Short films!

The place to talk about films that are, well, short! In days of old you had Disney, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Laurel and Hardy etc etc short films coming out of your ears. Nowadays it's mainly the Pixar shorts that get wide recognition.


Here's a few that are in the shortlist for this years Oscar for Best Animated feature (the shortlist also inlcudes Part Cloudy and A Matter Of Loaf and Death, but I hope you've all seen them both already!)


First up, narrated by Nick Cave, The Cat Piano

I'll admit that I didn't like that one very much.



This next one is much better, funny and charming. French Roast


And an oldie now, because I saw it the other day and it has Marvin The Martian, one of my favourite cartoon charaters of all time - Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a 1/2 Century!

A few more now, and along with French Roast that I posted before and Loaf and Death, they make up the five nominess for this year's best Animated short.


First up, a tug of war battle between the Grim Reaper and a hero-like doctor for an old lady's soul! Very funny

The Lady and The Reaper


Next, an old lady tells her grandaughter a version of Sleeping Beauty, but places herself in the story as a wronged elderly fairy. This one's is the weakest of the bunch, and to think it was nominated over Partly Cloudy


Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty



Lastly, this one takes place in a world covered in famous advertising slogan and the inhabitants are folk like Ronaol McDonald, the Jolly Green Giant, the MGM Lion and many more. It's inventive, and playing "spot the brand" is quite fun, but it would be better as a silent film I think.

Logorama, part 1

Logorama, part 2



And there you go. So, my order of preference for the five nominees are

A Matter Of Loaf And Death (This, must, must, must win!)
French Roast
The Lady And The Reaper
Logorama
Granny O Grimm's Sleeping Beauty


but I wish Partly Cloudy had been nominated

Two more now, both horror films and not for the faint-hearted!


First off, a weird European Puppet animation. A serial killer breaks into a house and terrorises a family. Quite funny if you're in the mood! It has a bad guy who hides inside a Christmas tree!!

Bloody Merry Christmas, part 1

Bloody Merry Christmas, part 2



Next up, a Grim Reaper-style murdered ruthlessly attacks an innocent man. With a spoon! A skit of slasher films, goes on a bit but is still a good laugh.


The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon!


Enjoy!

Three oscar winning animated shorts from the 60s.


The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

A thin blue line falls in love with a red dot, but she considers him dull and boring, preferring instead to be with a messy, black squiggle. The line goes off and learns to be more interesting, practising bending himself into all manner of shapes in order to win the heart of the dot. Robert Morley narrates this very odd but charming cartoon.



Munro

Charlie Brown-lookalike Munro is a 4 year old boy who gets drafted into the army. Despite telling everybody that he's only 4, he passes the physical and heads of to boot camp, and everyone there ignores him as well. After all, the army doesn't recruit 4 year old boys so how he can be one?



The Critic

Various shapes appear and move across the screen, accompanied by twinkly music. An unseen man wonders what the shapes are meant to symbolise and starts giving his own theories. Mel Brooks provides the voice and, like most of his own films, he isn't very funny.

An absolute classic Tom and Jerry one now. Quiet Please!

One of the finest cartoons ever made. I just love every second.


And a gem from Disney, The Band Concert. Stunningly animated, there's so much going in in this cartoon.

Two more oscar winning animations.


First off Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Double Feature

Set to the music of two great tunes from Herb Albert - Spanish Flea and Tijuana Taxi. There's one sequence that I'm sure must have inspired a few Muppet characters


Next, The Crunch Bird

A woman wants to buy her husband a birthday gift and settles on a pet, the Crunch Bird. At two minutes long it's a one joke film and the punchline is visible a long way from the end. Good fun though

Leaving behind animation now and going to the very start of cinema. Two films directed by Frenchman Louis le Prince, both about two seconds long.

They are Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge and they're both 122 years old!


Perhaps not much too look at, but still fascinating from a historical viewpoint.



This next one's from 1912, starring Andre Deed, a big name in silent omedy and is entitled Artheme Swallows his Clarinet. Bonkers!

