Best Animated Short - 1931/1932

Happy New Year, everypony! Hope it's a good one.

Let's kick off 2014 with my 81st - and final - review...at least until the Oscar nominations are announced on January 16, and there's a new set of five films to review*. After that I'll be doing my darndest to attend one of the showings of the nominated shorts and reviewing those. But for now, this marks the end of the reviews that have dominated my life for a whole 22 months.

*My predictions have somewhat changed since I posted about the shortlist almost two months ago. I talked to Steve Segal, the professor of my History of Animation course a year ago. He had attended one of the screenings and had only raves about The Missing Scarf, which certainly looked interested but the design seemed a bit too new for the old-fashioned Academy. However, he described the film as being surprisingly deep, and as we saw from A Morning Stroll two years ago, new fangled technology has never stopped a film from being nominated. So perhaps we will see The Missing Scarf. I've added it to the predictions, replacing Hollow Land. Of course, almost everybody over at Gold Derby is predicting a nomination for Room on the Broom. It may be populist enough to grab a nomination. Eh oh well.

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Frederic Back (1924 - 2013)

Christmas is usually a time of joy and cheer. After all, we are celebrating the birth of Christ, who came down for our sins. Unfortunately, sometimes those are times of sadness, as those are the days of passing for some people. Men like Charlie Chaplin and former Rangers manager Billy Martin died on Christmas Day, while Kurosawa regular Toshio Mifune and former Rangers manager Johnny Oates died on Christmas Eve. Well now we can add another figure to those that died around this time: the great French Canadian animator Frederic Back.

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Best Animated Short - 1932/1933

And then there were two. After almost two years of writing reviews nobody reads, I've almost completed my quest of reviewing the Oscar nominated short films. (Of course, I would already be done if I didn't go onto a three month hiatus last year or switch the reviews to every two weeks, which has eroded whatever support I was getting for this blog.)

But anyways, we are near the finish. If you're paying attention that you might have noticed that the review's title included two years instead of just one. That's not a mistake. In the early years the Academy considered films from an August to July schedule, just like what the Emmys do now, and the ceremony would be held in November. Then somewhere around this time the Academy decided that was stupid and decided to extend the eligibility period from July of 1932 to the end of 1933 and then going to a January to December eligibility for 1934, and that's the way it's been since.

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Best Animated Short - 1934

Well, now we're really getting somewhere. It's been almost a month since the finalists were announced, and it's about a month before the Oscar nominees will be announced. According to some insider info the committee won't even be watching the finalists and voting on them until later this week. So for now it's just waiting and more reviews. Of course I've noted that since I've slowed these reviews down to just once every two weeks that my traffic had dried up. I was afraid that would happen, but I just haven't had much time to work on these reviews, what with work and also my desire to play some more Tokimeki Memorial. Oh well.

We're now in 1934. It is the year of the Gashouse Gang, when the St. Louis Cardinals so thoroughly trounced the Detroit Tigers in Game 7 that Joe Medwick had to be told to leave the game because the fans in Detroit were throwing food at him. There has to be a lot of hate when people were willing to part with food in the middle of the Great Depression.

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Non-Nominated Highlight - The Band Concert (1935)

Well, today is the day Disney's latest film Frozen opens wide, which is all fair and good, but more importantly it also means that Oscar contender Get a Horse! will finally move from the film festivals to the general public. Yes, I've already gone to see it, and I've updated my thoughts on the film in my entry on the Shortlist (which you all must read because I'm getting desperate). And you can stay for Frozen, which is, you know, pretty good.

