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.

The Ghost Writer

The irony in The Ghost Writer is thicker than molasses in Vermont in February. It’s revealed at one point that former Prime Minister Alan Lang (Pierce Brosnan totally acquitting himself after that Mama Mia debacle) is being indicting for crimes against humanity by the ICC (International Criminal Court) and he considers traveling. His lawyers warn him to stay put in his United States East Coast island retreat.
If you fly to London you can be arrested, he’s advised. The countries that don’t have an extradition treaty with the World Court include China, Iran, India, Russia, North Korea and the United States. Any attempt at subliminal humor at this point in the film is compounded by the fact that the director is Roman Polanski. The Ghost Writer stands among the best films Polanski has ever done, but the effect travels further. There hasn’t been an exciting political thriller like this since the 1970s. At the end of The Three Days of the Condor Robert Redford can just carry his manuscript over to the New York Times. But we live in such different times. At the end of The Ghost Writer there’s no place for Ewan McGregor, as The Ghost the titular ghost writer, to relay his manuscript. If one puts the truth on the internet will anybody possibly believe it?
Mcgregor stars with able assistance from Brosnan and Olivia Williams as Brosnan’s wife Ruth Lang. Kim Catrell (it’s so good to see her actually acting and not performing like in SATC) and Tom Wilkerson provide alert support.
All throughout the movie the sky plays a part in the composition and it’s always stormy or about to rain. In reality Polanski has only done three films in the last ten years, The Pianist, Oliver Twist (totally under-seen and underrated) and now The Ghost Writer. For those that can put the reputation of the artist aside from the artist this is one of the best films you will see this year.