Best Documentary Short Highlights - Neighbours (1952)

Canada has been the home of numerous great animators over the years, but none is more celebrated or more influential than the great Norman McLaren (with apologies to Frederic Back, Richard Condie, Cordell Barker, Ryan Larkin, and others.) We've seen McLaren in several posts since coming back from our hiatus, such as the 1964 review (that included his Christmas Cracker), and Saturday highlight posts on A Chairy Tale and Pas de Deux. These films are certainly great, but they aren't considered his masterpiece. Yes, Norman McLaren has one film that stands out as his defining work, one film in his lengthy career that combines art, innovation, and an important message.

I'm talking about none other than Neighbours.

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Best Animated Short - 1952

Ah, we have arrived at 1952. Apologies to everybody that was born in 1952 (including my aunt who would probably never read this blog entry), but 1952 just feels like an undistinguished year to me. Other than the birth year of my aunt I really can't think of anything significant from this year. Yeah, 1951 has the dual debuts of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, the Shot Heard Around the World, and an epic lineup of Best Picture nominees. 1953 saw the birth of George Brett, Mickey Mantle's legendary 565-foot home run (that probably didn't go 565 feet), and the fifth consecutive World Series win by the Yankees. And what did 1952 have? The birth of my aunt, which is much more of a personal thing.

Perhaps it's due to the fact that the films of 1952 were rather undistinguished. There is only one film that really stands out today, and that was the delightful Gene Kelly musical Singin' in the Rain. But Singin' in the Rain was only a modest hit at the box office, and scored only two Oscar nominations. The Gary Cooper Western melodrama High Noon is also highly regarded today, but it did even worse at the box office and was highly criticized for its supposed allegory on the Hollywood blacklisting.

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Best Live Action Short Highlight: Pas de Deux (1968)

Pas de Deux was a film that was nominated in the Best Live Action Short category, and I decided to skip writing about it back in October because for one reason I was struggling to keep my queue up, and for another reason I didn't really think it was animated. Why, the question even came up in the Canadian module of my History of Animation course, and I argued that it was live action. However, while doing some research about A Chairy Tale I found that Norman McLaren won a BAFTA award for Pas de Deux in the Best Animated Film category! Then it hit me. Who gives a buck about what I feel? My opinions are more worthless than the garbage you threw away a few days ago (which makes it kind of dubious as to why you're reading this in the first place.) I may not be as much of a fan of the BAFTA awards as the Oscars, but if they say Pas de Deux is an animated film then by golly we're going to review it like it's an animated film, which means it's going to be another highlight post. Yes, after going what seems like ages without a Saturday post, we're having our fourth Saturday post in a row, and we're not closed to finished yet.

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Best Documentary Short Highlight - The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein (1992)

In my last Saturday post about A Chairy Tale, I mentioned that there was an animated documentary that was nominated for the Best Documentary Short in 1992. My review of the nominated films of 1992 went up almost a year ago, but the film was nowhere to be found on the National Film Board of Canada website. I went back and checked periodically to see if it was posted, but it never was. By August I was desperate and decided to buy a copy from the NFB website. However, it never came and I decided to give up looking for it. If it ever gets posted then great, but I wasn't going to sit around waiting for it.

Well, when I was writing my thing on A Chairy Tale, I mentioned it when I talked about how I didn't always post these highlights in the year where it was made. After I made the reference I went and looked and lo and behold, there it was. Apparently the National Film Board posted it when I was wasting my time, money, and energy on futile interviews for programs that hated me the moment they saw my worthless obese self. Well, now that it's posted I might as well review it.

So here it is: The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein.

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Best Live Action Short Highlights - A Chairy Tale (1957)

So I was so eager in getting the Non-Nominated Highlight up for What's Opera, Doc? after the 1957 review that I plum forgot that 1957 also had one of the strangest nominations in the history of the shorts category: an animated film getting nominated for the Live Action Short category. Of course, there's no rule that absolutely says I have to post one of these highlights in the year where the film was made. I just chose to do so*.