But today is also the week after the 1935 review went up, and while Three Orphan Kittens, Who Killed Cock Robin? and The Calico Dragon were good films, those were far from being the film animated film from 1935. No, there is one film that came out that year that topped them out and may as well be the best Disney film of all time. (At least the animation professionals polled by Jerry Beck sure think so.)
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Best Animated Short - 1935

We are coming ever so close to the end of the line. Thankfully there's still the 2013 Oscar race to start preparing for, but the question now is what to do with this blog once I get through these last four reviews. Do I just sit around for a year and then spring into action every November when the next year's Oscar race comes into being? Do I make random posts about some other animation topics once in a while? Do I go ahead and review the Best Animated Feature nominees? That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it'll take much longer than these reviews of short films whose films are short, but it still takes me hours to write them. I was toying around with posting these reviews on tumblr, but it hasn't amounted to much. We shall see.

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Best Animated Short - 2013 - The Shortlist

So last year the list of qualifying animated short films were leaked to the public and I was able to make a post about it, which turned out to be one of my most popular posts. Well, it's been a year since then and I've been waiting for the list of qualifying films, but one never appeared. I went snooping around but the most I found was that the showing of the qualifying films had already happened back in October 22-23 or sometime around then. Well, a few days it came out that the Academy had come out with the shortlist of the films, which are the ten films that the Academy will meet again to decide on the nomination. So like last year, I will be writing on each of the films. The problem is unlike last year when a few of the films were readily available, only one of them fit the bill so far. So most of these will be just previous based on the trailers.

And of course just to show how useless this blog is / how hard it is to blog regularly, the list of finalists has been out for a week, but thanks to a combination of a hectic work schedule and an awesomely awesome pony convention (Nightmare Nights Dallas), this post only just now going up now when you were able to find the films practically everywhere else online.

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Best Animated Short - 1936

Hooray! My COMLEX 3 is over and I can finally relax and enjoy myself at Nightmare Nights Dallas this weekend! How did it go, you ask? Well how should I know? I'm writing this three weeks early so I won't have to waste much more time studying. Oh the joys of getting a nice long queue.

Anyways, now that we're in the 1930s it's kind of weird to go back and see just how different things were, especially in the game of baseball. In 1936 there were only 11 300-game winners. 30-win seasons and .400 seasons were uncommon but not impossible. The first Hall of Fame voting was held as the BBWAA elected Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth (just one year removed from his last game), the late Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. And a 17-year-old high school kid named Bob Feller is able to make it to the big leagues and strike out his age, even if it was against the hapless Philadelphia Athletics. Yes, things sure were different back in 1936. And yet the animated short films remain as timeless now as they were back in 1936. Some of them were, at least.

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Best Animated Short - 1937

Well, in another week and a half I will be taking my COMLEX Step 3 exam. You'd think I'd be so busy studying that I won't have time to write these reviews, but well, I am studying, but you do have to have study breaks. The good thing about going to q 2 week reviews is that I won't have to take as many of these study breaks or something to waste my day on reviews. I mean, it's fun to do these reviews and all, but I hate how I spend an hour reviewing each film because I have to look up some interesting facts that often times don't have anything to do with the film.

Meh. I've got nothing to say about 1937. Let's just go on to the Oscars from that year.

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Best Animated Short - 1938

To me, 1938 is one of those years like 1952 that really doesn't stand out. It really felt more of the same in baseball, as the Yankees won their third straight World Series title. Meanwhile Walt Disney won his seventh straight Oscar in the Best Animated Short category. And the films of 1938 were overshadowed by the Hollywood masterpieces that debuted in 1939. Still, if you look closer there are some things about 1938 that stands out.

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Oscar Facelift

The rules of the Best Animated Feature category are going to be changed...

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news today: More people will be able to serve the Animated Feature Film Award Screening Committee. Why is that?

Screeners.

These people will now be able to watch all of the potential nominees for Best Animated Feature thanks to the discs. Ergo, it won't seem like the winner took home the award without a challenge. Prior to this, the committee had to attend the nominees in November, as special screenings were held on Sundays... And did all of them go? Of course not! They are now required to view the screeners, thankfully. Again, with much more voters, we may see some diversity. A big studio might not even take home the award next year!

Now if anything, I see this as a response to the previous animated feature Oscar win...

