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Oscar shorts and an old car battery

May 14, 2005

We dashed out of the house, having let time get away from us, and dashed from my van to the historic Normal Theater.  It was the 2005 collection of Oscar Shorts, and those are always interesting, sometimes deeply moving.  Here are my notes:

The films Gopher Broke, Two Cars – One Night, and 7:35 in the morning were pretty forgettable, so I’ll dismiss them all in a single sentence.

Little Terrorist was quite funny, terrifying, and touching and sad.  A little Pakistani boy stumbles through a minefield to find himself pursued by soldiers in India.  Religious and cultural barriers make it difficult for a Hindu schoolmaster to help him return to his home.

Birthday Boy visits the solitary play of a Korean child in 1951 – and the tragedy he can’t comprehend. 

Ryan just blew my mind, and was worth the price of admission all by itself.  The 14-minute Canadian animated film portrays a once-brilliant animator interviewed as an addict on skid row. What’s striking about the piece is the visual conceptualization of both the interviewer and animator’s psychic injuries, and what remains of them.  The images rang completely true for me.  You just have to see it to believe it.

Wasp is a live-action portrayal of a really, really bad mother in London.  Hardened social workers will probably find this familiar turf, but many viewers exiting the theater found it rather shocking.  Perhaps they don’t read newspapers.

The final lesson of the evening is: the 8-year-old battery in my van has the power to (a: ) keep the headlights burning for two hours while we’re in the theater, or (b: ) start the engine, but not (c: ) both of the above. 

Categories: Movies, Reviews
  1. WeeDram
    May 15, 2005 at 17:12 | #1

    re: Ryan… :D

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