*However, there was an animated documentary that was nominated for the Best Documentary Short category back in 1991, but I never posted about it because it wasn't online. Of course it's online now so I'll have some catching up to do after this.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. How is it possible that an animated film gets nominated in the Live Action Short category? The answer lies in one of the most interesting of animation techniques: Pixilation

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Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 1962-1971

I started this blog shortly after the 80th year of the Best Animated Short category, and I realized that you could split those 80 years down to eight 10-year periods beginning with the second year of a decade and ending with the first year of the next decade. So from then on every time I've finished with one of these ten year periods I've been combining all of the nominated films from that period and ranking them by preference, since it's much easier to justify. We have now gotten to the fifth of these posts. Thanks to the timing of my hiatus it's been five months since I've last written one of these. In comparison, I was able to post three of them in the 5-month period from May to October of last year. Oh well. That's why I didn't want to do the hiatus, but I guess it was for the best.

Let's get this show on the road.

NULL: Hypothese Beta (1967)
NULL: The Shepherd (1970)
Two films whose legacy suffers from the suppressive power of greedy university institutions, (although the fact that they are still only available on the obsolete 16mm film format doesn't help.) I managed to trek all the way to the University of Arizona library in Tucson only to be told that they won't lend it out unless we have a 16mm projector to play it. *sigh* I guess I'm taking a road trip to Miami! Whooo! Then watch them go tell me to GFM because I don't have a 16mm projector. *sigh sigh*

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Best Animated Short - 1963

So a few reviews ago I tried limiting my introductions to just talking about the Oscar ceremonies for that year, but even with that I was still making my intros just about as long as the actual reviews themselves, which is a problem because for one thing I find reviewing Oscar history much more interesting than the films, mostly due to the fact that I've seen numerous times. Furthermore, it is essentially doubling the time I take to write one of these reviews. And when I'm faced with something that is going to take up to 8 hours in a day, I'd rather do something else like watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic or play The Sims 3. Meh. Maybe I'm just still trying to come to terms with my three-month hiatus.

Oh well. I guess we'll give this Academy review thing another shot.

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Best Animated Short - 1964

Well, it's kind of hard to believe but with the exception of this year's batch of nominees, the last time I wrote one of these reviews was back in November. And then came the extensive interviews and the nightmarish reality of having to retake the COMLEX PE examination. But now the re-exmination is a thing of the past. While the nightmares won't be over for at least another 6-10 weeks until the scores are reported, I suppose it won't do any good to dwell on those accursed seven hours back on February 15. It's now out of my control. So all I can do now is try not to think about it (since if I do it will fill me with worry and dread even though I think I did better...but was it enough?) and go back to these reviews. At the very least I should finish this particular review, one whose introduction I wrote before taking the PE exam the first time!

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Module 13: Japan (and the Rest of Asia) and Computer Animation

Hoo boy. This was a MASSIVE module, mainly because it incorporated two huge topics that probably warrant their own modules: Computer animation and Japanese animation. Computers have been a major tool in the production of animation since the 1970s, giving the ability to produce rendered animation with a 3 dimensional look or vector animation. It has taken over not only the field of animated films but also the production of many live action features. The technicalities of computer animation is way beyond the limits of my understanding, but needless to say it has completely transformed the animation industry.

And then there's the realm of Japanese animation, which has gained a massive following of its own. While animation has been in production since the 1910s and 1920s, it didn't really start to take off until the efforts of Osamu Tezuka, who is prolific in both the production of manga and anime. From then it expanded into Japanese culture as anime films and series became a big source of entertainment for the Japanese. And now it is becoming an international interest. I'm a big fan of the films of Studio Ghibli, and from that people seem to think of me as being an anime buff, but I've really cut back on watching anime since getting into the Oscar nominated animated shorts,* while my sisters have taken on the title of true blue anime otaku. It's still an interesting field for me.

