Shorts!

So, this weekend I went to see the Oscar nominated short films. I just love shorts. They are tiny, little delights. And let me tell you, the people of DC agree with me. The E Street Cinema was packed, the line for concessions snaked around the lobby, several showings sold out and people were asking around if anyone had any extra tickets. It was mayhem.

The Animated shorts were hosted by the guys who won last year for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which you may remember me mentioning. In between the shorts they talked about making their film and how shorts are such a different creative experience because they're the total vision of one or two people as opposed to a feature which is a collaboration of thousands.

My favorite animated short was Maggie Simpson in "The Longest Daycare."  I don't watch The Simpsons, but this was a delight, very clever and funny. I also really liked Fresh Guacamole, which clocked in at 2 minutes and was a stop-motion (oh, how I love stop-motion) visual treat. You can check it out here.

The Live Action shorts were hosted by Luke Matheny, who won two years ago for God of Love, which you may recall me telling you was utterly delightful and well worth your time. It's still on my iPad if anyone wants to see it.

There were two standouts in the Live Action shorts: Curfew and Death of a Shadow. Both will soon be available on iTunes.

Death of a Shadow had a really interesting premise that I think could have been served well in a feature-length film. A WWI soldier, who died tragically, now works for a spooky "collector" of shadow deaths. The soldier time travels to the moment of a death and captures it on a special camera that allows him to view it. He then returns to the Collector and places the shadow death in the Collector's gallery. When the soldier has collected 10,000 deaths, he will be free and his own shadow released from the gallery. The art direction is great and supremely creepy. Both the story and the characters are under-developed, but in a feature-length film much could be done about that.

The one I'm rooting for is Curfew, which takes a tired premise (messed up adult + precocious child) and turns it into something heartfelt and fresh. The lead actor, Shawn Christensen, also wrote, directed, and did the music for the film. He was probably cooking lunch for everyone as well. Keep an eye out for him. I think he'll do great things in the future.