The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts

I already posted about the documentary shorts, now I s'pose it's time to spew out my thoughts on the Live Action. I'll do animation later. It was really cool to get a chance to see these, even if they were projected from a digital server that killed the picture quality to sub DVD levels.

Anywho.

Our Time Is Up
Kevin Pollack stars as an uptight psychiatrist who never really engages his patients, who are shown successively from the same angle, finishing each other's sentences and such. "How do you feel about that" is about all he can muster. Then he learns that he has just six weeks to live, so he starts telling off his patients. The patients are put off at first by his bluntness, but the new therapy works. This is a pretty conventional film, full of psychiatry and dying cliches but the short film form never lets the cliches take over the plot. So it's put together prett well. I wish I had access to Kevin Pollack for my short films.

The Last Farm
A lot of people I'm going to school with now have made movies like this, but not as good. An old man lives in an isolated cottage on the cliffs by the sea. His daughter calls him, but he doesn't really want to talk He buys a bunch of wood and spends his time carving it. It takes about half the movie to figure out that he's buidling a coffin for his wife and that he plans to bury her. Then at the end, he buries himself alive next to his wife. There's not much plot to the movie, but the majestic fjords make up for it. Most of the time is dedicated to the old man struggling to move giants logs of wood and transport dirt with a big truck. But the movie pays off at the end with a few money images. The only real misstep is that the movie introduces a suspense element at the end when the guy's family just decides to visit him (despite him telling them not to come). Will he kill himself before they show up? It takes the focus off the man and never really pays off. Otherwise, pretty well done.

Cashback
This starts off as your predictable British bloke working the night shift movie, complete with voiceover narration introducing you to all the lovable wackos who work the overnight shift at a grocery store. There is no plot, just the main guy (I can never remember characters' names) introducing the characters and telling the audience about what it's like to work at a grocery store. I liked it because a lot of things he talks about reminded me of when I worked at a grocery store. Then at about the 2/3 point, the movie does a complete 180. The main guy (who doubles as an artist) freezes time and proceeds to take off all the women customers' clothes to "see the beauty within." I liked that the movie threw me for a loop, but I noticed that all the naked people were attractive women in their early 20s. It seemed very superficial to me. According to the IMDB, a full length version of this movie will be coming out later this year.

Ausreisser
This movie combines the "reserved man warms to cute kid" genre with the "mysterious kid turns out to just be in his head" genre. Basically a kid shows up at a reserved architect's house and claims to be his son by his exgirlfriend. The architect says "No way man, I haven't seen my exgirlfriend in six years, which is coincidentally, how old you are. Where is she anyway?" To which the kid replies "She's gone, I'm gonna disappear now" then the kid disappears and the architect tries to find him. And when the architect does find him, the kid runs away. And the architect chases the kid right into the hospital where the mom has been pronounced dead and the son the architect never knew he had is lying in critical condition from a car crash. Ever since The Sixth Sense, the audience has always been two steps ahead of movies like this. I know I was.

Six Shooter
Six Shooter stars Brendan Gleeson (I wish I could put him in a movie!) as a middle-aged Irish guy whose wife dies. On the train ride home, he sits next to an ADD riddled teenager whose mother just died. One booth down is a couple whose son just died. See a pattern? The teenager is a motormouth who has no shame in asking the couple if they feel bad about not being there for their son when he died. For a while the movie just watches as the kid talks bad to the couple and Brendan Gleeson steps in to stop them from fighting. The kid also keeps wanting to tell a story about the best day of his life. When he finally does get to tell it, it's the funniest thing you'll see all year. Eventually the kid's insults drive the wife of the couple to throw herself off the train. So the train's stopped and the police interrogate everything. Then there's a shootout between the kid and the police. When Brendan Gleeson finally gets home, he tries to committ suicide, but can't bring himself to do it.
This movie deservedly won the Oscar. It doesn't really have a plot per se, but it's the most emotionally moving and the deepest of all the short films. It's also the strangest, which is a plus too. I suppose all the characters were supposed to be different parts of the same person (they all have dead family members and they all deal with in in different ways), but the movie never explicitly states that. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't intended to be that. It's a very moving experience. I could imagine a good full length could be made from this (moreso than Cashback anyway).