Brave winning - beating out Wreck-It Ralph and ParaNorman no less! - more than caused a backlash. It seemed likely that Pixar's fairy tale film won because everything was rigged, or because no one in the branch even saw Wreck-It Ralph or ParaNorman. Well, now these people will be able to see those films and we'll see a much more balanced ceremony this coming February. I hope...

As for my Oscar nomination predictions? Well, here's my rough guess for now. (5 slots)

The Croods

Ernest and Celestine

Frozen

Monsters University

The Wind Rises

We should be hearing about the nominees in a couple months... What do you think of this change to the category's rules?

Best Animated Short - 1939

Ah, 1939, the last year of the Depressing '30s. It is the year that Germany invaded Poland, thereby turning what had previously been a messy conflict going on in China into a true World War. It was the year a young kid named Ted Williams burst onto the scene fresh from the beaches of San Diego and led the league in RBIs while blasting 31 home runs, but not even he can help the Red Sox topple the Yankees, who went on to win their fourth straight pennant en route to their fourth straight World Series title over Willard Hershberger's Reds.

But for most people, 1939 is the pinnacle of Hollywood moviemaking. Oh, there have been several other great years. 1994 was a particularly good year (Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption), and so were 1951 (A Streetcar Named Desire, The African Queen), 1959 (Ben-Hur, North By Northwest, Some Like It Hot), 1969 (Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), 1974 (Chinatown, The Godfather Part II), 1976 (Rocky, Network, Taxi Driver), but for most film fanatics 1939 was tops.

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Best Animated Short - 1940

Well, we're in the year of 1940. It's not quite as memorable as 1941, but it's got its moments. One significant moment was the suicide of Willard Hershberger. Hershberger was a catcher with the Cincinnati Reds. You'd think that somebody that's played baseball at the major leagues would be set for life, but you'd be dead wrong. There is nothing more mentally stressful than a career in professional sports. Think about it, you spend essentially your whole life dedicating yourself to a sport, where you dominated at virtually every level. Then you get thrust into a work environment where all of a sudden your best may not be good enough, and even if it is and you do get to the majors, you'd have to maintain your level of performance lest somebody else takes your job. And you don't have anything to fall back on. Those that are not on solid ground mentally usually do something drastic once their careers end.

History is littered with players that decided to end their lives: Catcher Marty Bergen killed himself and his family in 1900. Popular young star Win Mercer drank gas to end his life. A pitcher named Pea Ridge Day slit his throat after an unsuccessful operation on his pitching arm. And Christy Mathewson's brother Nicholas shot himself in the head from the stresses of trying to maintain his studies while playing professional ball. It's a brutal track record.

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Best Animated Short - 1941

1941, what a memorable year. It was the year Ted Williams hit a walk-off home run in the All Star game, and went on to hit .406 to become the last hitter to bat .400 in a year they qualified for the batting title. Yet his accomplishment went mostly unnoticed as fellow outfielder Joe DiMaggio stole most of the thunder with his legendary 56-game hitting streak. He later played a role in the Yankees' Game 4 comeback in the World Series that started after Mickey Owen couldn't get his hands on Hugh Casey's spitball. It was the year that Lou Gehrig lost his battle against what may or may not be the disease that bears hi name today. And of course the "date which will live in infamy" happened in 1941.


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Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 1942-1951

Well, it's that time again: Time to hunker down, look at the films from the past ten reviews and rank them subjectively by how much I liked them. It's the seventh time that I'll do one of these, and it's also the second to the last, as there are only ten reviews left to go. Unfortunately, there's no telling how long it'll take me to get those ten reviews out. I've made my list two weeks ago when I still had a sizable queue, but I've just gotten so busy and tired that I just haven't felt like writing. So now I've got like no queue. I'm hoping that I can get back on track after this week but considering the next review is the epic 1941 where ten films were nominated, I can't make any guarantees.

But enough talk, let's get to the rankings. There are 51 films from these past ten years, thanks to all the years with six or seven nominations.

