The Great Oscar Baiter

My incredibly negative feelings towards Tweety Bird are pretty well-documented by now. Some might say that they are “ridiculous” and “completely unwarranted” and that I should “seek professional help.” And perhaps those people may have a point! But still I defy you to watch Tweetie Pie, the first pairing of Sylvester and Tweety, and tell me that that yellow bastard has been anything but the worst. (via Wikipedia) By a combination of sheer coincidence and lazy planning, this is the second day in a row we're watching a Friz Freleng short. And while Greetings Bait was pretty atypical for a Merrie Melodies short, Tweetie Pie (which comes to us from the far flung year of 1947) is pretty standard stuff for a Tweety short, or any "hungry animal wants to eat an animal short." Sylvester stumbles across a cute little bird out in the cold and tries to eat it. His owner, however, takes sympathy on Tweety and brings him inside. Hijinks, as they so often do in shorts like these, en...

As I’ve said before, the major and most apparent risk with using pop culture references as a source of humor is that it typically doesn’t age well. Unless you’re referencing something which goes on to become a timeless classic, the best you can hope for is that your joke winds up taking on a strange new life of its own divorced from context. And honestly, sometimes that can work! Case in point- today’s short, the 1943 film Greetings Bait. (via IMDb) Regular readers of this blog should need no introduction to Friz Freleng, the director of this film. Greetings Bait was made during Freleng's stint at Warner Bros. as part of the Merrie Melodies series. But don't expect Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig to show up. No, Greetings Bait features a forgotten member of their stable- a worm. But not just any worm! You see folks, this worm is a caricature of comedian Jerry Colonna! For those of you who don't know who that is, don't worry- you're not alone. Far from it, actually! How c...

One of the wonderful things about animation is its ability to bring the impossible to life. But an underrated aspect of the medium is the way it can do the same for the very possible. Take Bob’s Birthday, for instance. Nothing about this short screams that it NEEDS to be animated. It could have easily been done in live action. And yet the fact that it wasn’t just makes it all the more special.  (via TV Tropes) Directed by Alison Snowden and David Fine (remember them?), Bob's Birthday is a 1993 short once again released by the National Film Board of Canada. It tells the story of Bob (naturally), a dissatisfied dentist whose wife Margaret is planning a surprise party for his 40th birthday. Bob's Birthday does double duty as not just an animated short but also the pilot for an animated series, Bob & Margaret. It's not hard to tell, as Bob's Birthday does play out like an above average episode of sitcom, starting out with some funny setup before turning into a tota...

I had a lot to say about this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, very little of it positive. But the absolute worst thing about it (aside from the boneheaded decision to move Best Actor to the end of the ceremony) was the lack of clips. Aside from a few categories, the awards show meant to celebrate the movies did very little to actually celebrate the movies. But the films affected the worst by this were the shorts. By far the least seen of any of the nominees, nominated shorts rely on the exposure offered by the Oscars to get audience interest. I remember seeing clips from Logorama and really wanting to see it, for example. Admittedly, I didn’t care much for the short when I finally saw it, but still. (via Wikipedia) Directed by Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain, Logorama is a French satire from the year 2009, set in a world where everything and everyone is a logo or a mascot. It follows a Michelin Man (Bob Stephenson) who is also a police officer as he chases down a ...

While Disney (and, by extension, Pixar) has a tendency to dominate in the animated categories at the Oscars, their recent success has nothing compared to their hot streak in the 1930s. For the first eight years in the history of Best Animated Short (back when it was called Best Short Subject, Cartoon), Disney reigned supreme. Of course, they didn’t just have mastery over the Academy either. No, Disney’s shorts also did very well at the box office too (although, again, I’m not exactly sure how one measures that). And no short of theirs did better than today’s film, the 1933 Silly Symphony, Three Little Pigs. (via Wikipedia) It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that Three Little Pigs (which was directed by Burt Gillett, not that anyone ever remembers that) is based on the classic fairy tale. In fact it's almost insulting that I felt I had to bring it up. As such, there's really no reason to go into the story and we can just jump into what it was that made this sho...