So, my choice: Six Shooter

The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts

I already posted about the documentary shorts, now I s'pose it's time to spew out my thoughts on the Live Action. I'll do animation later. It was really cool to get a chance to see these, even if they were projected from a digital server that killed the picture quality to sub DVD levels.

Anywho.

Our Time Is Up
Kevin Pollack stars as an uptight psychiatrist who never really engages his patients, who are shown successively from the same angle, finishing each other's sentences and such. "How do you feel about that" is about all he can muster. Then he learns that he has just six weeks to live, so he starts telling off his patients. The patients are put off at first by his bluntness, but the new therapy works. This is a pretty conventional film, full of psychiatry and dying cliches but the short film form never lets the cliches take over the plot. So it's put together prett well. I wish I had access to Kevin Pollack for my short films.

The Last Farm
A lot of people I'm going to school with now have made movies like this, but not as good. An old man lives in an isolated cottage on the cliffs by the sea. His daughter calls him, but he doesn't really want to talk He buys a bunch of wood and spends his time carving it. It takes about half the movie to figure out that he's buidling a coffin for his wife and that he plans to bury her. Then at the end, he buries himself alive next to his wife. There's not much plot to the movie, but the majestic fjords make up for it. Most of the time is dedicated to the old man struggling to move giants logs of wood and transport dirt with a big truck. But the movie pays off at the end with a few money images. The only real misstep is that the movie introduces a suspense element at the end when the guy's family just decides to visit him (despite him telling them not to come). Will he kill himself before they show up? It takes the focus off the man and never really pays off. Otherwise, pretty well done.

Cashback
This starts off as your predictable British bloke working the night shift movie, complete with voiceover narration introducing you to all the lovable wackos who work the overnight shift at a grocery store. There is no plot, just the main guy (I can never remember characters' names) introducing the characters and telling the audience about what it's like to work at a grocery store. I liked it because a lot of things he talks about reminded me of when I worked at a grocery store. Then at about the 2/3 point, the movie does a complete 180. The main guy (who doubles as an artist) freezes time and proceeds to take off all the women customers' clothes to "see the beauty within." I liked that the movie threw me for a loop, but I noticed that all the naked people were attractive women in their early 20s. It seemed very superficial to me. According to the IMDB, a full length version of this movie will be coming out later this year.

Ausreisser
This movie combines the "reserved man warms to cute kid" genre with the "mysterious kid turns out to just be in his head" genre. Basically a kid shows up at a reserved architect's house and claims to be his son by his exgirlfriend. The architect says "No way man, I haven't seen my exgirlfriend in six years, which is coincidentally, how old you are. Where is she anyway?" To which the kid replies "She's gone, I'm gonna disappear now" then the kid disappears and the architect tries to find him. And when the architect does find him, the kid runs away. And the architect chases the kid right into the hospital where the mom has been pronounced dead and the son the architect never knew he had is lying in critical condition from a car crash. Ever since The Sixth Sense, the audience has always been two steps ahead of movies like this. I know I was.

Six Shooter
Six Shooter stars Brendan Gleeson (I wish I could put him in a movie!) as a middle-aged Irish guy whose wife dies. On the train ride home, he sits next to an ADD riddled teenager whose mother just died. One booth down is a couple whose son just died. See a pattern? The teenager is a motormouth who has no shame in asking the couple if they feel bad about not being there for their son when he died. For a while the movie just watches as the kid talks bad to the couple and Brendan Gleeson steps in to stop them from fighting. The kid also keeps wanting to tell a story about the best day of his life. When he finally does get to tell it, it's the funniest thing you'll see all year. Eventually the kid's insults drive the wife of the couple to throw herself off the train. So the train's stopped and the police interrogate everything. Then there's a shootout between the kid and the police. When Brendan Gleeson finally gets home, he tries to committ suicide, but can't bring himself to do it.
This movie deservedly won the Oscar. It doesn't really have a plot per se, but it's the most emotionally moving and the deepest of all the short films. It's also the strangest, which is a plus too. I suppose all the characters were supposed to be different parts of the same person (they all have dead family members and they all deal with in in different ways), but the movie never explicitly states that. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't intended to be that. It's a very moving experience. I could imagine a good full length could be made from this (moreso than Cashback anyway).