NULL: Rippling Romance (1945)
This Columbia cartoon is now considered lost. That may not be the case based on what Thad (Komorowski?) has said, but he's also the one that says the film isn't worth getting declared not-lost.

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Best Documentary Highlights Double Feature (1942)

Documentaries fulfill an important niche in filmmaking, combining the art of moviemaking with the task of showing the world as it is. I once attended a talk by Oscar winning producer Paul Wagner who won an Oscar for his documentary The Stone Cutters and was enthralled by his filmmaking experiences about having to frame shots in addition to conducting the interviews. While there have been some documentaries that really made a splash on the scene like Bowling for Columbine, the 2005 Best Documentary Feature race, The Times of Harvey Milk, any all of the animated Documentary shorts, the documentary has kind of gotten the shaft with the Oscars. Few people care about the Best Documentary Feature, and nobody cares about the Documentary Short. Why, awards for documentaries weren't awarded until 1941 when the Academy decided to honor some films that did well with war coverage. This was nine years after categories for short films were instituted, including Best Animated Short.

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Best Animated Short - 1942

1942. For all intents and purposes, many Americans probably believe that World War II began around this time. Never mind that there has been fighting in Europe for three years and in Asia for over a decade, but 1942 is significant for being the first full year of involvement by the United States of America, and that's when stuff got real. Because America!

Yeah...I'm sure that's how the Europeans and Asians view Americans. Oh well.

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Best Animated Short - 1943

It's August 7. On this day nine years ago Greg Maddux of the Chicago Cubs worked through a gritty start just long enough to go five innings and have his team take the lead against the San Francisco Giants. The Cubs would score a few more insurance runs and the Cubs ended up with an 8-4 win, the 300th victory of his career. Of course Maddux wasn't the only pitcher to record his 300th win in the week between August 4-11. On August 11, 1961, Warren Spahn wound up on top in a gritty 2-1 battle against the Cubs thanks to an 8th-inning home run by Gino Cimoli. On August 4, 1985, Tom Seaver won his 300th game in New York, but wearing the uniform of the Chicago White Sox when he defeated the Yankees 4-1 on Phil Rizzuto Day. And on August 5, 2007, Tom Glavine became the second Tom to win 300 when he topped the Cubs 8-3. A grand total of four pitchers can celebrate the anniversaries of their milestone win on the week of August 4-11. No other week-long period can boast that many.

And what does that have to do with the Academy Awards? Nothing whatsoever!

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Best Animated Short - 1944

Aah! It's July 31, which means that not only is it the 23rd anniversary of Nolan Ryan's 300th win, but it's also the first anniversary of my epic drive from Texas to Virginia, my first of six marathon drives of at least 12 hours with no more than one hour break in the middle at one time. I've never come close to driving that long before so my memories of that night and day is pretty well implanted in my mind. It's hard to believe that a year has passed since then. You can enjoy my live blog of the drive.

Anyways, back to where we were. It was 1944 and war was raging in the east and in the west. So many young men in the prime of their lives were being sent to Europe and Africa and Asia to die in the name of freedom. On June 6, 1944, the Allied nations landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the reclamation of western Europe from Germany. Despite the loss of over 12,000 troops - that's 12,000 young men who would forever lose conscious even as time stretches on for a googleplex years - it was still a successful landing that eventually lead to the end of the war.

Meanwhile, while young men were out their losing their lives while fighting for the Allied way, citizens in the United States were still able to enjoy forms of entertainment, including baseball and film.

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Non-Nominated Highlight - Rhapsody Rabbit (1946)

So I'm sure you've noticed in my last review that I kept alluding to a great controversy, the greatest in the history of the Best Animated Short category and one of the greatest in animation history. As you know, The Cat Concerto took home the Oscar. Unfortunately, it was not the only film that year from a major studio that featured a popular mascot character playing Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" only to be bothered by an uninvited guest. For at the very same time Friz Freleng and his crew at Warner Bros. was making their own film of a similar nature: Rhapsody Rabbit.


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