There are signs aplenty that short films are coming into their own. No longer are these brief cinematic riffs served up as mere appetizers to features at festivals. They have dedicated programs of their own. Often they are must-sees.
Last month, the Sundance Film Festival made 50 of the fest’s 73 shorts available online. (They can be found through June 19 at sun dance.org.)
The venerable Aspen Shortsfest convenes April 5. In its 15th year, it’s one of the few international film festival where winning a top prize may make a short – feature, documentary or animated – eligible for Academy Award consideration.
Which brings us to this week’s evidence of the impressive growth spurt of the short film. Indie distributor Magnolia Pictures has packaged this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts into three programs and is showing them in theaters.
Today, the animated and live-action collections start at the Starz FilmCenter. Next Friday, in the nick of time for last-minute second-guessing, Starz begins screening the documentary contenders.
This week’s packages (through Thursday) are intriguing, in part because they can be educational about where film culture is at the moment.
Unlike the Starz First Look Student Film Festival (in April), which features shorts that are as uneven as they are often exciting, these contenders have the production values but also the familiar sheen of many theatrical releases. Admittedly, “uneven” can be overrated too.
In the live-action category, Sean Ellis’ visually stylish “Cashback” tells the story of art student Ben, who has figured out a soul-saving way to kill time during his supermarket night shift. A full-length version is already in post-production.
Rob Pearlstein’s “Our Time Is Up” features Kevin Pollak as a shrink. When the arrogant doctor learns he’s dying, he dispenses advice more brutal than therapeutic. “The Last Farm,” from Iceland, tells the sorrowful tale of an elderly farmer heading to a retirement community. These two films could not be more different. But that’s the pleasure.
The animated package is even more diverse. Along with the Pixar-produced “One Man Band,” not screened at press time, are “9,” and “Badgered.”
“The Mysteriously Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” is a moody stunner, even if its story of exploration during the time of a plague starts to seem sci-fi familiar.
For story, John Canemaker’s “The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation,” a mixed-media tale of an adult son wrestling with his father’s volatile past, is the most commanding.
To round out the animated program, Magnolia has included Bill Plympton’s latest, “The Fan and the Flower.”
Parents however should be cautioned that these “Not Rated” anthologies have fare that could easily earn them an R. Case in point: Martin McDonagh’s “Six Shooter,” a foulmouthed, violent excursion with a cocky young Irishman (Rúaidhrí Conroy) and a taciturn train passenger (Brendan Gleeson) who has just lost his wife.
“Oscar Shorts 2006 – Animated and Live-Action”
NOT RATED|Animation package, 1 hour, 21 minutes; Live-action package, 1 hour, 40 minutes |SHORT FILM COLLECTIONS|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter; go to denverfilm.org for a schedule or call 303-820-FILM.
