Preview screening: Oscar-nominated short films

Length isn't everything

by John P. Meyer

I just spent the most entertaining two hours in a movie theater since little Betty Sue showed me that trick with the popcorn box back in 8th grade. (Hold the butter!)

But, seriously, thanks to the Magnolia Pictures folks (and the Magnolia Theater, which kindly provided the use of their auditorium) several scruffy looking writer folk were able to spend their lunchtime getting a pre-Oscars look at this year's nominated short films, including both animated and live action features.

The animation portion of the agenda kicked off with The Danish Poet, the second Academy-nominated film from animator Torill Kove. Charmingly minimalist in line and motion, the story follows a writer's-blocked poet who travels from his Danish home to that font of creative inspiration, Norway. While he may not have been pinin' for the fjords upon arrival, by the time he returns to Denmark - after meeting up with the betrothed-to-someone-else love of his life - our pen-wielding hero certainly is. Liv Ullman narrates the piece, in surprisingly youthful (and engagingly expressive) vocal form.

WORDS OF WISDOM: "When a relative dies, you go to the funeral whether she was Danish or not."

The Little Matchgirl draws upon the sort of classical, lush, evocative animation pioneered by Walt Disney and carried on by such people as Don Hahn, who's responsible for both this film and 1991's Beauty and the Beast. It's a poignant story, well-told, entirely without dialogue.

From a stylistic and technical standpoint, Maestro is the most interesting of the animated features; it employs a point of view convention in which the "camera" rotates about the CGI character of focus, who appears to be primping (with the help of his mechanical assistant) for the performance of a lifetime. See if the surprise ending catches you completely by surprise, as it did me. (Once again, no dialogue.)

The Saviour, the first of the live-action films in the program, exposes us to a side of the door-to-door evangelical subculture (if there can be said to actually BE such a thing) that we might have seen coming, if we'd not been so quick to slam shut our imaginations to the practice. Who says evangelical religious fervor can't be a source of enrichment, even for atheists? God does indeed work in strange ways...

EASY FOR YOU TO SAY: "Maybe you should sort out your own faith before working on someone else's."

The highlight of the program has to be the totally-out-of-left-field West Bank Story, an all-dancing, all-singing, stereotype-whacking production engineered by USC School of Cinema/Television graduate Ari Sandel. Set in (you guessed it) the hotly-contested West Bank territory populated by Palestinians and occupied by Israel since the '67 Six Day War, from the first moments of screen time you'll know that this isn't going to be your typical Arab-Israeli tale of blood-drenched mayhem - although olive oil will be spilled in prodigious quantities.

HUMMUS, I MEAN: "Anytime you want it, I'll give it to you." - doe-eyed Palestinian babe to handsome Israeli soldier

Sponsored by UNICEF, Binta and the Great Idea shows us the world of contemporary rural Africa through the eyes of a young Senegalese girl whose father has listened to the advice of a friend from the big city and taken away a different lesson from the descriptions than the one intended. It's a story of light and hope in the midst of limitation and adversity.

WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT IT: "I like the colors of my country a lot." - Binta, wielding her crayons

Eramos Pocos (One Too Many) tells the story of some helpless couch potato menfolk who lose their wife and mother and are forced to fend for themselves. Dad can't find his slippers; Junior peers into the empty coffee pot as if it's an inside-out Rubik's Cube. Together they come up with a plan: drive over to the retirement facility to which they've previously relegated Grandma and return her to the (increasingly trashed-out) homestead, before it's too late. Funny thing, though: the family butcher doesn't remember her...

THE WAY TO A MAN'S HEART: "You don't know what this omelet means to us." - Dad to Grandma, as he and Junior gaze in drooling awe at the perfectly-turned savory creation.

Helmer & Son provides another example (as if, in our wisdom, we needed one) of how things aren't always what they seem: a son is called away from the office for an emergency visit to the rest home where he's just admitted his father, who has locked himself into a storage closet as a means of attracting attention to his intolerable situation - maybe.

WARNING: Naked old people alert!!

You, too will have an opportunity to view the shorts (and here I refer to "short films," you pitiful perv) at the Magnolia beginning on 2/16.