*I really should come up with some abbreviation for this term, like ONIS.

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Module 10: Canada

"Really, Canada?" you ask, but it's true. Canada has had a surprisingly rich history of animation, beginning with the hiring of visionary director Norman McLaren by the National Film Board of Canada. McLaren had many experimental animation efforts, but really put Canada on the map with his Oscar winning film Neighbours, which revolutionized the pixilation technique. The NFB continued to attract talented animators from around the world, leading to great success at the Academy Awards.

Of course NFB is not the only animation studio in Canada. Radio Canada also made a mark in the world of animation, especially with its flagship animator Frederic Back. And there's also Studio DHX, which contributed...well, you'll see in due time. ;)

The module also included some things about South American animation, which is quite memorable as Argentinean animator Quirino Cristiani made the first full length animated film 95 years ago, but the film was eventually lost. They didn't do much after that except Mafalda, and I didn't include it in the discussion.

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Best Animated Short - 1966

Well, we're closing in at the end of the year, and now we're entering the time of year when all of the Best Picture hopefuls are coming out in theaters. Today is a pretty significant day where no less than two films with Best Picture aspirations are opening wide. The first is Life of Pi, the film based on the highly symbolic novel from Yann Martel. While the film deals a lot with Indians, it was actually helmed by Taiwanese director 李安 (Ang Lee), the man behind such classics as 臥虎藏龍 (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Brokeback Mountain, and my personal favorites 喜宴 (The Wedding Banquet) and 色，戒 (Lust, Caution). He has a special skill of mixing art and symbolism and would be a perfect choice for a film like this. Of course, the one that I'm more curious in is Silver Linings Playbook. The trailer caught my attention with its portrayal of a guy that's clearly in a manic state, and then showed Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence's characters swapping lists of mood stabilizers and benzodiazepines that they took. I have no idea how accurate the portrayal of psychiatric illnesses will be, but as an aspiring psychiatrists I am very curious. All of the Oscar buzz doesn't hurt either. Unfortunately my life will be rather turbulent for the next month what with interviews and traveling to Conshohocken, Pennsylvania for the COMLEX Physical Exam test, but hopefully I'll find some time to watch it. And work on more reviews.

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Best Animated Short - 1967

Well, our journey backwards through the history of the Best Animated Short category continues. I really hope I'll get time to write all this in the next two months because I'll have residency interviews up the wazoo. I have 27 interviews scheduled, which is 2.7x more than the number of med school interviews I had. And since some of my interviews will be two in one, I'd have to rank 31 programs come match time. Yep, it's going to be a busy three months.

But I cannot take a break. After all, there are still 36 more years to review, and the 2012 Oscar season is starting. Why, the shortlist was posted just last week. And the final list of nominees will be announced in January, and I'll have a review for that to interrupt the reviews from the 1950s. And then the cycle begins again with new films competing in new festivals and so on and so forth. Hopefully I'll get to go to some of these festivals someday.

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Best Animated Short - 1968

Okay, I'm not even going to wait until the end to announce this. I don't even know why I do that because I post the title screen for the winning film on every single of my reviews, so it's not like I'm spoiling anything. It's even more true for this years because I wrote about this year's Best Animated Short winner four months ago. That's right, we have finally reached the year that Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day took home the Best Animated Short Oscar, ending the 13 year drought for Disney and making him one of the select group of people to win a posthumous Oscar. It's hard to believe that it's been four months since I was working on the puzzle based on the film, but I guess time passes when you're busy with clinical rotations, board studying, baseball*, and My Little Pony.

*No idea what to think about the Giants beating the Tigers. I mean, I like both teams. I was born in Michigan and still have aunts that are die-hard fans of the Tigers. And I've kind of gotten board the Giants bandwagon since the entire Randy Johnson's 300th win thing three years ago. I've always liked it when teams that hadn't won for a while wins again, and the Tigers haven't won since 1984, a few months before I was even born. However, I'm also not very pleased with the Tigers' efforts to essentially buy their way to the title with that massive deal for Prince Fielder. On the other hand, the Giants had won two years ago, and they beat the hometown Rangers to do so. So, it really was a lose-lose situation. At least it wasn't the Cardinals that won. 

