Oscars Death Race 2012 – Press Play Video Blog

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Sarah D. Bunting wins the Oscars Death race as she surveys the race for Best Documentary Shorts

[EDITOR'S NOTE: It's over! With her inclusion of Best Documentary Shorts in this series, Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com has succeeded in watching every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. Congratulations, Sarah, for winning the Oscars Death Race. You can catch her down at the local bar treating herself to a pleasant alcoholic beverage, celebrating her hard-won victory. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here. ]

Documentary Shorts Sarah 61, Oscars 0; 24 categories completed, race won

The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. A salute to the many men and women who took enormous risks for the movement without needing name recognition, TBoB introduces us to James Armstrong, a barber in his eighties, on the eve of Barack Obama's election. You can't necessarily separate the man from his relationship to the fight for integration (his sons integrated Graymont Elementary in Birmingham), but I'd rather have seen a tighter focus on the man himself, letting those stories come through him. The talking heads and footage of the inauguration made the film a little flat overall.

God Is The Bigger Elvis. The film that completed the Death Race, it will always have a special place in my heart — but it's a visit with Dolores Hart, once an up-and-coming starlet who foreswore Hollywood to join a Benedictine order almost 50 years ago. Now a mother prioress, she and other nuns talk about that decision, the process of communing with God, and the evolution of their understanding of intimacy. The bittersweet reveal towards the end is lovely and sad.

Incident in New Baghdad. The film is told from the POV of Ethan McCord, an infantryman present at said incident, and runs footage that is truly stern stuff as McCord gives his perspective on what really went down. Its strength is the way it acts as a confessional for McCord, but I think it needed a few more minutes of him and a few less of pointed Fox News coverage.

Saving Face. This one knocked me back a step. I hadn't known about the epidemic of women getting acid thrown on them in Pakistan, but this horrible problem (if that's a big enough word for it; I feel it isn't) was on the rise. In 2011, a member of the parliament got a bill through that made it punishable with a life sentence, but prior to that, many victims had to continue living with the husbands and in-laws who had maimed them. Others tried to rebuild their lives and self- esteem through plastic surgery and support groups. Some very upsetting footage; a fairly conventional triumph-over-adversity doc, but well done of the genre.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Starts out rivetingly, with home movies of the March 2011 tsunami carrying a moving carpet of destruction towards a hillside — houses, cars, fleeing people. The tension dissipates once the film moves into its central topic: that the cherry blossoms which return to Japan each spring are a symbol of national spirit and resilience. Unpoetic shots of aftermath debris, contrasted with Malick-y portraits of the blooms themselves, get repetitive, but there's interesting stuff here; look out for the tree wrangler (who refers to himself as "the cherry master") who talks about the beauty and terror of nature, and how "we forget the terror."

Should win: No clear leader in my opinion, but the one that really stuck with me is Saving Face.

Will win: My sense is that The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossomhas the lead here.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

SCORE CARD UPDATE: Sarah D. Bunting wins the Oscars Death Race

Current score: Oscars 0, Sarah 61; 24 categories completed

Best Picture:

Best Actor:

Best Actress:

Best Supporting Actor:

Best Supporting Actress:

Best Director

Best Foreign Language Film:

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Animated Feature Film:

Best Art Direction:

Best Cinematography:

Best Sound Mixing:

Best Sound Editing:

Best Original Score:

Best Original Song:

Best Documentary Feature:

Best Documentary (short subject):

Best Film Editing:

Best Makeup:

Best Costume Design:

Best Animated Short Film:

Best Live Action Short Film:

Best Visual Effects:

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Picture

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The end is rapidly approaching and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is down to the category for Documentary Shorts. Here, she picks the Oscar in the Best Picture category. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here. It's a tough job. But, someone has to do it.]

NYMag's David Edelstein posits that The Artist is a lock for the gold on Sunday, and I don't disagree, with the conclusion or the reasoning. It's a weird year for the Best Pic slate, with a lot of seriously-flawed-at-best material; it might come down to the least of nine evils.

