Oscar to Choose 3 to 5 of Ten Animated Short Finalists

"Let's Pollute"

The Academy have revealed the finalist list for Oscar's Best Animated Short category. Depending on how voting goes we'll see anywhere from three to five nominees. But the lucky names will be drawn from this entertaining list.

• The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger (Bill Plympton Studio)
• Coyote Falls (Warner Bros)
• Day & Night (Pixar)
• The Gruffalo (Magic Light Pictures)
• Let's Pollute (Geefwee Boedoe)
• The Lost Thing (Passion Pictures Australia)
• Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage (Sacrebleu Productions)
• Sensology (GAGNE International LLC)
• The Silence Beneath the Bark (Lardux Films)
• Urs (Filmakademie Baeden Wuerttemberg)

6 excerpts/ trailers and 4 full length finalists after the jump... See them for yourselves. Which will you root for? [Thanks to Movielicious for rounding these shorts up.]

Trailer for THE SILENCE BENEATH THE BARK

Teaser : Le silence sous l'écorce / The silence beneath the bark (2009) from joanna lurie on Vimeo.

Trailer for URS

Just an excerpt from MADAGASCAR ...unrelated to the American feature film! ;) The full short is 11 minutes long.

Excerpt from Bill Plympton's THE COW WHO WANTED TO BE A HAMBURGER. This one looks quite a bit different aesthetically than his usual films, which tend to look pencil sketchy but his shorts are often gut-bustingly funny. This is 6 minutes long at full length.

Brief excerpt for THE GRUFFALO. This is 1/2 an hour long at full length.

Trailer for THE LOST THING. 15 minute short.

Full Short COYOTE FALLS

Full Short DAY & NIGHT

Full Short LET'S POLLUTE

Full Short SENSOLOGY. 6 minutes. 

(Gorgeous abstract musical visualizations)

Your verdict?

*

Who Toons

JA from MNPP here. While Nat's been away there's been a sad dearth of Oscar news reported on here at TFE and so when I saw this news earlier today I knew it might be a nice enough sized scrap to toss down until he's back and such things can be discussed proper-like. The Academy announced the fifteen candidates that are eligible for the Animated Feature prize this morning, and they are as follows:

Alpha and Omega
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Despicable Me
The Dreams of Jinsha
How to Train Your Dragon

Idiots and Angels
The Illusionist
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
Megamind
My Dog Tulip

Shrek Forever After
Summer Wars
Tangled
Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue
Toy Story 3

You can check out Nat's prediction page for the category right here. But isn't it funny how the alphabet saved the inevitable winner for last? Trying to trick us all like that.

Seriously though, is anybody going to beat Toy Story 3? Should anybody beat Toy Story 3? I liked not loved it personally - although those final 20 minutes are killer to be sure. I'd love to see The Illusionist (as I'm sure most of us would) but it's not out here til Christmas.
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The Final Linkdown

My beloved bloglines -- where I subscribe to hundreds of blogs and websites in case something interesting pops up -- goes the way of the dodo tomorrow. This is the final link roundup as you've come to know (and love / be indifferent to). I'm taking this opportunity to rethink my web reading and start from scratch in terms of what I "follow" since I spend too much time surfing, skimming, reading, wandering. Not that I won't keep sharing things that amuse me. Question: Would you like the Film Experience to have more frequent tiny-ass posts to cover a broad range of news and topics or do you enjoy the major compilations where everything gets smooshed together like so?

The Film Pie has an interesting "inside movie journalism" story about being the 'first' review posted on Rotten Tomatoes (re: Paranormal Activity 2).
Pink is the New Blog Jude Law on Sesame Street. Awwww. I don't get enough Jude Law these days. Or felt puppets. Both at once? Yes, please.
Low Resolution Halloween words of wisdom from Beetlejuice. Speaking of...
The Exploding Kinetoscope has some birthday wishes for Winona Ryder. Could her career be back on the upswing?
popbytes 'Hottie with a Rubik's Cube'. How 80s and now simultaneously.
Everything I Know... is not among the fans of Julianne Moore's Off Broadway musical Freckleface Strawberry.
Blog Stage considers the changes made for Rabbit Hole as it shifts from stage to screen.
Dear Old Hollywood For California readers: The Arclight is hosting a Steve McQueen tribute event on November 11th.