Another oscar winning 'toon. From 1953, the history of music, Disney style!

Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom

A Symposium on Popular Songs

Part 1
Part 2

More music from Disney. This one's oscar-nominated from 1962.

Ludwig Von Drake, or Donald Duck's uncle as he might be better known, provides us with a potted history of 20th Century which has all been, he claims, entirely inspired and created by him. we then clips of his creations. A ragtime song performed by stop-motion vegetables, a Bing Crosby-lookalike doing some crooning, a brilliant early rock and roll song and more. Excellent!

4 more 'toons!

The Skeleton Dance
One of the greatest animated shorts ever made. The first of Disney's experimental Silly Symphonies. Composer Carl Stalling, most closely associated with Warner Bros cartoons, posed the idea to Disney that animation could be drawn to fit music and that led to this film's creation. Horror staples abound in the first half. Owls, lightning, bats, spiders, black cats and a dog howling at the moon, but it's when the titular dance begins that the short really kicks off. The four skeletons moving eerily in synch, using one another's bones as musical instruments, is oddly creepy 80 years on, but the highlight is probably when one skeleton comes up the screen, gnashing his teeth menacingly. Brilliant.


Egyptian Melodies
Another Silly Symphonies, another horror. No skeletons this time, but mummies. A spider opens the door to a egyptian tomb, making quietly makes is way down the passages, a remarkable sequence as the camera follows his journey from behind. Once in the tomb he's terrified when 4 mummies come to life and start dancing. Things become worse when the characters on a frieze also become animated, sending the poor blighter back on his way outside.


Ferdinand The Bull
This short earned Disney his 7th Oscar in the 30's for animated short films. Ferdinand is a big strong bull who likes to laze about smelling flowers but after being mistakenly thought to be ferocious, he's whisked off to become the foe for a prize bullfighter.


Local Boy Makes Good: A Story With a Moral
A UK propganda cartoon in which an RAF pilot fails to put on his respirator, leaving his at the mercy of a squadron of Luftwaffe planes. Luckily his altitude gauge is at hand to make things right.

A piece of brilliance from Aardman, concerning a man who is pestered by a buzzing insect - Fly

Macabre animated British fun here, as two undertakers have to transport a body themselves after their hearse is destroyed - This Way Up

A little, and by little I mean 90 seconds, gem from 1969 - Bambi Meets Godzilla. I laughed more than I perhaps should have

Time for some early Disney!

First up, one of his earliest toon.s an odd take on Little Red Riding Hood

Then two Mickey Mouse Classics, Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie
Both great animations, but his character, especially in Plane Crazy is much different to how he later became. I like him better in his later cartoons.



And now, Superman! I saw my first Superman cartoon just last week and they're brilliant! Better than the films! Here's the first two from the Fleischer studios



Superman and The Mechanial Monsters, the influence of the latter can be seen in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Rhapsody In Rivets, a fun cartoon in which a skyscraper is built to the tune of Hungarian Rhapsody No 2!


And here's a short that ties in with the great Pixar film Up - George and A.J.

Tales of Worm Paranoia, part of What a Cartoon! on Cartoon Network, 1997. Creepy as hell...

"You don't know me but I had wrath in my heart"


That was great, would've freaked me out when younger though!

Imagine how I felt!!

If we're going for weird ones, try this one for size. Chris Morris' My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117...

Time for some foreign animation!


First up, Inspirace by Czech animator Karel Zeman. Made in 1948, it';s a stop-motion film made with figurines made out of blown glass! That must have been painstaking!


Also, Hedgehog In The Fog from Russian Yuriy Norshteyn. Absolutely gorgeous stuff.

Vincent by Tim Burton. Considering how much I love Burton and this films (I even like Planet of The Apes) it's amazing that I first saw this just a few days ago. Brilliant animation!

I love Vincent!! I remember when I saw Nightmare Before Christmas originally, Vincent was on before it!!

From Aardman...