Oscar Shorts: Live Action and Animated

Just in time to capture your imagination a program of Oscar winning shorts moves into the Angelika Film Center this weekend. The screenings are divided between live action and animated short subjects, with showtimes alternating.
In the animated section the program also includes a handful of additional shorts. My favorite is Presto, which was the cartoon that ran before Wall-E. The winning short, Le Maison en Petits Cubes resembles a mind puzzle, constantly shifting in form and meaning with soft pastel colors. For the live action program my favorite was The Pig because I thought it achieved an emotional victory for its ending that you don't see coming. The Pig concerns an old man dealing with an unpleasant operation and the fact that the Muslim patient next to him wants a painting of a pig removed from the room. All the live action entries are enticing and the film that won the Academy Award last week, Toyland, plays with the conceit of the Holocaust being seen through a child's eyes.


Animated Program - Total Running Time 94 min
Lavatory - Lovestory - dir. Konstantin Bronzit - Russia - 10 min
Oktapodi - dir. Julien Bocabeille - France - 3 min
Le Maison en Petits Cubes - dir. Kunio Kato - Japan - 12 min
This Way Up - dirs. Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith - UK - 9 min
Presto - dir. Doug Sweetland - United States - 5 min
plus the following Commended Films:
Varmints - dir. Marc Craste - UK - 24 min
John and Karen - dir. Matthew Walker - UK - 5 min
Gopher Broke - produced by Blur Studios - USA - 4 min.
Skhizein - dir. Jérémy Clapin - France - 14 min.
Hot Dog - dir. Bill Plympton - USA - 6 min.

Live Action - Total Running Time 98 min
Auf Der Strecke (On the Line) - dir. Reto Caffi - Germany/Switzerland - 30 min
New Boy - dir. Steph Green - Ireland - 11 min
Toyland - dir. Jochen Freydank - Germany - 14 min
The Pig - dirs. Tivi Magnusson and Dorte Høgh - Denmrk - 22 min
Manon on the Asphalt - dirs. Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont - France - 15 min

Two Lovers

When Joaquin Phoenix zoned out on Dave Letterman’s show people bought the gag wholesale. A generation ago the concept of reinventing yourself multiple times in various guises was fresh, but nowadays it’s as dead as Andy Kaufman. In case you don’t know the incident to which I refer, about this time last month (2/11/09) Phoenix appeared on Dave Letterman with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers look he’s been sporting for, well, as long as it took to grow that Rip Van winkle beard. Television is so controlled that there’s no way Phoenix’s meltdown was the spontaneous combustion it pretended to be. I don’t pretend to be a critic of hip hop but Phoenix wants us to believe his future as an artist follows the path of music as opposed to film.
It’s too bad if Phoenix does plan to retire because he’s worthy of your sore eyes with his turn as a thirtysomething guy down on his luck that recently moved back with his parents (in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn) in Two Lovers. There’s a touch of angst like Marty felt. Marty was the guy who lives with his mom (a role won an Oscar for Ernest Borgnine in the mid-50s) and never wants to go out. Unlike his black and white counterpart Phoenix’s Leonard meets two rather hot women (Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw) right off the bat, and then spends the rest of the film deceiving them and himself.
The Brighton Beach locale will ring a bell to viewers familiar with director’s James Gray previous films like Little Odessa and We Own the Night. Like those films Two Lovers observes the tight knit binds that hold families together. Unlike Gray’s other films Two Lovers never wanders into violence. In that sense Two Lovers plays like the comic doppelganger of Gray’s forays into family ties.
Paltrow’s Michelle, a kept woman, offers the glimpse of another lifestyle to Leonard whereas Shaw’s Sandra represents the status quo since her parents and Leonard’s folks want them to get married. Much of Two Lovers’ humor comes from Leonard’s attempts to be different, like in the way he acts suave around Sandra but is kind of a dweeb with Michelle, even going so far as to mimic her taste in alcohol by ordering a Brandy Alexander.
Two Lovers, playing exclusively at the River Oaks Three, suggests that Phoenix is at the top of his game as an actor. The film swirls with potential romantic comedy balanced by dramatic obstacles.