The Great Oscar Baiter

It’s the bane of any job-seeking millennial- the need for work experience. Every job you apply for requires experience. But how do you get experience if no one hires you? And it’s not just the well-paying jobs that do this! A few years ago I wanted to get a job as a sign spinner for the local Little Caesar’s, but they required work experience! Who has a job as a sign spinner, quits, then decides to get another job as a sign spinner? And so, as I face the prospect of rejoining the workforce after a year of unemployment, I turn to the world of cinema for comfort. And the 1989 short Work Experience provides just that by reminding us that the work experience paradox is nothing new- it’s been going on for decades! Well… maybe that’s not as comforting as I thought. (via IMDb) Quite by accident, the past few days in our Year in Shorts seems to be following the theme of "incredibly obscure films." That is admittedly not too surprising (the shorts categories are not the most popular...

When it comes to controversial Oscar choices, they don't come more hotly contested than the decision to award Best Picture to Forrest Gump. While that movie was certainly popular upon release, and remains well loved to this day, you don't have to look very hard to find someone to tell you that Pulp Fiction was clearly far more deserving of that honor that year. I'm certainly one of them. (Still other people will tell you that The Shawshank Redemption was the TRUE Best Picture of 1994, despite the fact that it's really only marginally better than Forrest Gump ). The debate rages to this day, and probably will until the sun dies. This stands in stark contrast to the total lack of debate surrounding that year's category for Best Animated Short. Admittedly that category attracts very little controversy (or attention) in general, but even among Oscar enthusiasts I can't imagine there are many people who won't agree that Bob's Birthday rightfully took home...

As we’ve seen multiple times in our Year in Shorts, the 1960s were a time of great experimentation for film. And while many of those oddities were animated, just as many of them were filmed in live action. Nowadays, most of the Oscar-nominated live action shorts are pretty narrative driven, either telling quirky romances or intense dramas in their allotted time. But in the 1960s, sometimes it was just enough to have a strange sense of humor and a willingness to see what you could do with it. The 1965 short Help! My Snowman’s Burning Down is one such film. (via IMDb) Help! My Snowman's Burning Down was written and directed by Carson Davidson, whom you probably don't remember for directing the much more normal short 3rd Ave. El. The two shorts don't have much in common, aside from their mutual star, Bob Larkin. But Help! My Snowman's Burning Down isn't a chronicle of a mode of transportation. Instead, it's a surreal comedy filled with bizarre sight gags and a ...

A recent trend in computer animated films has been the use of advances in technology to produce photorealistic animals. This has been met with some controversy, and not without good reason. As Jon Favreau’s The Lion King has demonstrated all too well, real-looking animals are not particularly expressive, a simple fact which runs counterproductive to the nature of animation. But there is a time and a place for everything, and the 2017 short film Garden Party shows that this recent trend can be used for good as well. (via Wikipedia) Garden Party was directed by Illogic Collective, a sextet of French animation students. (What is it with French students and their Oscar-nominated shorts about animals? ) It follows an assortment of frogs exploring a deserted mansion, getting up to all manner of amphibious hijinks along the way. Which is a perfectly cute idea for a short, if not exactly inspired. But things are not exactly as they seem, and it isn't long before the short takes a sinist...

In many ways, films often act as time capsules, preserving a moment in history for generations to come. This is especially true for documentaries, which preserve in amber an issue or event and what people thought about it at the time. Those sorts of things are always pretty interesting. Which is good, because in the case of films like A City Decides, it’s just about the only interesting thing the documentary has going for it. (via The National Film Preservation Foundation) Directed by Charles Guggenheim (the most awarded documentarian in Oscar history) and released in 1956, A City Decides is a documentary short chronicling the integration of public schools in St. Louis. As a historical document, its value is unimpeachable, giving an in depth look into the process, as well as the debates had around the subject. Without the benefit of hindsight or the years of history between its subject and release, A City Decides provides an unobscured look at a moment in civil rights history. Which ...

If one were to dedicate a gallery to the characters of the Golden Age of Animation, Andy Panda’s portrait would probably be hung up next to the bathroom. (As a side note, is there an animated character portrait gallery? Someone should get on that.) You can’t help but feel for the guy. He’s been so eclipsed by Tom and Jerry, pretty much every Disney or Looney Tunes character, Mr. Magoo, even his old co-star Woody Woodpecker. But you shouldn’t feel too sorry for him. As the 1944 short Fish Fry proves, there’s probably a good reason no one remembers Andy Panda anymore- he’s boring. (via TV Tropes) James "Shamus" Culhane's Fish Fry is the second short in a row to have the distinction of losing the Oscar to a Tom and Jerry short, this time losing to Mouse Trouble. Watching Fish Fry, it's pretty obvious there was no real competition. In the interest of fairness, I should say that I was unable to rewatch this short for the purposes of this blog; I know I've seen it...