So, my choice: Six Shooter

Pondering at Sixteen

I was looking at my turtle today. He was sitting on his rock. I did some calculating and figured out that the dimensions of his tank weren’t much bigger than those of my living room. Plus he pees in the water that he lives in.

It wasn’t right. He needed to get out once in a while. He needed to be free. So I decided to do something. I was going to let him out of his tank. He would be allowed to go wherever he wanted. No longer was I going to flaunt my human superiority. He would have choice. He would be free to be the turtle he wanted to be.

So I lifted the tank’s lid and moved my arm in to grab him. He was scared and jumped off his rock and into the water and tried to swim away, but I managed to grab him. Once he was out of the tank, I set him on the carpet. He didn’t move. I waited a minute, but he still didn’t move. I waited another minute. Then he moved two steps. I decided that I should shut the doors in my house, lest he get into the bathroom and ingest some cleaning chemicals. So I went around the house and shut all the doors and stuff towels under them, so he couldn’t squeeze his way in. Then I got hungry. I went to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. It was quite tasty. I returned to my room to watch some TV. I opened the door and

**CRUNCH**

I hoped what I felt beneath my foot was not what I thought I was feeling beneath my foot, but what I was feeling beneath my foot was indeed what I did not want to feel beneath my foot. I lifted up my leg and there was the bleeding shell of a dead free turtle.

As I stood next to the broken turtle, I comforted myself. He was free for fifteen or so minutes. He had walked seven feet from his tank to the door. That was farther than he ever had traveled. He at least got to know what it was like.

I held a funeral for the turtle later that day. I put the turtle in a shoebox and buried it in my back yard. There he would lie for eternity. The shoebox was pretty big because I have extra large feet. So he spent the rest of eternity in relative comfort.

As I covered his shoebox coffin with dirt, I realized I never knew what sex the turtle was.

Pondering at Fifteen

I hit a rabbit with my car tonight.

I was in the middle of darkness (on a highway in the middle of Utah), broken only by two cones of yellow (my headlights).
I saw a large splotch of white (the rabbit) jump through the light.
I saw two red circles (the rabbit’s eyes.)
I felt my passenger front wheel jump over the rabbit.

I wish the wheel had jumped over the rabbit. It hit the rabbit straight on. For a split instant, I could feel the wheel contour the rabbit’s curved body. I think I shrieked, but I may have not. By the time I caught my breath I was a mile away.

I figured one of three things had happened.
1) The rabbit was not dead. The bump I felt was merely the rabbit passing under the non-wheeled portion of my car. After I passed, he continued jumping down the road with minor scratches and bruises. (This did not happen.)
2) My wheel had hit the rabbit head on. The rabbit died instantly and flew to the side of the road. It was snowing that night, so by morning, he’ll have a blanket of snow to keep him warm in his eternal slumber.
3) I had hit the rabbit in a non-lethal place, such as his (or her, or her pregnant with several children) legs. He spent the next several hours in the most excruciating pain which wasn’t relieved until too much blood was pumped out his open wounds or until another car hit him in the head. Either way, by the time I eat breakfast tomorrow, he would be dead.

I wanted Option 2, but my paranoia allowed no other Option than 3. As I drove farther down the highway, abandoning my victim to a greater and greater degree, I desired nothing more than to turn the car around, drive back to the scene of the crime and put him out of his misery.

But I did not.
I kept driving until I got home. Then I brushed my teeth and went to bed. As I lay, the light spots that remain when I close my eyes were all colored red. The rabbit’s eyes rocked me to sleep. In the red I could see the burning afterlife that awaited me.
...
...
...
But all that was two months ago. I figured out that the watery surface of the rabbit’s eyes was reflecting the color of my car (red). And now, the only place those eyes shine now is in my mind. So I suppose the rabbit found its afterlife in me. Now, it’s up to me to ensure that his afterlife is a good one. It may not be heaven, but I do the best I can.

