Oscar Thoughts

Still no comments, which has admittedly slowed my enthusiasm for keeping up the journal. But I still feel like I should and I've got some thoughts worth writing about. So let's see how long this lasts.

The Oscar nominations have been announced. With the continuing writers' strike (which I support), the sort of ceremony we'll get - if any - is still in doubt. But for the time being, the speculation is on.

As usual, I haven't seen many of the big nominees this year. With Andrew's job, getting out to see movies has become even more difficult. I can tell you that we really liked "Juno" and I hear good things about a lot of the other films with a lot of nominations, but that's about it. The animated categories, on the other hand, I can say a few things about.

There are five films up for Best Animated Short. In most years, I end up seeing one or none of the nominated shorts, usually a Pixar offering if anything. The vast majority of animated shorts (and live action short films, for that matter) only show in festivals and touring shows nowadays and I seldom get out to see them. But this year, a friend of mine located either the entire short or a trailer for the short for all five nominees on YouTube. So i've seen three of the shorts in their entirety and trailers for the other two.

My pick up of the films I've seen in their entirety is "Peter and the Wolf", a stop motion adaptation of the Prokofiev piece. The story itself is pretty faithful to the original aside from a slight modernization and a little bit of additional material. What makes this short special is the animation. This is some of the most expressive stop motion I have ever seen, with beautiful suggestions of character through action and movement. There's no dialogue and everything is perfectly conveyed through the characters' expressions and particular little motions.

The runner up for me in this category is "Moya Iyubov" ("My Love"). This film is done with oil on glass, quite possibly the most insanity inducing method of animating I can think of. The animator makes a painting with oil paints on a piece of glass, shoots one frame, uses linseed oil to erase parts of the picture, makes changes, shoots another frame, an so on. It's all the difficulties of stop motion - where once a frame is altered, it's gone forever - without the benefit of at least having your set and puppets still there to work with when you finish. The result, though, is absolutely beautiful, like a painting come to life. The reason it isn't my top choice for Best Animated Short may not be entirely fair. The film is Russian, it has a lot of dialogue, and there's no subtitled version available. It also featured very realistic characters, to the point where it feels a little too much like live action with a filter on it to me. It's beautiful and definitely worth watching, but it's not something that I had any kind of emotional connection with.

The other three films are a comic computer animated short that isn't particularly impressive in any way and the two I only saw trailers for and can't really comment on.

Best Animated Feature Film is a bit more of a challenge for me. I've seen two of the three nominated films and I really can't decide between them. (Incidentally, the nomination of the third film, "Surf's Up", surprised even Sony, the company that produced the film. They did not run any kind of publicity campaign for its nomination, so why it was chosen is anybody's guess. It won't win, though. Penguin movies are so Oscars 2007.)

"Ratatouille" is Pixar and Brad Bird's latest film, about a French rodent with gourmet tastes and a dream of becoming a chef. It's a beautiful film with an excellent balance of comedy and drama. The animation continues to up the Pixar standard. It doesn't talk down to kids and in fact barely caters to them at all. It's just a really excellent movie, let alone animated movie.

"Persepolis" is based on the autobiographical graphic novels about a woman's childhood in Iran. It's 2D, with a very simple style, and most of the film is in black and white. It's in French with English subtitles. It isn't a complete downer all the way through; the pacing and insertion of scenes to relieve tension are quite good. But given the subject matter, it's not light entertainment and certainly not for the kiddie set. Frankly, I've never seen an animated film quite like it.

The problem I have in choosing between these two films points to a flaw in having a Best Animated Feature category (or Best Picture, for that matter). Aside from both being animated, these two films have very little in common and it's nearly impossible to judge if one does its job better than the other, just as it's hard to say whether a comedy does a better job of being a comedy than a period epic does of being a period epic. I'm glad that there is a Best Animated Feature category, as it sometimes brings attention to films the public may not be aware of. But it just seems fruitless to pick a best film when the group contains both apples and oranges.

Which will win? I can't say there either. More people have probably seen "Ratatouille", which may give it an edge. But voters may also feel that "Persepolis" is a more "arty" and "important" film, the type that Academy members like to vote for. I could easily see them voting for it based on the plot summary alone without even seeing the film. Whichever wins, though, I'll be happy. I think it's definitely a good thing when there are two animated films up for the Oscar that are both so good that I can't make up my mind which should take the honor home.