, it makes some tragically bad teenage choices. Another cute, well-animated, if not exactly mind-blowing entry. Three Beers.
3. The Girl Who Cried Pearls
I’m not usually one for fugly puppet stop-motion, but something about this quasi-O. Henry story of how an elderly man amassed his fortune starting as a prospect-less street urchin struck me. It’s just a quality story full of emotion with a sharp twist, and more teeth than you’d think when you start with it. Two Beers.
4. Playing God
Speaking of fugly puppet stop-motion, good god. Or rather, evil one, I suppose, as that’s the point of this story told from the perspective of a new man freshly hewn from clay, an uncaring creator, and an assemblage of horrific earlier attempts to do whatever it is that would make this creator happy in the end. Pitch dark, but intense and affecting. Two Beers.
5. The Night Boots
This just wasn’t for me I guess. The hazy, felty, black and white animation is definitely unique, and well-rendered, but the little boy and forest creature adventures are a bit slack and random. A paean to childish imagination and the French backwoods, perhaps?. Four Beers.
6. The Quinta’s Ghost
This short is told from the perspective of a house, which doesn’t end up being as strange as it sounds. The house happens to be great Spanish painter Francisco de Goya’s, where he spent the last years of his life descending into what may be madness, and is unquestionably a deep darkness, from which sprang his famous Black Paintings series, rendered on the walls of that house and not discovered and brought to the Prado Museum until 50 years after his death. A fascinating piece of art history, rendered evocatively. Two Beers.
7. The Three Sisters
This Russian animated short is simple but amusing fare, both in story and in artistic style. Three frumpy sisters live on an island, but when a seagull cripples them financially in one fell swoop, they need to rent out one of their identical cottages. The renter- a man! A big strapping sea captain, at that, which awakens some things in each of them as they compete for his attention. It’s probably the most fun of the shortlisted films, which sometimes is enough. Three Beers.