The evil-lope, please…

The nominees

The Artist. As Edelstein notes, it's charming — charming enough. Some found it too self-consciously charming, but a lot of people saw it…and a lot of people felt good and smart about themselves for seeing it. The presumptive winner.

The Descendants. Went off the boil a few weeks ago, which is fine by me, as I despised it across the board. Not a terrible pick for your pool, but unlikely.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Man, people are REALLY afraid of Scott Rudin, eh? …I would drop a "just kidding" in here if I could find another reason for the nomination, but I can't. Widely, and correctly, reviled by critics; no chance.

The Help. Wonderful performances almost get the white-guilty writing out of its own way, but not quite. A long shot.

Hugo. I admired it a great deal, and while it's not something I will rush to buy on DVD, of the group this year, I think it's the most…complete, I guess. It's a story for all ages, the acting is good, the writing is a little strange but mostly good, the director pushed himself and the format, and it's pretty. It could win, but I would bet it for Best Directing, not here.

Midnight in Paris. A past-masters nomination, I suspect, for a likeable but redundant Woody Allen movie. No chance.

Moneyball. A very good movie that exceeded my expectations by a wide margin; it's built well. For whatever reason — too niche? — it's not in the discussion, which is unfortunate, but the nomination is the award.

The Tree of Life. A part of me wants it to win, because it didn't work for me, but I still think it's important, from an event standpoint and from a "half the fun of watching movies is talking about them afterwards" standpoint. Plus, watching people lose their fookin' minds on Twitter about it at 11:55 PM? Awesome. "Divisive" won't get it done, though, and I don't think it has enough friends in the room.

War Horse. Gorgeous but undisciplined outing from Spielberg that might feel too "children's" to pull many votes. Doubtful.

Who shouldn't be here: I'll just say it: most of them. EL&IC is the most egregious, but this is another category where it's not who's here. It's who's not.

Who should be here, but isn't: I was disappointed in Tinker Tailor, but it's ambitious, at least, and it's better than several of the nominees. So is Win Win. So is Meek's Cutoff. So is the entire Best Foreign Language category. Seriously, where is A Separation — it pulled a screenplay nom, it got decent distribution compared to its category-mates, and it has a basic understanding of how human beings speak to one another, which is not something you can say for about half the BP slate. Where's Rango? Where's Bridesmaids, for that matter?

I get a whiff of "let's not bother nominating things the Academy voters won't make an effort to see" from the nominees this year. …Well, every year, but it's not usually the bulk of the list. I have absolutely no problem with nominating popular entertainments that did big box office, but if films got passed over as too challenging to the voters, that's horseshit. The rest of us have to pretend to take these awards seriously for 17 months out of the year, so the voters can take them seriously too, or they can step aside. Fall asleep reading subtitles? You're excused. Can't follow complicated plots? You're excused. "But how do I get the 3D glasses to go over my bifoca–" You're excused. You don't have to drive to Montreal and back in one day to see Monsieur Lazhar like one crazy lady I might mention, but if "best" means "least likely to inconvenience members of the industry whose kings we are crowning in front of the entire world on TV"? Not good enough.

ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! …Hee. Sorry about that. I'm a little tired over here. To the prediction-mobile, let's go!

Who should win: Hugo or Moneyball

Who will win: The Artist

Who needs a binky and a nap: This brother

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Director and Cinematography

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The end is rapidly approaching and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is ready to call the races for Best Director and Best Cinematography. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here. ]

Perhaps I should have given each of these categories its own piece, but I don't think you can separate them, and also, we're running out of time here. Let's take cinematography first.

I think any of the nominees has a solid argument, in theory: The Artist for its unusual film format (okay, that's kind of a reach), Dragon Tattoo for the palpable cold and consistent blue palette, Hugo for the dreamlike design and extra credit for 3D, War Horse for that saturated look and a handful of gorgeously orchestrated shots. But this one belongs to The Tree of Life (and this alone). And rightly so.

I don't see anyone on the list who doesn't belong, although The Artist's nom is kind of cheap, but I'd have liked to see Tinker Tailor get some photography/art recognition. You could practically smell the Soviet tobacco, even watching it on a screener.

