The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 3B Short films, high hopes Hard days for print media By ANDREW LAPIN and EMILY BOUDREAU Daily Film Writers Every year around Oscar nomi- nation time, there are at least 10 recognized films the general pub- lic will have never heard of: the five live-action and five animated shorts nominated in the Acad- emy's "Best Short Film" catego- ries. But it doesn't have to be that way anymore. The Michigan The- ater is currently screening all the 2009 Oscar-nominated short films in two separate programs or one combined, discounted program. The Daily picks apart the best and worst from this cinematic smor- gasbord. ANIMATION: "Oktapodi" Short but sweet, this two-min- ute French CGI lark follows an octopus as he attempts to save his significant other from the clutch- es of a restaurateur. The film's slightly insane pace makes it play like a deleted scene from "Find- ing Nemo." Superb art direction is on display as the characters race through a gorgeously designed hilly seaside village. COURTESY OF TALANiS i "Pieces of Love" ("Le Maison en Petits Cubes") Every frame of this exquisite Japanese film could be sold as a watercolor painting. The concept is engrossing, if melancholy: An old man lives alone in a flooded village, and he must constantly add new floors onto his house to survive above the rising tide. As he scuba dives through his submerged home, he recounts happy memories of his family from years gone by. Of the five nominees in this category, "Pieces" is most deserving of the prize. "This Way Up" Considering two hallmarks of British comedy are slapstick and making fun of dead people, it should come as no surprise that this short (concerning two bum- bling morticians who must trans- port a recently deceased woman to her grave by foot) comes out of the United Kingdom. "This Way Up" is morbidly hilarious as the heroes get caught in one ridicu- lous obstacle after another - it's like Tim Burton by way of Rube Goldberg. story of the same title by Andre Dubus, tells the classic tale of the new kid in class. But this time, the "new boy" is a refugee from Africa who is isolated from his country and peers. The boy carries a heavy secret in addition to the tradition- al "new school" problems (bullies and the annoying girl who decides she has a crush on him). He flashes back to memories of his home in Africa, his school and his father to create a piece that is both funny and powerful. "On the Line" ("Auf Der Strecke") Yes, Lance Bass of "NSYNC is in a 2001 movie with the same title. No worries, though: This German film is much better. A department store security guard is madly in love with a girl who works in the book department. He is so enchant- ed by her that he watches her on his surveillance cameras. He is a lone- ly man - most of his interactions with others are based on what he observes through his camera. He wants to find a connection with somebody who is not barred by a camera lens. After a preventable tragedy strikes on the subway, he finds the relationship he seeks but is ridden with guilt. her son's innocence by telling him his Jewish best friend is taking a trip to Toyland. The boy packs his suitcase in the middle of the night, determined to follow his friend there. The plot seems like a repeat of "Life is Beautiful" at first, but the endinghas arather unexpected twist. This German film has a rath- er tired feel, though. Its plot, shots of black and white photographs, and theme of perpetual innocence have all been worn out. "Lavatory - Lovestory" In this minimalist Russian short, a lonely public bathroom attendant finds mysterious bouquets in her tip jar and tries to deduce her secret admirer from the many gentlemen occupying the toilets. (It seems tip jars in bathrooms and restroom caretakers of the opposite sex are commonplace in Russia.) The film is cute, but the black outlines of characters on white backgrounds tend to resemble a Red Bull com- mercial. "Presto" The Pixar short-making machine strikes again with this zany magician-versus-rabbit tale (which opened for last summer's "WALL-E" in theaters). It's laugh out loud funny, with more exces- sively violent physical humor than the studio has perhaps ever dared. While "Presto" doesn't meet the imaginative heights of "For the Birds" or "Geri's Game," it works wonders as an extended Tex Avery homage. "The Pig" An old man has to suffer the indignity of having gastrointesti- nal surgery (or as he puts it, "sur- gery in the butt") in this Danish short film. The situation is light- ened slightly when he notices the rather odd picture of a pig on his wall with a smile he describes as "just like the Mona Lisa." The man comes to believe the pig to be his "guardian angel" and causes a fuss when the painting goes missing. The film is thoroughly enjoyable and perhaps the most Oscar-wor- thy of the bunch. BONUS FILMS: To give your buck added bang, the Animated Shorts showcase also includes five "extra com- mended" (not nominated) films from 2008. Four of these are ani- mal tales. Two of them, "Gopher Broke" and "Hot Dog" (both from the United States) are goofy slapstick; one, the U.K.'s "John and Karen," is cheeky and dia- logue-based; and one, the U.K.'s "Varmints," is just