The Short Films

1998 through 2007
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sijmen
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Post by sijmen »

Thanks Magilla!

I'm blushing...
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Post by Big Magilla »

I finally caught up with them. Tanghi Argentini was robbed. It was the most delightful of the bunch with a nice O. Henry style ending. Geert aka Sijmen can write a short story!

The DVD comes out next Tuesaday, May 6th. I have an advance copy and will have capsule reviews of all the nominees on Oscar Guy's main site day and date with the official release on Tuesday.
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Post by rain Bard »

Here's my take on three out of the four doc. short films, as published here. I have not seen Freeheld though, and from what I've heard it sounds like a very likely candidate to win.
Tim Sternberg's Salim Baba is my sentimental favorite in the category, probably because it's also the one with the least chance to win. It's the shortest and its subject the least consequential, at least upon first glance: a man who pushes a portable cinema cart through the streets of Kolkata, India, where he exhibits spliced-together fragments of old Bollywood films to the delight of children who can't afford to go to a "real" cinema.

La Corona is just as good, with a riveting subject matter: a beauty pageant in a women's prison in Columbia. Terrific characters, very well-directed, amazing access to the prison facility thanks to director Isabel Vega (her co-director Amanda Micheli made the terrific stuntwoman documentary Double Dare, which proved the awesomeness of Zöe Bell well before Death Proof). My only personal reservation with the film is that it seems like it could have been even more effective if expanded to feature-length, and that its 40-minutes-on-the-nose running time (the maximum for this category, and according to imdb Freeheld hits it too) is a naked grab at this Oscar. I guess that's business though. It feels a lot like a winner; a nice mixture of socially-conscious and entertaining. La Corona was an honorable mention for a prize awarded by the Sundance Shorts Jury, made up of Juno director Jason Reitman, Melonie Diaz (this year's "queen of Sundance" she acted four feature films in the festival), and Jon Bloom, head of the Academy's Short Film section.

Sari's Mother, which I saw not at Sundance but at the San Francisco International Film Festival back in May, is the fourth segment planned for last year's documentary feature nominee Iraq in Fragments. Director James Longley felt it didn't fit with the other three fragments after all, and decided to leave it out of his feature and develop it into a stand-alone short subject. It's probably the most downbeat of the four of Longley's fragments, as it shows a mother trying to get medical care for her young son, who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. It's pretty bleak, but voters could go for it if they decide they want to acknowledge the war in Iraq."


I also wrote about La Corona here.
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Post by barrybrooks8 »

I saw the shorts yesterday. Kind of a muddled bunch if you ask me. The only one that stood out that I was excited about was I Met The Walrus. Of the Live-Action choices, Tanghi Argentini was my favorite, scoring a B. My least favorites were My Love and The Tonto Woman. Pickpockets and pigeons were both just average, maybe below so. However, I am very grateful that they even came somewhat close to me (even though I had to drive an hour to take an hour and a half-long train and then a $10 cab to get there...but I would say it was worth it, just to get out of Milwaukee for a day).
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Post by Damien »

A friend of mine, who does entertainment reporting for The Advocate, writes:

OSCAR LIVE ACTION:

The Mozart of Pickpockets -- I predict this will triumph over Tanghi Argentini. Both are short and humorous with Mozart having the slight edge thanks to a stronger final joke and a cute little kid. The long shot is a heart tugger about women in a cancer ward but the darn thing is 40 minutes long, which dilutes any love most people will feel for it. There's also a half hour Western that looks REALLY expensive but
ends poorly and is ultimately a shoulder shrugger of a tale.

OSCAR ANIMATED

I Met The Walrus -- I may be blinded by my love for the Beatles. But this animated short based on a 14 year old kid's taped interview with John Lennon in a hotel room in 1969 was by far and away the best.

Plus, Lennon provides the only star power anywhere. No shorts were directed or peopled by famous actors and none of the animated shorts were by Pixar. This is a decidedly glitz free affair. "Even Pigeons Go To Heaven" was standard fare with a "twist" at the end that didn't have a huge impact. "Moya Lyubov" was a draggy Russian (I think) tale
about a dreamy 15 year old boy and his first love with some gorgeous painterly effects but quite long and indulgent. "Madame Tutle-Putli" had some great puppet visuals but I'll be damned if I have a clue what
it was about and it ended very surreally and inconclusively. And "Peter and the Wolf" is a half hour remake of Prokofiev that is the only contender. The humor was modest and the updates to the tale served no real purpose. But a great score! I still think nostalgia for Lennon wins out, with the animation in "I Met The Walrus" really clever and Beatle-esque or at least Lennon-esque somehow, delighting
in wordplay. Leaves a gentle smile on your face.