Should win: The Tree of Life

Will win: The Tree of Life

Best Directing is a more difficult call, at least for me, because the tendency is to both praise and blame the director for anything and everything, even if we have no real information on what s/he could control inside the production. On the plus side, we really only have to consider three of the five directors on the list. Payne will win elsewhere for The Descendants, but I didn't see him doing anything above and beyond with the structure or the look of the story. Woody Allen could direct this picture in his sleep — and may have, with The Purple Rose of Manhattan tucked under his pillow. It's The Artist, Hugo, and The Tree of Life.

I can't say whether it's more challenging to direct actors with no audible dialogue. Hazanavicius may get extra credit for that, and various other quirks of the production. Again, that's rewarding the concept, not the execution, and I liked the execution well enough — but Hugo's is, well, harder, and as I've said elsewhere, the results are more universally appealing. The Tree of Life…I can see the argument. It's very ambitious, it gets good performances (out of children as well), it's gorgeous, and the issues I had with it are probably at the script/editing levels. But you can say the same things about Hugo, without as many problems. But I would watch TToL again, and I don't think I would "need" to revisit Hugo. So, as always, it depends on what we think should be rewarded here. I'd be very surprised if Malick won, but encouraged at the same time.

Woody Allen shouldn't have made this list, nor Payne — not if they're taking a spot from David Fincher, Asghar Farhadi, or another director who wasn't so by-numbers.

Should win: Hugo

Will win: The Artist

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the races for Best Original and Adapted Screenplay

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Oscars Death Race is almost over and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is busting out her predictions for the Academy Awards 2012. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Adapted Screenplay is an interesting case, at least to me: what's getting voted on, exactly? Is it the screenplay qua screenplay? Or is it the skill of the adaptation? I realize I shouldn't think too deeply on these criteria, but the category this year points up the distinction I've just mentioned, for two reasons: 1) the source material is quite varied (two novels, a play, a non-fiction book, etc.); and 2) two adaptations of wildly popular book series didn't get nominated. More on that in a sec; first, the nominees.

The Descendants has this locked up, I believe, though it's probably the only statue the film will receive. I wish it could get some other statue, like for Best Hawaiian Shirts or Best Bridges Imitation By Another Bridges…something that's not for writing.

Hugo is one I'm surprised to see nominated, but that's probably because the movie registers more visually; people who have read the book almost uniformly praise the film version. I really liked the way the writing's phrasings and tone reflected the fabulism of the plot, and I wouldn't mind a win for it, but it's not happening.

The Ides of March. The movie had pacing problems, but I don't know that that's the screenplay's fault. The first half is gripping and it does do some things extremely well (the scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the SUV is an example of how it elided things and expected us to keep up). But this isn't the nom I thought we'd get from TIoM — George Clooney's acting and the way he's shot combined to make him, for the first time in a while, genuinely menacing and villainous onscreen; I also thought Ryan Gosling might get some attention. But it's this, and this came out too early. No shot.

Moneyball is, for my money, the best writing on offer here. It's Sorkin-y, but in the good ways; it lets the actors work, but isn't too indulgent of them; and it brought what I assumed was an unfilmable book to the screen. If I had a vote, I'd spend it on this.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does have an argument. My understanding is that it had its work cut out as far as trying to tame the sprawling John le Carré plots (the last time the material was attempted, it was a miniseries), and while I've heard it called murky and confusing, I didn't agree, or think that opacity was a bad thing in the second place. If the criterion is "how well did the screenplay address the challenges presented by the source," TTSS may have had the biggest distance to cover. But…again, I wonder why it's the script that gets the nod and not Tom Hardy, or the set design or cinematography. And it did win the BAFTA. Solid pick.

Anyone not belong here? I like Payne's other stuff, so I'm not that bent about it, but The Descendants is not good writing.

Anyone not here who should be? Dragon Tattoo, perhaps. I do think Jane Eyre should have gotten a nomination; that material is not for everyone, but Moira Buffini's version chops out the bulk of what alienates people about it, and gets to the good stuff.

Should win: Moneyball

Will win: The Descendants

Original Screenplay is a bit easier to assess in theory; in practice, the diversity of the nominations in 2012 make it tougher.