Voyeurism is a subject that has long fascinated filmmakers, and I guess it’s not very hard to see why. In many ways, the mere act of watching a film is, in its own way, voyeuristic. Still, there are a lot of different ways to tackle the subject, and I feel like few films are as in favor of it as today’s short, the 2019 Oscar winner, The Neighbors’ Window. (via Wikipedia) Written and directed by Marshall Curry, a man primarily known for his documentary work , The Neighbors' Window tells the story of a bored married couple who discover they can see into the apartment of the much younger couple living in the apartment across the street. This is somewhat stretching the definition of the word "neighbor" if you ask me, but I digress. The film takes place over a series of months, chronicling changes in the relationships of both couples, and all the fights and drama that would naturally arise over spying on people. It's ultimately your basic domestic drama, but with a twist....

The legacy of the Pink Panther is certainly a strange one. While the films themselves are remembered very fondly (just ask my dad), I don’t think it’s wrong to say that the animated mascot probably holds a bigger place in most people’s hearts these days. Either that or the iconic theme music. And I suppose that’s hardly a surprise; he was a breakout star, appearing in his own series of successful animated shorts. Today’s film, The Pink Blueprint, certainly makes a good argument as to why that is. (via Wikipedia) The premise for The Pink Blueprint (directed by Hawley Pratt and released in 1966) is a pretty simple riff on the tried-and-true formula. ( The Pink Blueprint is the eighteenth in the series.) In this short, the unnamed Little Man is trying to build a house, but the pesky panther keeps getting in the way. Considering that the last time we saw these two , the Little Man was painting a house, I suppose we ought to be happy with his recent promotion to contractor. The Pink Blu...

Most of the animated shorts about World War II that we’ve recovered have been pretty jingoistic portrayals of war, designed to sell bonds and the like. Very rarely did a short deal with the horrors of war in a way that was honest and direct. One exception was George Pal’s Tulips Shall Grow, an entry in his very long, storied and extraordinarily bizarre “Puppetoons” series. So whatever you want to say about the film, at least it’s got honesty going for it. (via TV Tropes) George Pal had a very interesting career, racking up seven Oscar nominations and one Honorary Oscar win. He directed the film adaptation of The Time Machine most people like, in spite of the fact that it's actually pretty bad. He directed 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, a movie I really like in spite of the fact that it's incredibly racist. He brought several Dr. Seuss books to life in the form of short films that I can not for the life of me find anywhere. But he is perhaps best known for his Puppetoons, stop motion an...

Alternate takes on fairy tales are certainly nothing new. Hell, I’m currently working on one myself. And they’ve definitely had a long history in the world of animation. Honestly, probably as long as there’s been animated films, there have been animated fairy tale remixes. Even the iconic Disney films are just new takes on old films. So today’s short, Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty, is part of a proud tradition, really. (via TV Tropes) Released in 2008, Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty is an Irish short directed by Nicky Phelan and written by Kathleen O'Rourke, based on a sketch character created by O'Rourke. The character in question, the titular Granny O'Grimm, is a seemingly sweet old lady who likes to read bedtime stories to her grandchild, but can't quite break the habit of adding her own dark sense of humor and feelings of resentment into the tale. This, as you can imagine, has a habit of traumatizing her innocent grandchild. As far as premises go, Gra...

While it’s certainly gotten something of a reappraisal since its release, Brave is generally considered one of Pixar’s weaker efforts. And, frankly, for good reason. The story’s a mess, the tone is all over the place and there’s no real consistency to any of its thematic work. As much as I hate to say it, the whole thing often comes off like a poor man’s Brother Bear. And Brother Bear was already the poor man’s Brother Bear. But, just like with The Good Dinosaur, at least we got a damn good short to make up for it in the form of La Luna. (via Wikipedia) Like the feature it was attached to, Enrico Casarosa's La Luna is a fantasy film about generational differences in a family. In this case, that family is a grandfather/father/son team put in charge of sweeping the fallen stars around the moon to create its phases. Typical Hollywood, always returning to the same old stories. Still, while La Luna' s premise is fairly complicated, its story is pretty simple. But it tells that...