Oscar Animated Shorts Program

I practically died laughing during Logorama, one of the Oscar nominated shorts running as part of the Oscar Animated Shorts engagement (currently unspooling at the Angelika). Everybody who loves movies or has been going on about Avatar-this or Blind Side-that needs to see Logorama.
Logorama is one of ten short subjects playing as part of this program; two categories divide the screenings into live action and animated shorts. The two feature-length programs are:

ANIMATED
French Roast
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper
Logorama
A Matter of Loaf and Death

LIVE ACTION
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish
The New Tenants




The live action shorts reflect concerns we've recently seen in mainstream cinema yet directed with personal views that take the subject to heightened emotional levels. For instance Kavi views child slavery without the underlying joy seen in Slumdog Millionaire while Instead of Abracadabra offers a Euro version of a geek magician with a Napoleon Dynamite complex.
The animated shorts outshne the live action nominees because of their flashes of brilliance. In particular A Matter of Loaf and Death (a pun on a Michael Powell film title) revives Wallace and Gromit and in 25-minutes this return of the Aardman Animations mastery puts most feature-length cartoon movies (excepting Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline) to shame. Gromit meets his match with a foxy poodle while Wallace is groomed for burial by a murderess former beauty queen and it's up to Gromit (and the poodle) to stop her. Logorama starts off as a satire of product placement but then goes ballistic with a couple of trash talking cops who (appearing as Michelin men) shoot up the town Michael Mann style in a battle with a killer clown that looks like and goes by the name of Ronald McDonald.
Even as you're amazed and laughing at the visual jokes the action and adult situations seize your attention. But the filmmakers are from the company H5 in Paris and the English language dialogue takes on new hilarity as swear words are reduced to meaningless phrases via French subtitles. So "No, shit" becomes "serieux?" Or one show stopper "That's what I'm talking about. A flying ass cheetah bouncing into trees and shit. That shit's fucked up," becomes "un guepard aveugle qui se cogne partout, c'est glauque!" Put Logorama on your must see list rapidement.