The Oscar Nominated Short Films (2012)

This compilation of Oscar-winning short films was put together by Shorts International, which also has a cable tv channel. They are the group who in the past few years have theatrically screened Oscar short film programs a few weeks just prior to the Oscar telecast, a few of which I've been able to attend. I have additionally seen a few of these at the Chicago International Film Festival or in other places. At one time cable tv channels such as HBO used shorts to either fill up an hour after the end of a film, or an established program such as Exposure, a science fiction and fantasy-based short film program hosted by Lisa Marie, would appear on the Sci Fi Channel. Now we get a whole channel devoted to shorts, in addition to many online portals one can find shorts on! Overall the films on this DVD are pretty good, a selection of live action and animated shorts from about the last ten years, and I can see why they were chosen as winners.

Films include:

God of Love (2010, U.S)
The New Tenants (2009, Denmark)
Toyland (2007, Germany)
West Bank Story (2005, U.S.)
The Lost Thing (2010, Australia)
Logorama (2009, France)
The Danish Poet (2006, Norway/Canada)
Ryan (2004, Canada)
Harvie Krumpet (2004, Australia)

Synopses and reviews after the jump!

The Horseman

Viewers be warned!  This is an Australian revenge film, so prepared for some pretty graphic violence.

The film starts in the middle of the story, where one man (Peter Marshall) is beating another to find some information. Pretty soon, we discover Christian is in search of some answers about the death of his daughter; he thinks she fell into the wrong crowd and they got her mixed up in drugs and other seedy behaviors. He believes she has been soiled by these men so goes after them one by one, torturing them for information as well as hurting them for hurting his daughter.

Christian’s search takes him around the country and he picks up a runaway, Alice (Caroline Marohasy), who claims she is just hitch-hiking to visit a friend. He gives her a ride, perhaps seeing a vulnerability in her that he instinctively wants to protect as it coincides with his current grief. Neither gives the other much detail of who they really are and where they come from and for most of the film Alice is oblivious to what Christian has been doing.

Circumstances separate them and bring them together again, until the people Christian is hunting down come after him.

Wake in Fright

This is an Australian movie from the 70s, "lost" due to its depiction of the male dominated culture of Australia, which while embraced by international audiences, faded at the Australian box office. It re-screened at Cannes a few years ago (where it also won a prize in 1971) and is only one of two films to screen at Cannes twice in that festival's history. The film stars actors mostly unknown to me, except Jack Thompson in his first screen role, and Donald Pleasance, although the other actors are apparently well known in Australia.

It concerns a young British teacher, John (Gary Bond), who is kind of in servitude--teachers have to pay a sort of bond for their jobs, to prevent them from abandoning the job since the outback locations are pretty desolate and isolating. During the Christmas break from school, John tries to travel home to spend time with his girlfriend, but since he has no substantial money, ends up stranded in a small town nicknamed the Yabba, where he had planned to travel on to Sydney. In Yabba, he meets several locals here, including a policeman (Chips Rafferty) who buys him drinks then introduces him to a gambling game, an English doctor with shady methods who finds the Aussies are less discerning about his credentials (Pleasance), and a man who buys him a drink (Al Thomas) and takes him home where John and he spend time with his friends (including Thompson), and, other than John, ignores his wife (Sylvia Kay, the director's wife at the time).

At first John does try halfheartedly to get home, but his degeneration into drinking, gambling, and other male pursuits leads to a week of near-insanity. At the end of it John rejoins "civilized society" but we question what has changed in him now.

Strictly Ballroom

Usually I am not a fan of really broad comedies. I think this '90s film comes from a time when Australia's comedies were mostly of the broad type, at least the ones I saw that came my way. But there is also a romance and music and dancing, creating appeal across many fronts. It is a film by Baz Luhrmann, part of his Red Curtain trilogy (along with Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge), and based on a stage musical he made in the '80s.

