The 2008 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

To aid you in handicapping your office Oscar pool, here’s my rundown of this year’s nominated animated shorts. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve made a final call on who will be the ultimate winner, though Pixar has yet again risen above the bulk of the pack. Presto (2008, USA) is cute and legitimately funny, but if the Academy voters want some real substance, my guess is that they’ll go with the Japanese nominee, La Maison en petits cubes (2008). No, I don’t know why the title’s in French, either. However, despite the fact that Maison is not my favorite animation style (I’ve never been a fan of shaky lines, hence my intense dislike of Dr. Katz), the story is both complex and touching without being treacly. It interweaves themes of memory, loss, and environmentalism, all with a light comic touch. Between the two, I would personally pick Maison, but it may well be an all-Pixar night, as WALL-E will certainly take home the animated feature prize.

The other nominees don’t come close to matching either of the aforementioned shorts - Lavatory Lovestory (2007, Russian) is cute, but didn’t really do much for me, and certainly didn’t innovate as far as animated style is concerned. The British submission, This Way Up (2008) was technically strong and admirably cheeky, but went a bit nuts in the finale. I found the slight (three minutes) Oktapodi (2007, French) terribly funny, and a good example of how Pixar’s computer-generated animation style has come to define the genre, but it didn’t have nearly enough heft to do much more than produce giggles. I just like animated octopods.

The Music Box packaged the nominees together with “commended” shorts, which I have to assume were runners-up for Oscar inclusion. The first, Varmints (2008, UK) was overlong and sickly sweet, combining the hot topics of environmentalism and cute animals. John and Karen (2007, UK) was one of the funniest things I saw all night, a morning-after exchange between a polar bear and a penguin that I think might have been the biggest crowd-pleaser of the program. Less popular were the animal escapades of Gopher Broke (2004, USA) and the lightweight Bill Plympton exercise Hot Dog (2008, USA). But I really liked the French Skhizein (2008), the story of an unusual encounter between a man and a meteorite. Skhizein would have made a fine Oscar nominee, blending a unique computer-generated style with quirky humor and a sobering finish, but it was probably a bit too dark for the Academy. Also, I imagine that whoever is chosen to present this category wouldn’t enjoy having to try to pronounce the title.