My wife and I caught the Oscar-nominated animated shorts at IFC this past weekend. I am not a big fan of animation, nor do I get to see a lot of short features (what person outside the film industry ever does?) but I must say I found these animated shorts to be great fun, most of them quite impressive in their artistic content. Your IFC ticket buys you the five nominated shorts plus three honorable mentions, all three of which I felt were better than two of the actual nominees.

My favorite out of the nominees was Monsieur Hublot, a very charming and interesting tale set in a futuristic landscape populated with beings who are constituted out of scrap wood and metal. Also wonderful was the Japanese short Possessions, which is an exploration of a old Japanese idea that personal articles like clothing and tools take on a (sometimes resentful) animated spirit presence. Feral, about a “wolf boy” who’s assimilated into human society, was visually amazing, but I found the story a bit abstract and theoretical, which diluted my enjoyment of it somewhat. The Disney feature, Get A Horse, was your typical, classical animated mayhem, and featured Micky and Minnie mouse, two animated characters I find distinctly uninteresting; though perhaps technically impressive, it lacked the substance of the others. The last nominated short, Room on the Broom, was a very cute story, but the animation seems well below all the others, including the honorable mentions. My impression is that it got nominated because it’s based on a big children’s book, and they got many big British character actors to do voice-overs, although the vocal-parts are so minimal you can hardly distinguish any of their voices (I think Gillian Anderson only says “yes” and “whooooo!” and maybe one other word, and Rob Brydon’s participation is limited to rather lame cat noises.)

The three honorable mentions made up for Room on the Broom, however. À La Française depicts an alternate-universe 19th century Versailles populated by a bunch of pompous, preening chickens all dressed up in French finery; it’s a lot of fun, and the kind of thing you could watch over and over again. The Missing Scarf is utterly bizarre, featuring a squirrel who goes around giving insufferable, new-agey philosophical advice to various psychologically troubled animals he meets in the forest, animals who then meet horrible, contrary fates the minute he leaves!! My wife and I both loved this one! The Blue Umbrella was remarkable for the way it animated everyday urban objects that are seldom animated, like drainpipes, manhole covers, walk-signs, and so on; the story was a bit saccharine, I guess, but who cares? I would probably have nominated these three runners up ahead of Get a Horse, Feral, and Room on the Broom.

Anyway, if you’re in NYC, you might want to catch these shorts for a change of pace; I’m sure they must be playing somewhere in LA as well. They are well worth a look, in my opinion.