Fairy tale mashup

A week ago I wrote that I wasn’t going to see any movies for a while, after seeing eight since the start of the year. I wrote that based on knowing the schedule for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra French Festival (Thursday’s program of music by Maurice Ravel, including both piano concertos, was wonderful!). But I didn’t notice an item on my calendar about the Oscar Shorts. For most movies I drive to the theater, buy a ticket, and see the film. The Detroit Film Theater warned us this show tended to sell out so I bought ahead. I had a ticket for Friday evening. That was canceled due to snow. So Saturday I called to exchange dates and went that evening. When I arrived (ticket in hand) signs said the show was sold out.

The Oscar Shorts is a show of all five films nominated for Academy Awards in the category of short animation, followed by the five films nominated for short live action. The whole evening ran over three hours (including a 25 minute intermission).

In the animation category most were 5-7 minutes.

Dear Basketball, a puff piece by Kobe Bryant on his love for his sport. He now has a film company.

Negative Space, from a French team. The narrator talks about being taught how to pack a suitcase by his father, which leads to a wry comment at the father’s funeral.

Lou, by the marvelous Pixar team. All the stuff in a Lost and Found box at an elementary school assembles itself into a being that takes on a playground bully. This one was my favorite.

Revolting Rhymes from Britain. This one was a half-hour. A wolf meets up with a woman who is about to go to a babysitting job. The wolf is lamenting his nephews, one killed by Red Riding Hood, the other by the Three Little Pigs. Thrown into the mix is Ms. Hood’s friend Snow White who cares for seven short men who bet everything on the horse races. It was a fun mashup of several fairy tales.

Garden Party, also from France. The animation in this one was good enough that it looked like live action. Frogs do what they do amongst the remains of a garden party, though we see several of the windows of the house have bullet holes.

A big deal was made warning us of the “disturbing imagery” that would appear at the end of the last entry. I’m sure they did that because children tend to come for these animated short films.

I felt they should have made a bigger deal about the “disturbing imagery” of the live action films. The program (if one stopped to get it) said the section was rated R. Perhaps the DFT knows children don’t stay for the second half.

In the live action category most were about 20 minutes with one as short as 13 minutes. Three of the five had violent themes. It is important to tell the stories, but a lot of violence for 90 minutes.

DeKalb Elementary was based on real events. The story opens in the school’s office. A man walks in and pulls out a gun. At that point I stopped watching, though I couldn’t stop hearing (and I was too far from the aisle to leave). The receptionist talks him out of shooting anyone.

The Silent Child is from Britain. The youngest child of the family is deaf. A social worker starts teaching her sign language. The mother wants to get her into a regular school but thinks the school won’t accommodate a child who can’t lip-read. This one was my favorite, partly by default.

My Nephew Emmett is set in 1955. Emmett Till of Chicago visits family in the Deep South and looks at a white woman the wrong way. The men of the woman’s family want to teach the lad a lesson. This is the uncle’s story of how he tries to protect the lad. I didn’t watch the final big confrontation. Yes, this one really happened.

The Eleven O’Clock is from Australia. A psychiatrist’s 11:00 appointment is a man who has delusions of being a psychiatrist. The joke got old fast.

Watu Wote / All of Us is from Germany, though set in Africa. A woman buys a bus ticket for the 31 hour trip from Nairobi into Somalia. The bus company tells her about violence at the border, though assures her the bus will have police escort coming to the border. But at the critical time the police car has engine trouble. I didn’t watch the end of this one either.