A Toy Story Moment
I thought this was cute. It's a moment of closure for director Lee Unkrich who has been working on the Toy Story franchise forever. If you've ever said goodbye to a long term project that you actually completed, you'll understand.



But this moment would be way cooler if we knew that there'd be no more Toy Story movies after Toy Story 3 which really did close the franchise beautifully. Sadly, Pixar, which once was THE studio for originality, is rapidly becoming like all the other studios when it comes to sequels and franchises and they're going to be beating all their horses way past the time that they're dead (to mangle a metaphor).

Finally, over at Pussy Goes Grrr Andreas made me lol with his love for Cat People. Have you ever seen that movie? There's almost nothing in the world I love more than clever people obsessing over movies. To this day I lol (literally) every time I think of the time Nick, hearing I had just watched Nashville, said "I want to rub that movie all over me." LOL. See, I did it again? It's too bad blogs don't have sound so you could hear. I speak the truth.

Linkenstein

What follows is a strange amalgam of old and new links. It's a frankenstein roundup, stitched together over the past four days from aborted link posts that were accidentally unposted... until now. "IT'S ALIVE!"


/Film Jon Hamm as Superman?
Movie|Line's failed/jokey photoshop attempt at the same thing utterly delights me (pictured left)
I Just Want to Be Perfect Black Swan website devoted to Nina's (Natalie Portman) psyche.
Cinema Blend a look at the newly announced cast of The Hobbit. With pics. Why do I feel that this movie is going to be such a disaster when I love the LotR trilogy? I guess I've lost faith in Peter Jackson given that the beauty of King Kong was smothered by a lack of self-editing and then we got the disastrous The Lovely Bones.

ONTD Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen. I must have slept through this pairing. This is news to me.
Cinematical Pixar gives its first female director the book (Brenda Chapman was to helm The Brave previously due out in 2012...but you know, I assume this could delay the movie). Boo.
Montages (in Norwegian) a look at what's coming up very soon in Norwegian film. The writer is most excited for The King of  Bastøy starring Stellan Skarsgard, Kristoffer Joner and Benjamin Helstad. The film takes place in 1915 and is based on a true story about a youth prison. Hmmm. Could it be next year's Oscar submission? It's never too early to start thinking about that given that the Oscar eligibility calendar is already in the 2011 film year now when it comes to Best Foreign Language Film.

(Partially) Off Cinema
Tiger Beatdown "No One is Ever On Your Side" excellent, excellent article on Mad Men's Betty Draper Francis. A must read for fans of the show in case you missed it.
Benefit of the Doubt on Metroid, feminism and the Aliens franchise (if you're curious as to why that's suddenly in the air again, it's due to the box set's release Alien Anthology.)
Moby Lives on literature's problems in reflecting our internet ruled new world: timeliness or timelessness?
The Faster Times a list of all the new shows coming to Broadway in the spring.
The Oatmeal How to Pet a Cat. Hee

Something That's Really Bothering Me
Did you read the NY Times piece about the shortage of memorable lines in the movies these days? I suppose it's only helping them that everyone has been talking about the piece and linking to it (like me) for a couple of days but I do not understand the response. I've only read a couple of "in response" articles but they seemed to join in the lament. The article cites 90s films like Terminator 2, Forrest Gump and Jerry Maguire as among the last mammoth 'quotables.' Some response articles are saying things like "yeah, it's sad that movies aren't literate anymore..." I'm sorry but Forrest F'in Gump and Jerry Maguire are not literate movies. They just had fun simple catchphrases. Why are people equating catchphrase-making with great screenwriting and extrapolating that into a lament for the state of modern cinema? Does that mean that Arnold Schwarzenegger movies deserved Best Screenplay Oscars?  A lack of catchphrases does not a poor screenplay make. The article makes a vague statement indicating that these things can take time,  citing "Plastics" from The Graduate as a line that percolated before boiling. But then it blames The Social Network for not having a great lines (um, excuse me? It has hundreds of great lines... it'll just take awhile for a few  of them to rise to the top) Meanwhile The Big Lebowski is praised for "The Dude abides." Listen. The Coen Bros write great dialogue. But I was around in 1998 when The Big Lebowski premiered. It was received with pockets of enthusiasm (as their pictures usually are) but mostly a shrug, and some considered it a small setback after Fargo (which had been nearly as popular as Raising Arizona, their first mainstream breakthrough. Lebowski wasn't.) It was only years later after obsessive fandom had successfully added several fresh coats of "classic" paint on Lebowski that people were incessantly quoting its dialogue and acting like it was this huge hit and of the best films of the 90s.