Pondering at Fourteen

My friend Charlie and I were at the grocery store in the spices section looking over the racks. We had looked over the shelves for four minutes and fifty-two seconds when Charlie turned to me.

“Bay Leaves, Nutmeg, Garlic Powder, that’s all I’m seeing. I don’t think they have it.”

“I’m sure it’s someone around here. They have twenty six varieties of seasoned salt here.”

“Well, maybe it’s not in this section.”

“I’m sure it’s in this section. It was always in this section.”

“Excuse me can I help you find something?”

Yes, the grocer store worker could help us. We were looking for something very specific. I got the craving earlier that day sitting in Charlie’s apartment.

“I want soup.”

“Ok.”

“I really want soup.”

“Then eat some soup.”

“But I don’t want just any soup. I want-”

“Wait, you don’t want-

“I’m afraid I do want-“

“Man, I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“I know me either.”

“Man, let’s get to the store.”

So we went to store. And we looked for four minutes and fifty-two seconds before the grocery store employee helped us.

“The bouillon cubes are in aisle four with the soup.”
“Oh, thanks man. You don’t know what a great deed you’ve done.”

“No problem.”

We went to aisle four and picked up the bouillon cubes. But not just any bouillon cubes. Chuck’s Fantastic Bouillon Cubes. Some backstory is in order: when we were little kids, my dad used to feed us soup made from bouillon cubes. Now one day Charlie gets stung by a bee. This is really bad because he’s allergic and if he's ever stung by a bee again, the doctor’s say he’ll have about fifteen minutes to live. But anyway a bee stung him and he was dying and my dad’s called 911 and they’re on their way. Now, even though Charlie’s swelling up and can hardly talk, he asks for some soup. And whaddya know my dad had been preparing some soup just then. But my dad had screwed up and instead of buying Jon’s Bouillon Cubes he bought this other kind of bouillon cubes, Chuck’s Fantastic Bouillon Cubes. So I go up to the stove and pour Charlie a cup of soup and hold the cup up to his mouth as he sips some of the soup. Then, magic, the swelling goes away, he starts to breath, and everything seems ok. When the doctors show up, they say he’s ok too. Nobody knew what had happened, but I did. The bouillon was there for a reason. It was fate. Y’know, Chuck’s Fantastic Bouillon cubes. Charlie = Chuck. It was like Charlie’s soul was in that soup and when I fed the soup back to Charlie, I was feeding his soul. And for the next few years we ate soup made from Chuck’s Fantastic Bouillon Cubes. Then we kinda got sick of it and ate it less frequently. Then a few years after that, we didn’t really eat it at all. By the time I got the craving at Charlie’s apartment, we had totally forgot about the bouillon. But I had remembered. And man was I hungry.

“I don’t see it man.”

“It’s gotta be here.”

“I dunno if they make it anymore.”

“They have to make it man. It’s our bouillon, man. It’s ours. Excuse me, sir, I’m looking for a certain kind of bouillon.”

The grocery store employee looked, but could not find the brand. He would have asked the manager, but he was gone for the day. We went back the next day.

“I sort of remember that. I think we discontinued it a few years back.”

We tried a few other stores over the next couple days with no luck. Eventually we kind of forgot about the bouillon and just went on with life. The next summer I was eating some soup when a bee stung me.

“Ow”

It really hurt.

The Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts

The art theater in town that I go to/live played a program of the Oscar nominated shorts this past week. It was really cool to see these because most people don't even know what these movies are about, let alone see them. Here's my thoughts on the documentary shorts. I'll do live action and animated later.