The plot concerns the competitive ballroom dancer Scott (Paul Mercurio). For all his life he has trained as a ballroom dancer, a culture that is a big part of several generations of his family. His parents, Shirley and Doug (Pat Thompson, Barry Otto), also were competitive when they were younger and now run a dancing academy. Among the hopefuls is the amateur Fran (Tara Morice), an ugly duckling who knows she can never match the glamour of the ballroom. When Scott tries to include new showier steps in his performances that are outside of the standard rules of the ballroom community, he is pressured into following the rules by his manager Les (Peter Whitford), the competition head Barry (Bill Hunter), and other dancers.

But Fran sees him practicing his new steps and Scott is grudgingly convinced to have her as a temporary partner since no one else wants to risk dancing with him. He also meets Fran's father, a notable flamenco dancer (Antonio Vargas), who helps Scott perfect his paso doble. Scott later finds out something about his own father and a shared dream that he now has the opportunity to make real.

Red Hill

Sometimes I like a good action movie that is not too taxing, yet still highbrow enough to satisfy my artistic sensibilities.  This modern Australian western/police suspense story, although it has many old fashioned western movie aesthetics,  has some gripping action and a couple of sympathetic characters who are opposite sides of the same coin. 

Young cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) has been voluntarily transferred to a countryside town, with his heavily pregnant wife. The reason at first is not explained why he elected to move to a smaller municipality. On his first day at work, there is an accident at a prison some miles away, and a murderer escapes, Eddie (Tom E. Lewis), an aborigine who was put away by Red Hill's sheriff Bill (Steve Bisley). We see the police department is pretty much an old boys network and Bill makes it clear to Shane that he is not very welcome. Bill's close-minded attitude also means he aims to lock down Red Hill and kill Eddie on sight if he comes, implying he is in the right to use such force because Eddie wants revenge for putting him away. Unfortunately for them, Eddie is a superior native tracker and bests the posse again and again, except for Shane, who for some reason he lets go at a critical moment when he sees they share something in common. During a long day and night as they first hunt Eddie, then become the hunted, Shane discovers some secrets of the town and has to decide who's side he is on.

Sweet Talker

This film is a remake/version of the stage musical The Music Man. It is co-written by Bryan Brown, who plays the lead Harry, a con man. One of the film's producers is Taylor Hackford, Helen Mirren's husband.

As he is leaving prison, Harry distracts his cellmate with dirty magazines while he is stealing his research for a get rich scheme: duping a small Australian town to finance the discovery of a sunken treasure ship that may or may not exist. On his way out of jail he pickpockets a supercillious businessman and heads for the town, Beachport. He stays at an inn run by Julie (Karen Allen), and her young son David.

Harry starts to drop clues and signs to convince the town that he knows what he's talking about. He plays on their greed and paints a dream of making Beachport a tourist attraction if the ship is found, and the town falls into his trap. Soon everyone wants to invest and are throwing money at Harry. They are spiffying up the town with souvenir shops and bus tours and the scheme of a theme park.

Animal Kingdom

A teen whose mother has died of drug overdose goes to live with his grandmother and uncles, who are involved in bank robberies and other crimes. They are not strangers to him although he hasn’t seen them for a long time. Josh (James Frecheville), who prefers to be known as “J,” re-meets his grandmother (Jacki Weaver), and uncles Darren who is just a few years older than himself, Craig, and the currently hiding Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) who seems to suffer from bipolarity or ADHD or something that involves meds he is not taking. It is Pope who is the wild card in the family, creating problems and conflicts among the others for his own benefit (which none of the others seem to see). Also in the group is Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), a cohort who hangs out often at the house.

CIFF 2011: Snowtown

A predator joins an Australian family, turning a teen into a fellow killer. Snowtown is based on real murders in 1990s Australia. A divorced mother with several sons trusts a neighbor look after them but finds he had taken nude photos of them. This includes those of the teen Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), the middle brother. The kids pretty much fend for themselves and when their mother finds a new man, John (Daniel Henshall), he seems to be a stable and encouraging father figure to the boys.