The Artist will win a lot of its categories, and it may win this one too — but the narrative and its structure are rather conventional (or, if you're one of the film's detractors, "derivative"). The concept isn't the same thing as the scripting, but I don't know whether that's considered a relevant distinction. A solid bet.

Bridesmaids. I liked the movie, but I had some issues with the length, and with the frat pandering. The writing did shine in the less showy scenes, like the scene at the beginning with the two friends at brunch, but I don't think it should win, and it won't.

Margin Call. JC Chandor attempted to split the difference between McGuffin-y vagueness and arcane specifics; I get the reasoning, but it failed. I'm betting he has good writing in him; this wasn't it. It's not impossible that he wins, but it doesn't seem to have legs.

Midnight in Paris. The customary nom for Woody Allen, but it's minor work. No shot.

A Separation is the best work here by a good distance, and at the highest difficulty level. The overlapping dialogue, the order and timing of the reveals, get more impressive the more you think about them.

Anything here that shouldn't be? Margin Call.

Anything that should be here but isn't? Win Win, maybe? Or Melancholia.

Should win: A Separation

Will win: The Artist

OSCARS DEATH RACE: A SEPARATION

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The end is rapidly approaching and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is down to the category for Documentary Shorts. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

A Separation opens with an argument in front of a judge. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants a divorce from Nader (Peyman Maadi), which he will grant, albeit reluctantly, and custody of their sixth-grade daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, writer/director Asghar Farhadi's daughter), which he won't. Simin wants to take Termeh out of Iran (she doesn't say why, but we're to assume the reason is…Iran), but Nader won't leave his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), who has Alzheimer's and needs constant care. Simin doesn't really want to divorce Nader, we sense, but when the bluff is called, she doesn't blink, and moves to her mother's house; Termeh, invited to go with her, elects to stay with her father.

But the two of them can't care for Nader's father during the day, and with Simin gone, Nader hires a day nurse — the devout, pregnant Razieh (Sareh Bayat), who commutes two hours each way with her four-year-old daughter. On her first day, the patient soils himself, and Razieh must consult with religious authorities to see if it's a sin for her to clean him. The father has a tendency to wander away barefoot to the newsstand; at one point, Razieh has to venture across a busy city street to retrieve him. She tries to quit and substitute her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini, particularly outstanding), in her place, but that doesn't work out, so she comes back. That afternoon, Nader comes home to find his father on the floor beside his bed, barely breathing and lashed to the bedpost with a scarf restraint.

So Razieh is either a criminal or a moron, right? Unless she isn't, and that explanation takes its time to come out. First, accusations of stealing have to fly, Razieh has to refuse to leave Nader's apartment under a cloud, Nader has to make her go, and another incident has to compound the first, and so on, and so on. Someone is shoved, or thrown, or merely ordered to leave, and the consequence is Nader's fault, or his father's "fault," or Hodjat's, or no one's. A complaint is filed, and then a cross-complaint. The audience picks a side, then switches, then switches back as witnesses are called and admissions are made. These stubborn, brave, annoying, complicated, recognizable characters and the thoughtful, unaffected performances behind them (even little Kimia Hosseini as Somayeh, Razieh's daughter, is fantastic) combine with a naturalistic dialogue style to make A Separation feel like a documentary. The arguments overlap, repeat, in such an authentic way, sometimes Catskills-y, sometimes tiresome, and in doing so, they give you time to come around to points of view.

I'd expected to respect this movie; instead, I loved it. I loved the ending — Simin and Nader on either side of a busy doorway, not speaking. I loved the family's little jokes about Nader's father at the foosball table ("he's the manager"). I loved how Razieh reminded me, in some shots, of the worried-moon faces of the women in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and in others of Madeline's Miss Clavel. It has texture.

Best Foreign Language is a strong category this year. I at least liked all the nominees, and three of them are wonderful. A Separation will win, and should.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the Race for Best Live-Action Short

Pentecost. I feel like we get one of these every year, a mini roman a clef about a grade-school kid in which the central gag doesn't quite merit the attention, and Pentecost is this year's. The pep talk by the priest is cute, in theory, but the whole thing needs to move much faster, not least the climactic scene (it would still fall flat, but less so).