OSCAR DOCU SHORTS

SARI'S MOTHER -- Sight unseen (I don't know ANYONE who's viewed them), I'd say it was down to Salim Baba (about an old man who makes money showing scraps of discarded film footage to neighborhood kids. BUt I think that's trumped by Sari's Mother, which is about a mother in war-torn Iraq trying to care for her 10 year old son dying of AIDS!! Good
God, if the mother was a survivor of the Holocaust it would win EVERY Oscar, but that's a pretty strong deck of cards.
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Post by Big Magilla »

My bad. I re-read the E.W. ballot, it does include both short film categories, but TV Guide does not - so boo to TV Guide.
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Post by sijmen »

Yes, LOTS of coverage. I'm very pleasantly surprised. (and boo to EW)

I hope you catch it some day, Wes.

After reading all these articles, it looks like a race between At Night and The Tonto Woman. I haven't seen any of them yet, but conventional wisdom tells us that in this category the weirdest title wins :-)
So the Oscar goes to The Tonto Woman?

Hmmm...

No, I would put my money on At Night (at least in a normal year. This bizarre and strangely absurd year I''ll skip this category from my Oscar pool)
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Post by Big Magilla »

There is a compilation DVD of all the shorts coming in April or May after they complete the theatrical tour.

Nice to see all this coverage of them in the various papers. TV Guide and E.W., though, both have their Oscar ballot editions out in which they list the nominees in all the categoreis except short subjects.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Sadly, I won't be able to go. They're only showing for one week and I've got plans during every single showing. Then, Sunday, which is normally a day I have to myself, is Oscar day and I've got too much to prepare that day.
Wesley Lovell
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Post by sijmen »

Please go the shorts and tell me what you think.

Today, I found several articles, some sayinh good, others saying awful things about Tanghi.

LA Times mentions me, but they didn't care much for the film. This is what has been written about Tanghi:

"The slender joke of the Belgian “Tanghi Argentini” is the sight of one stuffy male office worker teaching another to dance."
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008....0A&8dpc


“a slight comedy”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html....ion=rss

“Writer Geert Verbanck and director Guido Thys put André through some predictable paces before unleashing some surprises.”
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies....2.story

“More economical than "The Substitute" and far more emotionally generous is Guido Thys and Anja Daelemans' "Tanghi Argentini" from Belgium.”
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8254480?source=rss

“The film is fun, but it's the kind of flat, two-dimensional product that one would think the Academy is above.”
http://www.nysun.com/article/71375?page_no=2

“There’s a lovely feel to this short, with a quality that’s reminiscent of It’s a Wonderful Life.”
http://www.usatoday.com/life....?csp=34

“Elegantly lensed and crisply edited”
http://au.news.yahoo.com/080215/11/15ugv.html

‘not one of the 10 Oscar candidates overstayed its welcome.”
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/movies/15635737.html
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Post by Damien »

Tanghi Argentini opens here in new York City tomorrow as part of a nominated live-action shorts program!
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Post by OscarGuy »

We do have them as a set running locally soon, but I may not have the time to get out and see them. We'll see how this computer thing goes and how the rest of my weeks go.
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Post by rain Bard »

I'm hoping to see them this weekend, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. They play as a set at a local theatre here in San Francisco (one in Berkeley too).
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Post by sijmen »

Finally! I found articles about the Oscar shorts! And it's amazing how different the opnions are. Tanghi Argentini is the favourite of some, but others label it as forgetable.

From what I read At Night seems to be the front runner, and Tanghi Argentini is a possible spoiler - well, maybe I'm too optimistic, or too blinded by wishfull thinking :)

Looking at the Short film history though, I noticed that winners usually are English language or Scandinavian films, so that's good news for At Night and The Tonto Woman. Can't wait to see them all (I will next tuesday)

Here are some articles I found on the web:

The Good:
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms....645

http://andthewinneris.blog.com/2681017/

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=41981

The Bad:
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobas....=411059

http://movies.pitch.com/2008-02-14/film/in-short/

The Ugly:
http://cornellsun.com/node/27601

http://www.freep.com/apps....2140317 (because it doesn't mention Tanghi)
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