Documentary

The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club
This is your standard "talking heads" documentary about a guy who's deified by some and is not so hot for others. In this case the guy is Kevin Carter, a South African photographer who was a member of the Bang Bang Club, a group of photographers who shot photos of hardcore poverty in Africa. His most famous photo is of a vulture looking upon starving Sudanese girl stumbling to a food distribution center. He wins a pulitzer for the powerful image, but attracts controversy when it is revealed that he failed to help the little girl out. The experience devestates him so much that he later commits suicide.
The documentary is flat, mainly due to the talking heads approach. That wouldn't be so bad, but most of the talking heads are his friends or other members of the Bang Bang club, so the movie ultimately dwindles down to "Look how awesome this guy was and wasn't it awful that all those people drove him to commit suicide?" A documentary that explores the moral dillema of a photojournalist (to help or to shoot) in more depth would have been better.


God Sleeps in Rwanda

This documentary examines how the genocide in Rwanda examines the effects of the 1994 genocide on Rwandan women. There are both bad effects (most women's husbands were, leaving them without any means of support, Rape was used as a method of warfare, leading to widespread HIV infect, ya know very bad stuff) and surprisingly, some good effects. Since the genocide left Rwanda 70% female, women were given all sorts of rights they didn't have before, as a matter of necessity. Since I used to live in Rwanda, the documentary was very touching. To see the country so ravaged is really heartbreaking. I do wonder whether women are really flourishing in a country whose positions of power are still occupied by men.


The Mushroom Club

In my opinion, this was the best documentary of the bunch. It examines how the the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima changed the city and Japan in general. You can see a lot of parallels with America and 9/11 in the way that, while the people of Hiroshima treat the event with reverence (paper crane ceremonies and the like), most of their time is spent pretending it didn't even happen. It's also great to get a different perspective on the bomb. While high school taught me that the bomb was dropped so WW2 would end and Robert McNamara says that America actually saved lives by dropping the bomb (when you compare how many people would have died if the war had gone on for a few more years with the amount of people who died in the blast), most Japanese have a much different perspective, one where thousands are vaporized instantly and even more die/suffer major mental and physical defects from from radiation poisoning. Hundreds died when they swam in the river, hoping it would protect them from the radiation, when in fact it was full of radiation, killing everyone who went in. The best voice was graphic novelist Akiyuki Nosaka, whose Grave of the Fireflies is about the effects of the bomb.


A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corman

This was what won the academy award and I can see why. It's a rose colored glasses look at an even that "changed America." It also has the best soundtrack, probably by someone who scores feature length hollywood movies like Seabiscuit or Cinderella Man. Those are good movies to make a comparison, cause this is about one of those events that "brought America together." Norman Corman was poet whose poetry radio show CBS in the 30's was a big hit. The documentary spends about half its time talking about his rise to the most respected radio man in the nation. The other half talks about his radio show "A Note of Triumph" which aired the night that Germany surrendered to America. From the clips played in the movie, it sounded like a very eloquent speech given by a very eloquent speaker. It's a very good speechification of the mood of a country on the night they just won the hardest fought war in its history. Of course, America still had to fight Japan, which makes this movie an interesting companion piece to The Mushroom Club. Overall, this movie had about the same effect on me as Seabiscuit or Cinderella Man, good entertainment, but c'mon. Fifty years people are going to make a movie about how American Idol brought America together. Your grandparents'll love it though.

Overall, I thought that all of these movies are solid, but also very conventional and a bit bland, a lot like the Oscars themselves. To be expect I s'pose. I give the award to The Mushroom Club.

Pondering at Thirteen

George OD’d on cocaine when he was 26.

“How could this have happened?” asked his mother, Sheila, at the hospital. None of the three other people--the doctor, George’s father Leonard, his sister Julie, and a little kid that happened to walk by--answered her, but Julie knew. A few years ago George was sitting, watching TV at Julie’s apartment when suddenly he turned to her and said, “You know, I think I’m going to start doing cocaine.” Julie laughed and George laughed too, but later that evening, George asked his friend Terry if he knew of anyone he could get cocaine from. Terry said he didn’t, but he thought he knew someone who knew of someone. Three connections later George had an overpriced bag of cocaine to use to his desire.

