Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

Short films don’t have much purchase in the contemporary entertainment landscape. The typical length of the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, about 11 minutes, resides in an awkward space between the 30 or 60 second TV commercial, the hour-ish episode and the 90 minute feature film. Lined up consecutively and without breaks, each short film ends roughly when I would start thinking about nachos in a normal cinema setting.

For those with some idea of the animated short genre, Disney Pixar’s string of adorable films is the bedrock in American culture. “Geri’s Game,” the tale of an old man playing his wily alter ego in chess, won the Academy Award in 1997. A companion piece to greatest-thing-ever Toy Story, the delightful short helped ignite Pixar’s run of blockbusters toward the $7.4 billion buyout by Disney in 2006 (Steve Jobsians rejoice!).

In 2012, Disney Pixar once again has skin in the game with “La Luna.” In this undeniably cute and colorful tale, a boy accompanies his father and grandfather (I hope that’s who the two old men are, anyway) on a journey to do what I will term “creative maintenance” on the surface of the moon. Did you know that the moon was actually covered by a million little glowing stars? “La Luna” reveals that and more in its cherubic glory.

Beyond the fodder of the OshKosh B’Gosh set, this year’s nominees contain some thoughtful material for adults. “A Morning Stroll” is a hyper-bizarre meditation on how three generations of New Yorkers—1950s businessman, modern iPhone addict and post-apocalyptic zombie—react when they see a chicken strolling on the sidewalk. I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere.

More successfully, two Canadian films engage with emotionally weighty motifs typical of the genre. “Dimanche” is about a Quebecois boy experiencing a particularly strange Sunday; the film expresses how the adult world is eternally puzzling to children (“Why do we go to church only for Dad to fall asleep?”). In “Wildlife,” set in 1909, a pink-palmed English remittance man buys a ranch in rural Alberta only to struggle when he fails to prepare for the brutal winter. Wes Anderson-esque idiosyncrasies and compelling hand-drawn animation make this the most “serious film” of the lot.

But William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg’s “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” reminds of the traditional purpose of animate shorts: indulgence in the magical. A storm sweeps a book collector from his perch at a New Orleans hotel to a fantastic library where books come alive to celebrate reading—for instance, an ailing book is resuscitated when Mr. Lessmore follows the lines with his index finger. When the man grows old, a young girl appears to take his place; like the caretakers before her, she is imbued with color to symbolize an escape from the drab black-and-white world.

“The Fantastic Flying Books,” along with several of the other nominees, conveys its message with time-honored and comforting tropes. But the joy of recapturing them via a medium that is now less Beauty and the Beast and more Family Guy is worth the brief slip into childhood daydreaming.

The Carolina Theatre in Downtown Durham is screening the nominees for the last time tonight, Thursday February 23, at 7:15 PM.