The Great Oscar Baiter

I don’t need to tell you that 2020 was a crazy year, in ways both big and small. One example of the latter category is the fact that there weren't any new releases from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, in just over a week from now superhero movies are going to come back in a big way, and with that, endless think pieces about how we’re all contributing to the death of cinema by watching them. It’s gonna be a fun six months folks! But of course, superhero movies are nothing new. Although, admittedly, they took different forms back in the day, with serials being the best way to see the adventures of characters like Batman and Superman, both in animation and live action. But only one of those films ever got nominated for an Oscar- the 1941 Fleischer cartoon, simply titled Superman. (via Wikipedia) Also titled The Mad Scientist, Superman was the first in a series of shorts produced for Paramount by Fleischer Studios, who (thanks to their experience on the Popeye series ) were no...

Even though most everyone agrees pop culture references are the lowest form of humor, the Academy certainly couldn’t get enough of them. How many Oscar-nominated cartoons have we watched in which the comedy is primarily derived from caricatures of Hollywood celebrities? Too many if you ask me. And the 1938 Silly Symphony Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood is yet another to throw onto the pile. (via Wikipedia) The premise of Mother Goose Goes Hollywood is exceedingly simple, if fairly unusual for one of the Silly Symphonies. Directed by Wilfred Jackson, the short is basically a series of skits adapting various nursery rhymes, with the various roles being filled in by caricatures of Hollywood celebrities. It's worth noting that the idea of combining nursery rhymes with celebrity caricatures is hardly a new one; Walter Lantz did it five years earlier with the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short, The Merry Old Soul. Ordinarily I would take Disney to task for being so unoriginal, but since Os...

Saul Bass is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic names in 60s Hollywood. If you don't know his name, you at least know his work. Known for his famous title sequences in films like North by Northwest, West Side Story and Psycho, Saul Bass achieved a legacy most of us could only dream of. (If you still don't know him by his work, might I recommend checking out some of those movies?) But while Bass may be famous for those sequences, he never won an Oscar for any of them. Sadly, there is no Academy Award for Best Title Design. (Add it to the list of Oscars we need alongside Best Casting, Best Stunt Work and Best Choreography.) Still, Bass managed to get nominated for his work in short films, even winning once for the documentary Why Man Creates . Today’s short, 1979’s The Solar Film, earned him his last nomination. And it’s… well, it’s just awful. (via MUBI) Co-directed by Saul Bass and his wife Elaine (a legendary titles designer in her own right, best known for her iconic...

We’ve covered a lot of great animated shorts here at The Great Oscar Baiter, but the things that make them great are often varied. Some are emotional powerhouses, which aim straight for the heart and hit with perfect accuracy. Others are hilarious comedies which crack me up every time I see them. And some are just plain damn weird, but in a good way. But some shorts are great just because they’re an example of great filmmakers practicing their craft. Robert Swarthe’s 1975 short Kick Me is one such example. (via Pinterest) In many ways, Kick Me serves as a study in how to do a lot with very little. Swarthe (who would later go on to receive a second Oscar nomination for his special effects work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture ) manages to tell a very effective story using incredibly limited animation. Kick Me is the story of a pair of anthropomorphic red legs (it was the seventies) who goes on a series of adventures before running afoul of a seemingly sentient baseball. Things get ...

You know what I don’t like? Movies about math. And why would I? Math isn’t very interesting, so it’s really not surprising that movies about it aren’t very interesting either. A Beautiful Mind? Boring. Hidden Figures? Meh. Stand and Deliver? Surprisingly very weird. And don’t even get me started on Moneyball, which proved that making a movie about two incredibly boring subjects (math and baseball) results in an incredibly boring movie. (Sorry, Moneyball fans.) And so it stands to reason that today’s short, the 1959 film Donald in Mathmagic Land, would be boring as well. It isn’t, of course, because there’s one important factor in this equation which you have to remember- Donald in Mathmagic Land stars Donald Duck. And Donald Duck may be many things. But he is never boring. (via TV Tropes) If you've ever attended public school in America, chances are good that you've seen this short, so I won't waste too much time explaining it. While he's out hunting one day (wh...

Not all cartoon characters are created equally. While some, like Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry, go on to become timeless icons, many simply fade away. When was the last time you heard someone talk about Fox and Crow? What about Andy Panda? And similarly consigned to the ash pile of obscurity is Nudnik. Despite starring in fifteen shorts throughout the sixties, Nudnik is more or less forgotten by the public at large, mostly remembered only by animation aficionados interested in the works of Gene Deitch and Rembrandt Studios. But, thanks to his Oscar-nominated debut Here’s Nudnik, Oscar Baiters like you and me know a little about Nudnik too. (via TV Tropes) Originally (and rather confusingly) titled Nudnik #2, Here's Nudnik was released in 1965, the same year as Deitch's similarly nominated (but significantly better) How to Avoid Friendship . It follows the titular Nudnik, a lovable sad sack with no job, no money, but an endless supply of optimism. Gene Deitch considered Nudni...

The fact that Woody Woodpecker was the star of multiple Oscar-nominated shorts just doesn’t sit right with me. The Academy never nominated any Daffy Duck shorts, but Woody Woodpecker made the cut? Who is Woody Woodpecker but the poor man’s Daffy Duck, after all? And yet there was something about that laughing bastard which the Academy couldn’t get enough of. So let’s look at The Dizzy Acrobat and see if we can get to the bottom of it. (via Wikipedia) Released in 1943 and directed by Alex Lovy, The Dizzy Acrobat is the eighth Woody Woodpecker short to grace cinema screens. The premise is a pretty simple one; Woody is spending a day at the circus and gets into a whole lot of hijinks. What else can you expect from a cartoon? Or a film set in a circus? Circuses are a hotbed for hijinks, everyone knows this. Just ask Charlie Chaplin. Or Jimmy Stewart, Murder Clown . So we really can't be surprised that Woody Woodpecker gets up to a whole lot of shenanigans either. "Why so serio...