NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Feb.-Mar. 2017)

[Chris Knipp]

Oscar Nominated Shorts - Animations (2017). Consisted of a series of quite short ones and a longer one at the end, Robert Valley's Pear Cider and Cigarettes. that you're warned to shield kids from because it has strong language and sexual references. It's far and away the most memorable of the bunch. It's the filmmaker's autobiographical recollections of a childhood friend he calls "Techno" who was a wild kid he winds up in China with awaiting a liver transplant for Techno, who is by then rather the worse for wear. It's kind of a walk on the wild side, and the salty, deep-voiced voiceover narration keeps you closely involved while the images, more tilted panoramas of a colorful graphic novel variety than innovative animation, give you a visual reference. "Techno" is presented as a lean, seedily handsome chap. Much of the rest are visually uninteresting, including the Disney/Pixar offering, "Piper." It shows they can miraculously imitate the look of foamy surf on a sandy beach (but is that necessary?): when they get to the playful sandpiper, the film descends into cuteness. "Blind Vaysha" by Theodore Ushev (National Film Board of Canada) recommends itself because it has the look of color woodcuts. There's a voiceover narration so we're told a story, but the theme of a person born with one eye that sees the past and the other that sees the future never makes much sense, except for the trite message to "live in the present." "Pearl," which traces a little family's lives and dreams through the music they listened to crossing the country in an old car, is a nice idea, but it's too complex for the short runtime.
A runner-up we're shown by Alicja Jasina, is a student winner called "Once Upon a Line," that tells of a commuter office worker drone whose life is transformed when he meets a lady and falls in love. This has the kind of absolute minimalism that shows animation at its best. If only there had been more such distinctive, minimalist gems as in other years or in Best of Annecy. But this was an uneven year, it seems. Watched at IFC Center 13 Feb. 2017.