The 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films
"The 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films" is almost an accurate title. One nominated animated short, "One Man Band," was pulled from the program by Pixar, and in its place is "The Fan and the Flower," which was not nominated.And, ironically, "The Fan and the Flower" proves to be one of the better shorts here, an animated fable about the unlikely romance between a potted plant and a ceiling fan.
The rest of this three-hour program, however, is highly uneven. (Locally, the Tower Theatre is splitting the film into two collections, one with all the live-action shorts and another with the animated works, but for a single admission price.)
All of the cartoons are imaginative. The characters and other objects in "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello" appear to be silhouetted paper cutouts, though its story does go on a little too long. And the Oscar-winner, "The Moon and the Son," employs photographs and a variety of drawing techniques and styles. And the digitally animated rag doll characters in the fantasy-thriller "9" almost appear to be real.
The live-action program is heavy on good ideas gone awry. The initially clever "Cashback" becomes an excuse to show various female characters in various states of undress. The calculated-to-shock Irish thriller "Six Shooter," which won the Oscar in the live-action category, is as crass and annoying as one of its characters. The dark comic "Our Time Is Up," about a therapist who finds out he has just weeks to live, is more amusing, albeit predictable.
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