Later that night George, rather surprised he had gone through with it, thought about flushing the cocaine down the toilet. He even went so far as go into the bathroom with the bag and pour a little into the toilet. Before he could pour the whole thing in, though, he thought the better about wasting all that money and promptly returned to his dining room and snorted three lines.

When he told Julie of what he did the next day, she was incredibly angry with George and made him flush the rest of the cocaine away. Later that day however, George met back up with his acquaintance of an acquaintance and was fully addicted to the drug within two weeks. Two years later, life thoroughly down the tubes, he OD’d and landed in the hospital.

George died later that night.

George’s sister, Julie, was so torn by guilt of not intervening that she went on a drinking binge and drove her car into a lake. George’s mother, Sheila was so grief stricken that she swallowed a bottle of aspirin. George’s father, Leonard, became a sad depressed man who never answered the phone and rarely left the house. The doctor, who had worked valiantly through the night trying to save George’s life, quit medicine to find his soul in the Australian Outback, where he was eaten by a crazed wallaby. The kid who had just stumbled in--his name was Gregory--was so traumatized in seeing the life drain from George’s body that he too grew up to be a cocaine addict. Gregory OD’d and ended up in that very same room of that very same hospital twenty-three years later. As he was slowly fading away, another kid wandered in and witnessed his passing. That kid, whose name was Paula, suffered a similar fate. And so on and so on and so on.

The moral of the story is: don’t OD on cocaine.

Pondering at Twelve

The school kids surrounded Joey and Tom and chanted “Fight, fight, fight, fight.”

Joey was the first to act: “Dude, Tom, you’re so lame. L-A-M-E, man. Lame.”

Tom came back swinging: “I’ll show you lame.” And he made a zippering motion over his mouth. Then he stuck his tightly clenched mouth out to spite Joey.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Joey said. “Dude you couldn’t get any lamer than you are now.”

Tom responded by giving Joey the finger.

Joey beat Tom up pretty bad after that, even though Tom was much smaller than Joey. Tom kept his word however, he never spoke again.

The interesting thing about the story of Joey and Tom is what they went on to become.

Joey became a noted speech pathologist. His work led directly to end of 99% of speech impediments the world over. He was even short listed for the Nobel Prize. Over five thousand people attended his funeral. The moment of silence asked for near the beginning of the service brought nearly everyone in the room to tears.

Tom’s lack of communication skills meant he was unable to get a job, socialize, or function on a normal basis. He lived most of his life on the streets. Begging was difficult without speech, but he managed to get by. He managed to outlive Joey by three years. He was alone when he died silently in a garbage can, but he died happily. He had won the fight.

Pondering at Eleven

One time I had a zit right under my nose. I was content to ignore it, but it grew, and grew, and grew until I couldn’t breathe through my left nostril. Now, I know my mom told me not to do this, but I took my two index fingers and pressed down on the skin next to the zit.

“You better not do that,” the zit cried out.

I stopped pressing down. “I wouldn’t but, you’ve become a bit of a burden” I said.

“Suit yourself” the zit replied.

So I pressed down even harder next to the zit. I pressed down with all my might, with all the will in the world to save my face from the zit forever.

BOOM! My head exploded. The zit did not.

“Ahh! Put my head back. Put it back together.”

But the zit had other plans. With its steady growth, the zit grew to the size of my head in just a few days. Very few people noticed the difference. It went about its happy new life for a few weeks before it grew a new zit. Zit #2 grew bigger and bigger till Zit #1 just couldn’t take it anymore and decided it was time to pop it.

“You better not do that.”

Zit #1’s head exploded minutes later.

This cycle continued for years. A zit would grow to the size of my head and in a few weeks would grow another zit. It would try to pop it, but would just explode instead. People gave me a nickname, Mr. Zit.

Everything was going fine until Mr. Tumor showed up. H just kept growing and growing and growing despite any efforts to pop him. He eventually took over my head and everything went back to business. Everything was just dandy.

Until I died.

My head was waiting for me in the afterlife. When I got there it was joyous reunion. Two days later I got a zit and it just kept growing and growing.