Content Warning- Today's post contains discussions of suicide When it comes to the iconic characters Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, I’ve made my feelings fairly clear. Bugs Bunny is hilarious. Pepe Le Pew is not. Speedy Gonzales is a badass. Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner are the poor man’s Tom and Jerry, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And Tweety Bird , of course, is my mortal enemy. But somehow, despite being the absolute worst Looney Tune, the Academy loved them some Sylvester and Tweety shorts. Which is unfair on two levels; it was unfair to the much better shorts that they ignored, and it was unfair to associate Sylvester with Tweety Bird. As we’ve seen with Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester can be a great character under the right circumstances. And as his debut short, Life with Feathers, shows, sometimes the right circumstances are incredibly dark. (via Wikipedia) Life with Feathers is another short from animation legend Friz Freleng, this time released in 1945. ...

Every now and again, I come across a short that’s rather difficult to find much to talk about. There are various reasons for this. Sometimes a short is great, but in a way that’s fairly self-evident and hard to add to. Other times a short is very abstract and somewhat difficult to analyze without projecting. Some shorts are just military propaganda, which just isn’t very interesting to talk about. And some are just plain bad and not worth the effort! But sometimes a short is perfectly fine, visually striking and perfectly entertaining but still tricky to discuss just because there’s not too much going on under the surface. Tomasz Baginski’s 2002 short The Cathedral is definitely one of those films. (via TV Tropes) Based on the short story by Jacek Dukaj, The Cathedral is a Polish science fiction short, which means that's another country we can check off our international short films bingo. Luckily for us the film is totally wordless, so there's no language barrier for us to ...

Writing an Oscar blog comes with a lot of perks, but also a great number of challenges. And chief among them is this- it simply makes you too popular. I can not tell you how many times people have, upon hearing that I spend my precious free time writing ten paragraph essays critically analyzing Tom and Jerry shorts, have instantly wanted to be my best friend. As a reader of this blog, you’ve undoubtedly experienced similar issues. It is the curse of the Oscar Baiter. Luckily, animator Gene Deitch has created a film just for people like us, aptly titled How to Avoid Friendship. (via TV Tropes) If the name Gene Deitch sounds familiar, it's because we've mentioned him a few times on the blog before. After Hanna and Barbera stopped making Tom and Jerry shorts, the series was handed off to Rembrandt Studios in Czechoslovakia, all directed by Gene Deitch. The thirteen shorts made by Deitch and his team are widely considered, by fans and Deitch himself, to be the worst of the Tom and ...

There are some things in cinema that we know to be true- Movies set on trains are automatically better than movies not set on trains. Nothing is better than watching a movie and having Margo Martindale pop up unexpectedly. And Tom and Jerry never ever talk. But there are exceptions to every rule. The Polar Express is set on a train and that movie’s not very good at all. The only thing better than watching a movie with a surprise Margo Martindale is watching a movie and seeing her name in the opening credits. And on a few occasions, Tom and Jerry have spoken. Some of them are clearly regrettable; Tom and Jerry The Movie comes to mind. But sometimes it works, and the 1945 short Quiet Please! is one of those times. (via IMDb) Of all the Tom and Jerry shorts we've covered, Quiet Please! is the one I've had the most difficult time finding information about. It doesn't even have a Wikipedia page for Pete's sake! Still, some things need no explanation- We know it's a ...

Experimental films are fun, aren’t they? They can be pretty damn weird, though. Heck, we’ve covered a few here ourselves! But experimental films aren’t all just art films and avant-garde montages, you know. Sometimes they can be relatively normal movies with one major change in form. Eugene Federonko’s Every Child is such a film. For the most part, it’s a fairly normal short- with one huge difference! (via TV Tropes) Released in 1979 by the National Film Board of Canada working in conjunction with UNICEF, Every Child is the brainchild of writer-producer Derek Lamb. It tells the story of a baby constantly being abandoned on doorsteps (happy stuff, right?), in a long quest to find a loving home. It's a strange enough short on its own, but what sets it apart is its sound design. I hope you like a cappella, because all of the sound effects are provided vocally by Les Mimes Electriques. If you're not a fan of a capella, this short might not be for you. And for the most part, it...