So in my post back in June I talked quite extensively about Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, but I didn't mention any of the films that it was competing against, so there will still be something to talk about in this post.

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Best Animated Short - 1969

Happy Nightmare Night, everypony...er...Happy Halloween, everybody. My friends at the Longview Comic Book Club will probably be hooting and hollering it up at their Halloween party, but me? I'm on a plane going to South Carolina for the fifth and sixth residency interviews. Sure, I'd rather have it be to Atlanta to watch Game 7 of the World Series at Turner Field, but that dream kind of died when the Braves were knocked off by the St. Louis Cardinals. Oh well, at least they got knocked off by the eventual World Champion San Francisco Giants. I think I'm less bitter at the Giants ruining the Rangers' World Series hopes than the Cardinals, because the Rangers were so close to the title. And now both Rangers are pretty much going to join the Indians and the Royals as also-rans. It was a good run while it lasted. But I digress. Even though I'm on a plane right now, I have this review up because I'm writing it in advance. There really was no point to this paragraph, but it doesn't matter because the only people that will end up reading this are my sisters, who are more into Japanese anime anyways. So yey, my target audience for this blog is essentially myself! No wonder I've lost the motivation to write it. But I will keep trucking on! We still have 38 years to review, and by golly I'm going to review them!

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Best Animated Short - 2012 - Qualifying Films

Well, it's that time of year again, when the Academy reveals their list films that qualify for the Best Animated Short film Oscar. As I revealed in an earlier thread, a film can qualify by either getting a public showing in a Los Angeles County theater, wins a competitive award at an approved film festival, or a Gold Medal at the Student Academy Awards (for student films.) Any film that meets one of these requirements qualify, and they'll go in front of a committee that will vote on the films. The top 10 goes on the short list.

This year there are 57 qualifying films. That's a LOT, especially since there were only 33 in 2010, the first year that I paid attention to the qualifying films. The full list, courtesy of Oscar nominee Michael Sporn (Doctor DeSoto, 1984) and Animation Magazine after the jump. I'll write a short blurb that hopefully I can expand once the nominees are announced in January. Plus I'll link to trailers or even the short film whenever available.

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Best Animated Short - 1971

So, we're in the middle of baseball playoffs, normally a magical time for me, but I just can't find myself getting excited, mostly because I don't really care for any of the teams that are left. I was able to ride the Rangers bandwagon to World Series games the last two years, but this year they blew the division lead on the last day, and then dropped the Wild Card game at home to the Miracle O's, my only postseason game of the year. Similarly, the Washington Nationals dominated the regular season, finishing with the winning record, but like the Philadelphia Phillies last year, they dropped the division series to the Wild Card St. Louis Cardinals. Of the remaining team the only team I like is the Yankees, and that's because it had Mickey Mantle, one of my favorite players of all time. Except you know, their offense has completely disappeared, so they're probably not going to be getting #28 anytime soon.

Also an interesting fact is how the Pirates ended up with a 79-83 record, even though they had a 67-54 record on  August 19, when they played a 19-inning game against those same Cardinals that are well on their way to a second straight World Series title. While they won the game, they fell completely off the cliff, winning only 12 games in their last 41 games. That helped them extend their record for consecutive losing seasons to 20. It's so surprising that the Pirates are one of a few teams to win five World Series titles. The first was in 1909, when Honus Wagner led them to a victory over Ty Cobb's Tigers in the first seven-game World Series. It was the Tigers' third straight World Series defeat. The Pirates won again in 1925, when Max Carey and Pie Traynor led the team over Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators, ending their hopes for back to back Series. The Pirates' third title came in 1960, when they were outscored and outplayed by the Yankees, but managed to squeeze in three tight wins, and then came out on top in the most thrilling Game 7 off Bill Mazeroski's walk-off blast. The 1979 Pirates were led by Willie Stargell, whose "We are Family" motto led them to a victory over the favored Baltimore Orioles.