bizarre (a humanoid dog attempts to pro- tect his meadow from the evils of urban sprawl ... and giant jel- lyfish). The remaining film, France's "Skhizein," shows a man who's struck by a meteor and finds he's literally beside him- self. It's the best offering of all the shorts. Why this engrossing and darkly humorous work didn't receive an actual nomination is mind-boggling. D ear reader: I know you're tired of column after col- umn, in print or online, about the death of print media. Or how subscrib- ers no longer care about the written word or the printed page, or liter- ary criticism takingup space in news- KIMBERLY papers readers CHOU no longer want or can afford to buy. I'm tired of it, too. So let's just get this over with: I hope you're reading this on your 2nd-genera- tion Kindle, several months in the future. Because if the big-name newspapers start going the way of the big-name banks, the ways in which the general reading public receives books will change - more than they already have. (My God. I can't believe I just wrote about journalistic and financial institu- tions in the same sentence.) Let me explain. These days, cities that his- torically have been known as two- newspaper towns are in threat of losing one or both of their major papers. Once-mighty dailies are cutting or severely limiting home delivery (hello, Detroit News and Detroit Free Press) and even the bastions of old-media culture are looking a little shaky these days. In the most recent issue of The Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn wondered out loud - to the ire of The Gray Lady's execs - what would happen "if The New York Times goes out of business, like, this May?" Hirschorn suggests that that the Times, revamped as solely nytimes.com, could come to dominate digital journalism, to the point where it "resemble(s) a big- ger, better and less partisan ver- sion of The Huffington Post." So, we can assume that the Sunday Book Review will still exist as a separate entity online. We can also assume that readers who faithfully read the Sunday Book Review - who actually seek it out instead of picking it up after they've already read the other sec- tions, flipped through the maga- zine and skimmed through the wedding announcements - will still seek it out. But what about the casual Sunday readers who pick up the Book Review because it's in between two sections they are already going to read? What hap- pens when there's a significantly lower chance that a book section will catch your eye, because it doesn't actually exist in print any- more? The Washington Post's decision to cease printing its weekly Book World as a distinct section, divid- ing the book content into two other sections after Feb. 15, provoked more tired sighs from the literary community. "There is a lot of great online coverage, but you go and look for it," said novelist Meg Wolitzer, a regular reviewer for Book World, on the nytimes.com ArtsBeat blog. "For people who get it on their front step, books are honored there and the loss of that seems like a big mistake." By affording this monolithic category of"books" (reviews, pre- views, author interviews) its own separate section instead of tacking it onto the end of another section, as the Los Angeles Times has done since cutting its Sunday stand- alone in 2007, newspapers are, to borrow ArtsBeat's words, "sym- bolically prioritizing" literary pro- duction and culture. But they're also makingbetter-rounded people of their readers - or encouraging that thought, at least. A guest speaker once said dur- ing a lunch not geared toward newspapers about the importance of architecture in print media: how where you place stories on the page, where in the section and in what section, is goingto affect the chances the stories are going to be read. It's very much common sense, right? Technol- Difficult times call for digital publishing. ogy is changing the influence newspapers can have on readers. When you're reading a newspaper online, it's much easier to bypass stories or whole sections you're not that interested in; with news aggregators like Google Reader, readers can further tailor their media intake so that they really don't encounter much outside their interests at all. If newspapers continue to cut sections to cut costs, or cease printing altogether, readers who want their dose of literary culture with the Sunday paper will have to do some more searching online. Readers who were absorbingthe occasional extra book review because of its proximity to other content of interest might not be quite as inspired as before to seek out other book-related reading. Certainly the idea of "literary criti- cism" has certain connotations - "pretentious" comes to mind. But wrapped into the everyman insti- tution of a newspaper, the "book review" appears accessible to most everyone. But that accessibility might not save them. Of course, there are other reasons why books may be los- ing their place on the newspaper page. With the slumping pub- lishing industry acquiring fewer new books, and some companies issuing such alarming notices as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's in November (when it announced it would stop acquisitions until fur- ther notice), at some point there may