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2013 Animated Short Oscar Analysis

2013 was a solid, though far from great year for animated shorts. The Academy mostly ended up nominating the best shorts of the year. Their list is quite interesting as it mixed the more childlike and mainstream fare with the more mature and artistic experiments. The result is a perfectly solid slate.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

5. Room on the Broom

A witch is thankful to three animals that help her find her belongings and fight a fire-breathing dragon in this perfectly solid, but still rather disappointing flick. The score was terrific and the overall atmosphere was quite charming. I liked the characters as a group, though individually they weren’t well developed. It’s a tender movie, but it’s also slight in plot and way too repetitive in its structure that it ended up being a letdown. So, in this rather solid slate it sadly has to get the last spot.

4. Possessions

One night of the eighteenth century, in the depths of the mountain, a man is lost and finds a small temple. In the moment when he enters, the room space is transformed into a completely different world. Shuhei Morita directed this film so well and it is fueled by an interesting atmosphere of mystery and deeply rooted mythology. It’s a very atmospheric and very Japanese story for the better. I just wished that the animation aged better as it looked rather crude. These last two spots are devoted to problematically animated projects.

3. Mr. Hublot

Mr. Hublot is the story about a titular character who lives in a small apartment in a crowded steampunk city. He saves a robot dog and moves him to his house, but after he grows to a great height, he accommodates him in a larger warehouse where he stays to live with the pet. It is such a charming story that felt so human and touching in its central relationship. The two are so endearing together. Its setting was also very authentic and fascinating. My issues here are its overly slow pace and a failure to explore its intriguing world more. It’s a solid Oscar winner, but not my favorite film on this slate.

2. Get a Horse!

Get a Horse! is one of the most recent Mickey Mouse shorts and it’s among the better ones. Yes, it’s very gimmicky and frenetic in its nature, but it worked because its concept was so good. Jumping from black-and-white to color was quite interesting. Jumping from 2D to 3D was also intriguing and the film is best seen in the theater. This is pretty much Disney honoring its entire history and giving Mickey Mouse a proper big-screen sendoff, so you cannot really fault it for not having the best story when it’s this fun and wonderfully old-fashioned.

1. Feral

Easily the best animated short of the year and on this list is Feral directed by Daniel Sousa. This is the type of short that is heavily reliant on its visuals to tell its admittedly simple story. The ending was a bit too ambiguous, but still interesting. The story is predictable, but very well realized and quite emotionally engaging. The movie is best seen for its animation, which is absolutely fantastic, fluid and so gorgeous. The sound and score are also terrific. Feral is an artistic animated short that is also a moving viewing experience, so it has to be number one.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

The Missing Scarf – The Missing Scarf is a very sophisticated and thought-provoking film about existentialist themes of life and death. The animation is nothing to write home about, but the ideas were stupendous, the narration surprisingly strong and the dialogue excellent. This one really should have been nominated.

Party Central – Party Central is a very underrated ‘Monsters, Inc.’ cartoon that has a somewhat standard first half, but a superb second one. The ending that saw the mother character go through two doors (“door jumping”) was absolutely brilliant and so was the final scene that saw the parents in a scared childlike state, which was such a smart role reversal.

Gloria Victoria – Gloria Victoria is the type of arthouse film that I do not love, but I do appreciate. The ambiguity behind its imagery was problematic and the first half was much less striking than the second. But this one worked due to very artistic animation that was mixed well with superb classical music. The anti-war sentiment was also admirable.