Raju. A nicely executed piece about a German couple in Kolkata to adopt an orphan. It does everything it needs to, and doesn't do anything it doesn't need to. Could have taken a little more time with the denouement, but I liked it.

The Shore. It's a sort of O. Henry story about two old friends who haven't spoken in a while, and it's acted extremely well, particularly by Ciaran Hinds; his elegance with the exposition is a pleasure to watch. But the big "humorous" set piece is set up in a way that doesn't make sense and isn't funny, and the payoff in no way justifies the build-up. It's not boring, exactly, or too long, since chopping it down wouldn't solve the problem; there's just not much of a story.

Time Freak. Cute, shaggy-doggish plot about two friends and a time machine that doesn't trust its jokes. The throwaway visuals and sped-up bits were the parts that worked, but the bulk of the short is the actors floundering in exposition quicksand (and the guy who plays Evan is not great). It holds the last beat way too long, like "you will say 'cut' out loud, several times" too long. Fun idea, weak execution.

Tuba Atlantic. A man is given a terminal diagnosis; shortly afterwards, an Angel of Death shows up at his door to "help" him. I was almost sure the aggressive quirk of the concept couldn't be overcome, but it's a beautiful piece to look at, and the script grounds itself in details: Oskar unfolding a photo after three decades; the Angel's complaint about her sister and her braces. The end is a tad corny, but the movie did suck me in in the end.

Should win: None of them is fantastic, but Raju is the best of the lot.

Will win: Based on what won the category last year, we can't rule out Time Freak; it's that or Tuba Atlantic.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: TREE OF LIFE

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The end is rapidly approaching and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is down to the categories for Live Action Shorts and Documentary Shorts. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Is it fair to review a work that functions, as Roger Ebert said in his piece on The Tree of Life, as more of a prayer than a story? Can we measure this intensely personal, individual film with traditional yardsticks?

I believe it is; I believe we can. Some of the positive reviews of The Tree of Life seem defensive to the point of stridency, meeting charges of "but there's no narrative!" with a carpet-bombing of superlatives, and implying between salvos that such an unconventional and daring form of filmic storytelling has no use for bourgeois adjectives like "linear" and "coherent." Well…actually, on the one hand, I agree, in the sense that Malick has his ways of doing things and thinking about stories and connecting (or shuffling) dots, and that peculiar Malickian blend of compulsive control and sticky viscera either hits you or it doesn't, so no review per se is going to change your mind.

But on the other hand, it's possible to understand how Malick operates, to be tolerant of the occasional sweaty lapses into sophomore workshop, to respect — revere — his unique sequencing and wait with hands folded for him to arrive inside your head, to say "oy, always with the leaves," but fondly, as you would about a nutty relative…and to think, still, that The Tree of Life doesn't work.

And that's where I'm at with it. I love Malick, he has the heart of a lion to try the shit he does and never hide, but: The Tree of Life fell flat for me. I didn't hate it; I adored parts of it, and got teary, and it is stunning visually. Nobody else can transport you back to the dusks of your youth like Malick.

This felt forced, though — out of sync, like a hitter in a slump who swings too hard or too late. The whispered voice-overs do reflect the things some of us say to God, but "realistic" doesn't necessarily mean "interesting," and the murmurs become redundant after a while, then almost parodic. Ditto the gazillion scenes of the kids playing, and/or their mother (Jessica Chastain) providing a safe Rockwellian haven from the cardboard abusiveness of O'Brien Sr. (Brad Pitt); it's not the repetition itself, really, but the pacing, which occasionally felt like a screensaver designed by a joint coalition of Scientific American and Betty Friedan.

The acting is very good, given that the company doesn't get much to play aside from poignant gazing. I don't know how you'd begin to direct a kid in the young-Jack role, but Hunter McCracken is a keeper. Pitt is fantastic again, illustrating the divide between the man he thinks he is and the man his sons see — and that he knows that divide is there.

