In Contention

Tag: Logorama

  • Césars for Polanski, ‘Gods,’ ‘Illusionist’… and Fincher

    When the nominations for the César Awards — known in glib terms as the French Oscars — were announced last month, I wrote that I anticipated a tight race between Roman Polanski’s widely acclaimed Euro thriller “The Ghost Writer” and Xavier Beauvois’s lofty Cannes prizewinner “Of Gods and Men,” with the latter just winning out.

    As it turned out, I was right. Beauvois’s film (the French Oscar submission, which surprised many by failing to make the Academy’s shortlist) took the top prize, but it was “The Ghost Writer” that netted the most wins, with four — including two for Polanski himself (Best Director and Adapted Screenplay), plus honors for editing and Alexandre Desplat’s score.

    Given that combination of awards, it’s tempting to call Polanski’s film the “Social Network” of the French awards circuit — except that title goes to, well, “The Social Network.” David Fincher’s one-time Oscar frontrunner beat a rum bunch of mismatched nominees, including “Bright Star,” “Inception” and “Invictus,” to be named Best Foreign Film.

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  • Record box office for Oscar shorts

    Early in my Oscar-watching days, long before the advent of YouTube or VOD, the short film awards represented little more than a chance to get ahead in the Oscar pool by sheer guesswork.

    With no means of viewing the nominees, and the field of awards coverage considerably less comprehensive than it is today, you’d do well to find out what the shorts were about, much less whether they were any good. In the end, you picked the title that most caught your fancy, and hoped for the best.

    For most casual viewers, of course, the short film awards still mean little more than a handy bathroom-break opportunity in the telecast. But for serious awards-watchers, there’s less of an excuse these days to be uninformed: clips of the nominees (and sometimes even the entire films) are readily available online, while Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures have screened an annual program of the nominees in theaters for the last five years.

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  • 3/8 Oscarweb Round-up (Oscar hangover edition)

    Kathryn Bigelow at the 82nd annual Academy Awards• Melissa Silverstein with a personal reflection on those four words: “the time has come.” [Women & Hollywood]

    • Anne Thompson gets a nice soundbite from “Logorama” director Nicolas Schmerkin backstage: “It took longer than ‘Avatar.’  It took more directors than ‘Avatar.’” [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Paola Singer sits down with Best Foreign Language Film winner Juan Jose Campanella. [Speakeasy]

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  • 2/19 Oscarweb Round-up

    Logorama• Steve Pond talks to Ludovic Houplain, director of animated short nominee “Logorama,” which is looking more and more likely to pull an upset over Nick Park and Aardman. [The Odds]

    • The 15 best Oscarcast moments. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Melena Ryzik reports from the New York celebration of “Food Inc.” [The Carpetbagger]

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Short Film (Animated)

    French RoastThis is one of the few times the animated short category doesn’t have an American in the bunch.  One of the big snubs, in fact, was probably Pixar’s “Partly Cloudy.” So I wouldn’t bank on any domestic bias this time around.

    The animated short films feature a wide array of creative prowess, but it almost seems unfair to have such brief exercises up against longer-form narratives. The shortest entry of the bunch is roughly six minutes long, while the longest is nearly 30. You get vastly different pros and cons when you get that mixture of pace and comedic (since most animated shorts are comedies) timing. Nevertheless, none of them stands out as outright bad, so that’s certainly a plus.

    The nominees are:

    “French Roast” (Fabrice O. Joubert)
    “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” (Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell)
    “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” (Javier Recio Gracia)
    “Logorama” (Nicolas Schmerkin)
    “Wallace & Gromit in ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’” (Nick Park)

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  • AMPAS announces shortlisted animated shorts

    The Cat PianoVia press release:

    • “The Cat Piano,” Eddie White and Ari Gibson, directors (The People’s Republic of Animation)
    • “French Roast,” Fabrice O. Joubert, director (Pumpkin Factory/Bibo Films)
    • “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty,” Nicky Phelan, director, and Darragh O’Connell, producer (Brown Bag Films)
    • “The Kinematograph,” Tomek Baginski, director-producer (Platige Image)
    • “The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte),” Javier Recio Gracia, director (Kandor Graphics and Green Moon)
    • “Logorama,” Nicolas Schmerkin, producer (Autour de Minuit)
    • “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” Nick Park, director (Aardman Animations Ltd.)
    • “Partly Cloudy,” Peter Sohn, director (Pixar Animation Studios)
    • “Runaway,” Cordell Barker, director (National Film Board of Canada)
    • “Variete,” Roelof van den Bergh, director (il Luster Productions)

    You can watch one or two of these on YouTube I think.  Anyway, thoughts?  Anyone?