simply be fewer books to write about. Chou is unable to use the Internet. E-mail her at kimberch@urich.edu and hopefully she'll be able to open it. "Manon on the Asphalt" This French film is not nearly as dismal as it sounds. Manon is involved in an accident and, as she is dying, she experiences flashes of past evenings with friends and old boyfriends. She wonders how each of these people will handle her death, and she ponders the times they'll have after she's gone. The jazzy soundtrack and the bright summer light create a dreamlike atmosphere that some- how manages to reassure the con- tinuation of life even after Manon is gone. LIVE ACTION: "Toyland" "New Boy" In pre-World War II Germany, This Irish short, based on the a Gentile mother attempts to save Stimulating American art By SARAH CHAVEY Daily Arts Writer Anyone who has been abroad k: about crazy street performers, artist their works in crowded squares an wafting through quaint alleys. But around Ann Arbor, the only music to1 (save for that guy by the UGLi) is cor our individual iPods. What's more, t nomenon isn't just local; Europe has times the number of publicly fund phony orchestras per capita than the States. It's clear our country falls fa the rest of the world in the area of pu - but why? As usual, the answer comes down tics, money and long-standing cultur: ences perpetuating this dichotomy. for instance, harbors a more collecti ture than the United States, which dr ple to participate in and support pul Success in keeping such a culture a come about via employing artists -1 humbly - through the public sector. This is made plausible by (gasp government spending in the area of culture. Such spending is a luxury for in European governmental mo not in the United States. Here, fun the arts is handled mostly on the state level and through several separate federal insti- tutions, the largest being the National Endowment for the Arts. Regrettably, the NEA's budget has been cut over the years, from $175 to $125 mil- lion annually. But more prob- lematic is the lack of cohesive goals among such public cul- tural institutions as the NEA, National Public Radio and Pub- lic Broadcasting Service. Most nations solve this con- fusion by establishing an arts- and-culture cabinet position to guidegovernmentspendingand offer the overarching guidance these organizations need to make substantial changes. Such a position provides the author- ity and resources required to effectively impact the way the country approaches the arts in the long run. This is just what several arts enthusiasts are hoping President Barack Obamna will do - and they have nows all s selling d music walking be heard nfined to his phe- over 20 ed sym- e United r behind blic arts to poli- al differ- Europe, vist cul- aws peo- blic arts. live has however p) heavy arts and allowed dels, but ding for history on their side. During the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt funded (through the Farm Security Administration) photo documen- tation of America's strife and strength. The great works generated through this program are still heralded today as triumphs in Ameri- can art. Struggling through the Civil Rights Politics and politicians have a great effect on how the arts are cultivated. Movement, Lyndon B. Johnson created the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Obama could continue this national tradition of overcoming daunting times, not only in tax plans, defense strategy and diplomacy - all imperative components - but also by invigorating the American spirit through a strengthening of our common bond: our culture. It's also worth noting that, historically, some of our most celebrated artistic works emerged from times of strife. "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz," two of Hol- lywood's highest rated masterpieces, were released in 1939, a trying time for an America suffering through the end of the Great Depres- sion and possibly on the verge of war. Many argue that, in these troubled econom- ic times, the arts should be the least of our wor- ries. But it should be duly noted that cultural products are some of America's most valuable exports. American movies, music, books and art (as well as our actors, actresses and musi- cians) have become cultural commodities and are extremely marketable abroad. Creating a position in the presidential cabi- net for arts and culture would allow public cultural institutions to work together more easily and efficiently. More scholarships could be awarded to budding artists. More theaters and performance spaces could be built, and more community orchestras, choirs and the- ater companies could be funded. America is often known as the world's cul- tural center. We have the potential to culti- vate a great arts culture, but we're missing the boat. With a little guidance and a decent effort, the benefits to be reaped could be just what we need. "Recognizig Ann Arbor's Greatest Accomplishments" Austin Kloske Lindsay Darin Ben Righthand Successfully went on two Works at a CAT scan at Applied to 7 law schools valentine's dates on the UM hospital and scanned in 1.5 hours. same night. a guy with a maglite in a very comprimising position. 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