The article does suddenly remember that "I drink your milkshake" (There Will Be Blood) permeated pop culture but completely forgets about "I wish I knew how to quit you" (Brokeback Mountain) which was quoted just about as often as movie lines ever get quoted. And then there are any number of lines from Mean Girls (Best Shot subject this week!) as reader Dom pointed out a few days ago. You or someone you know quotes that movie every day. I know, right. 

I guarantee you that "milkshake" and "quit you"will never disappear. And that 5 years from now, some line from The Social Network will still be in the public vernacular. One day people might not even remember where they first heard the line they end up using from The Social Network it may dig so deep down into the bone marrow of everyday conversation. You think everyone who has ever said "fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night" was thinking of All About Eve (or had even seen All About Eve) when they first said it?

Unsung Heroes: The Chefs of Ratatouille

Hi everybody. Michael C from Serious Film back again with another unsung contribution to cinematic brilliance. This week it's an achievement I'm sure most of you will recognize -- just don't read it on an empty stomach.

I have always been a little taken aback by the depth of Brad Bird and Jim Capobianco's screenplay for Ratatouille. I mean, here is a big-budget family film starring a talking rat and it is about nothing less than what it means to be an artist. I was reading W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, the story of a man who drops out of society in order to follow his passion to paint, and I couldn't help but think, "This reminds me of Remy." It should come as no surprise that the filmmakers behind such an ambitious project went the extra mile and sought out the help of real master chefs in order to do their material justice.

Organic objects are traditionally the hardest to render in computer animation (It's no accident Pixar's first film was a love letter to the textures of plastic) so a major challenge for Ratatouille was food that not only looked delicious but was also convincing gourmet cooking. Luckily, they had Michael Warch, who in addition to being set and layout manager for the film was also a Sous Chef who could prepare dishes on command for the designers to study. Adapting and expanding the sub-surface lighting technique developed for better skin tones in The Incredibles, they were so successful with the food design that Ratatouille is often mentioned with Big Night and Eat Drink Man Woman as one of the most appetizing food movies ever made.

And this being a Pixar film, they didn't stop there. Not content for Remy to merely be a credible cook they endeavored to show him as a great artist. The production turned for advice to Thomas Keller, one of America's great chefs.  Keller opened up his restaurant to the Pixar artists so that they could get a feel for the energy of a professional kitchen. The backstage knowledge shows. Gusteau's is more than a stock movie restaurant with waiters jostling each other out of the way. It has a dynamic that has been thought through down to the smallest details, from the constant movement of the chefs, to the shorthand communication, to the way they hold the utensils.

Perhaps Keller's greatest contribution to the movie is his creation of the title dish served to the critic at the film's climax. The thinly sliced version of ratatouille is a Keller specialty, and when he learned of the context in which it was to be used he improvised that graceful little mound of food in the center of the plate, an artistic flourish reproduced faithfully in the film. Keller's dramatic instincts were correct. The dish is as memorable to look at as it is supposed to be to taste.

It is notoriously difficult to portray an artist at work cinematically. In the case of Ratatouille, the final product is so entertaining that is easy to miss the fact that they conquered the dilemma. Besides being named among the great food movies Ratatouille could also be listed beside films like Amadeus and Scorsese's Life Lessons as a great depiction of an artist.