It isn't a disaster, but it never quite gets going, never quite attains that chant feeling I think Ebert is talking about that you get in other Malick works. Yes, it's self-indulgent, but that can work for this artist; here, it works against him (the regrettable megachurch-y foolishness of the ending is one example). I don't think anyone's wrong to love TToL, I agree that it's audacious and so on, but a noble failure is still a failure.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: BULLHEAD

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Bullhead isn't about what you think it's about at first. You start out with a voice-over about things from the past coming back; then you move into a plot about the Flemish "hormone mafia," and whether cattle farmer Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) is going to involve himself in a deal to improve the weight of his cows. Or so you think. You also see a series of moody shots of Jacky in his bathroom, staring, sitting immobile in the shower, then injecting himself with testosterone, so then you think the movie is about that — that perhaps he's preparing for a fight of some kind? Then Jacky attends a meeting set up by a smarmy vet (Frank Lamers), and recognizes the boss's flunky Diederik (Jeroen Perceval), although both men play it like they've never met. There is A Vibe between them, and you think, "Ohhh, okay. It's about that." And it is. And…it isn't.

It's about all these things (the "preparing for a fight" part, too, although not in a Rocky sense). Jacky and Diederik were besties as kids; their fathers worked together, tied up with the same sketchy cattle characters Jacky is now dealing with. Then they crossed paths with a disturbed boy, and that long-ago horror is now leading inexorably to ruin.

The film is shot effectively, which is to say unpleasantly. I felt stifled by the greyness and the tight close-ups, but it worked to create tension. Good acting throughout as well. Perceval's jumpy jackass is convincing but not unsympathetic, and Schoenaerts has one of those beautifully busted European-actor faces that American film doesn't really allow for; it looks carved, not born, but it's expressive in spite of that, and he does fine work with an Ennis Del Mar-type character who isn't very articulate. And there isn't much even an articulate character can say to Jacky's situation. The film is about a man who couldn't quite become a man, who lived without living, and it's beyond discussing.

It puts a foot wrong now and then — I didn't love the last shot, and the crucifix hallucination is sophomoric — and it's hard to take in some ways, but it's a strong movie, in the way a drink is strong.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Animated Short

Dimanche/Sunday. It seemed promising despite the crude animation; the sound design is witty, and it started out as a sort of fantasia on how children perceive things. But it keeps killing animals off horribly for no reason, and the surrealism comes and goes when it's convenient. A clearer visual style might have helped, but I don't think it knows what it's trying to say.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. The ending is mournful and beautiful, but the emotion is unearned, and the more I thought about this one, the less it held up. The books themselves, bird/butterfly hybrids, are endearing, but between the scattershot hat-tips to The Wizard of Oz, the internal logic that isn't, and the over-long and show-offy tornado intro, the story doesn't jell.

La Luna. The Pixar entry. Short and sweet, but didn't get much reaction from me or the theater at large. Usually a Pixar short is either really cute or hee-larious, or has one or two memorable images or new ways of thinking about a visual; this has a lovely rendering of oar marks on water at the beginning, but I had to check my notes to recall it. The competent pacing alone could snag it the statue…sometimes "professional" and "not an utter muddle" is enough in this category.

A Morning Stroll. It's far from perfect, but chickens are so funny to me, and the animated chicken who ties this triptych together is SO fluffy and has SUCH teeny legs that I immediately loved the short. In the first segment, it's basically animated as a couple of swoops, a beak line, and little stick legs, but it grooms itself so evocatively regardless…it's probably just me, the chicken thing, but it's cute. AMS also uses clever fonts and does a couple of new things with zombie humor (although it gets a little too in love with that subject in the final third), and it's the most fun and least self-serious of the lot. Definitely my favorite.

Wild Life. Gorgeous to look at, and almost there: good character beats (a dog busts out a wicked side-eye, for instance), switches up styles. But there's too much going on, too many interstitial cards and explainy letters, and not enough development of the central character except via the dismissive opinions of others. It's like it doesn't trust itself.

Should win: A Morning Stroll. La Luna is a bit dull, and Wild Life isn't quite cooked.

Will win: La Luna.