2009 Academy-Award Nominated Short Films (2009)

THE ANIMATED FEATURES:Lavatory - (Love) Russia 10minWriter/Director: Konstantin Bronzit"Lavatory, " a Russian entry has no dialogue, but the signs are in English. A quick look at someone who is by all practical considerations invisible. She's the attendant. She accepts small change in a mayo jar, reads the paper entitled "Happy Woman," perhaps meant as an ironic pointer since the reader is anything but. Would you be if you had to clean the johns every day? She does have fantasies, principally one in which she rides the cleaning brush as though it were a skateboard. What may or not be another daydream is her sighting of flowers in the tip jar: in one case red, in another blue, still a third bouquet is red. Who is her secret admirer? This provides all the motivation needed, as she searches the stalls-which unlike those in America include men as well as women. She may or may not have found the lover-boy. Cute.Pieces of Love - (La Maison En Petits Cubes) Japan 12mWriter/Director Kunio KatoA dreadfully uninteresting cartoon about a man whose house is under water, though the photography has an impressionistic look that could have been drawn by Renoir.Oktapodi France 3minDirectors: Julilen Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, Emud MokhberiThe best compliment one can give this bit of banality is that it's short: just three minutes long, though it makes for a good product placement for the Greek National Tourist Board. On the typical island with its white houses and spotless streets, two colorful octopi struggle for their lives when a driver, annoyed by the creatures who wind up in the passenger seat as though flies looking for food or excitement. When he shoos them away, they might survive if they can find water. PrestoU.S. 5minWriter/Director: Doug SweetlandAmericans may not know how to make cars any more but they're without parallel in the movie-making business-at least from the tech nology standpoint. This pixar animation is terrific: moving at breakneck speed, a laugh-a-second cartoon about a magician whose rabbit goes on strike because his human companion forgets to feed him a carrot. No matter. The pratfalls that the Mr. Presto undergoes unwillingly thanks to the hare brings more applause from the vast audience. Once again, Pixar pulls a rabbit out of a hat.This Way Up UK 9minDirectors: Smith & FoulkesWriters: Christopher O'Reilly, Smith & FoulkesFrom the Brits we get This Way Up, a macabre tale of two employees from a funeral company dressed in black who run into serious trouble on the way to the graveyard. Since this is not a horror picture, the trouble comes not from the corpse, which likes to pop up and smile at the drivers rather than slicing them up, but rather from the perilous roadside from which deadly enemies of nature emerge. In one case, a huge rock demolishes the hearse. The short has the ambiance of a Tim Burton movie, but entertainment value is lacking.THE LIVE ACTION FEATURESOn the Line (Auf der Strecke) German-Switzerland 30minDirector: Reto CaffiWriters: Philippe Zweifel, Reto CaffiThis German-Swiss co-production is the longest of the ten features, with sharp dialogue and involving characters. A department store security guard who has no mercy when dealing with shoplifters, spies a cutie who works in a bookstore. He is able to zoom in on her activity shelving books and is known by her because they ride the train home together. For several weeks or months, they just smile at each other. When the woman's brother is beaten to death by thuggish youths after she walks away from him in a huff, she feels guilty that she left him figuring, rightly so, that had she remained with him, he'd still be alive. When the principal character comforts her, seeing an opportunity for a relationship, we in the audience may place bets on his potential. A final shock, a long close-up of the woman in the bookshop, recalls what the security guard says: that you can people's thoughts by looking into their eyes. A fine feature that could be extended into a full-length film.The Pig (Grisen) Denmark 22minDirector: Dorte HoghWriters: Anders August, Dorte HoghA serio-comedy about an elderly, obese Dane in a hospital. He falls in love with a painting of a pig on the wall, considering the animal to be his guardian angel, one who might protect him should a colonoscopy reveal that his abscess is malignant. When the family of his roommate, who are Muslims and are offended by the porcine painting, remove it from the wall, hell breaks loose as the elderly man puts his attorney daughter into the role of his attack dog. This could be a plea for tolerance on both sides, bearing just the right balance of comedy and moralizing. One does wonder why a hospital needs to give a chap a colonoscopy and then, finding polyps, instead of removing them keeps him in its care for several days, taking care of the cutting only a day or so after the examination. Involving and entertaining.Manon on the Asphalt (Sur Le Bitume) France 15minWriter/Directors: Elizabeth Marre, Olivier PontWhen a woman on a bike on the way to her boyfriend hits a bump and is seriously, even critically hurt, she casts an eye on the blur of people surrounding her as she lay in the street and ponders what she might have done to make the lives of her significant others more loving. This is yet another comment on the idea of living one's life as though each day were your last. In addition to the lack of originality in the notion, the film is marred by being narrated by the woman in voiceover.New Boy Ireland 11minWriter/Director: Steph GreenNew Boy, about a Irish lad who is having trouble with a couple of the white kids in an Irish elementary school, bears a concept that is a ripoff of Doubt. The lad compares his troublesome days at his seat with daydreaming of his better life in an African village where he is taught by a loving instructor until the teacher is carried away by rebels. The teacher spends as much time on discipline as do her counterparts in many American schools, while the African education system, at least in the boy's mind, is more pleasant for students and teachers alike-except for the fact that some holders of the chalk may be shot if they're from the wrong clan. The comedy comes from the scary looks by the Irish teacher and by her habit of forcing her charges to raise their arms as though being searched at an airport security area. At eleven minutes, this cannot be compared to the current favorite teacher movie The Class, but each moment is absorbing.Toyland (Spielzeugland) Germany 14minDirector: Jochen Alexander FreydankWriters: Johann A. Bunners, Jochen Alexander FreydankThis one rips off the theme of the excellent full-length feature The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which should have received Oscar nominations, though perhaps the Academy is tired of Holocaust dramas. Toyland, giving us scenes from a German town in the early forties, describes two young lads, one Jewish, the other "Aryan," who take piano lessons together and make nice progress in their duets. When the Gentile fellow disappears from his house, a frantic mother is at first thought by the Nazi guards to be Jewish (which shows that there really is little or no difference between Jews and "Aryans" in appearance). We know right away what is happening to the two boys, separated by stormtrooping idiots, and we are in suspense about whether the ending is to emulate that of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. A winner. --© Magnolia Pictures