And then there was 1971.

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Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts 1972-1981

When I started this blog back in February, I was posting reviews at a rate of two a week, but I later had to pare it down to one a week as I couldn't keep up with the pace. With the new rate it felt as though it would take us forever to get through, but now we've hit the halfway point in our reviews in what feels like a blink of an eye. True, it has been eight months and a whole lot of things have happened in my life in that time, but it still feels like nothing more like a hop, skip, and a jump since my first review on this blog. And the halfway point of 80 years is 40 years, and you know what happens every 10 years? I rank the nominees by preference. I've been maintaining these rankings in each individual years by quality and preference, but when combining them all into one big list I focus solely on preference because that is much more subjective. Of course, that would lead to some incidents where some films that are not quite so good gets ranked high and masterpieces that are ranked low. But hey, at least there are no absolutely mediocre films that have been nominated...right? Well, except for A Greek Tragedy, and that film actually won. *grumble grumble*

So...1972-1981. For the most part there were three nominees a year, like the decade that came...after. However, there were two years with four nominees, and one busy year with five nominees, so that comes out to 34 films, just a wee bit above the 1982-1991 list. Is that going to change the complexion of things? We shall see. But for now...let the countdown begin!

NULL: Dedalo (1976)
Impossible to find, especially since my online course is turning out to be a dead end. However from what I've seen of it I'm not quite as excited about this as Lorenzo, but dammit! It still needs to be seen somehow!

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Best Animated Short - 1974

Well, I've had quite an adventure since finishing my last review back on Thursday, August 30. The day after that, I finished my Infectious Disease rotation in Akron, OH and went on a detour to Atlanta, GA to watch a Braves game. You see, I had seen eight games at eight stadiums so far this year, and hadn't even seen a Rangers game yet, even though they are the closest team to me. I figure I'll probably watch a Rangers game by the end of the year. If I can just see another game on my way back from Ohio I'd have seen games at 1/3 of the Major League stadiums, which would be a mini ballpark tour. When I found out I get a Labor Day weekend, I immediately set off to look for home games that wouldn't deviate too much from the 18-hour drive.

In the end I found that the Cubs and Braves had home games on Saturday, September 1, and attending those games only adds 4 hours to my drive. Chicago is six hours away from Akron while Atlanta is 12 hours away. The Cubs game is at 1:05 while the Braves game is at 4:05. In the end I opted to visit Atlanta.

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Best Animated Short - 1975

So in my last review I tried getting rid of the excess topics in my introductions, and I was able to streamline it quite well! Sure, I didn't talk about baseball as much as I would have liked, but at the same time I wasn't spending two to three hours on just the introduction alone. It's worked so well I'll keep limiting my discussions on the Oscar awards of a particular year. Yeah, I won't be getting to talk about the Big Red Machine and the legendary World Series they had with the underdog Boston Red Sox (which included the memorable Game 6 that ended with Carlton Fisk's home run, a moment that was referenced in the Best Picture nominated Good Will Hunting). Nor would I have the chance to talk about my classmate Brian Barkley, who actually pitched for the Red Sox in 1998. But you know what? I'm okay with that.

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Best Animated Short - 1976

So I've been here fretting about the length of my introductions while blabbering about who I know that was born a certain year or the major current events in the world and in baseball from that particular year. It was up to my sister that told me a solution: why bother spending my time writing about those excess things? It's just a waste of time and space about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with animated shorts in the first place, and she doesn't even bother reading them. At least the Oscars has some connection because it's, you know, the Oscars, but even she skims through that stuff.

So I'm going to follow her advice and not write anything about the Bicentennial, and not write anything about Chris Chambliss's triumphant home run that broke the hearts of the Kansas City Royals. And we'll see how it goes.

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