Penny Thoughts ‘14—Me and My Moulton (2014) ****

NR, 14 min.

Director/Writer: Torill Kove

Narrator: Andrea Bræn Hovig

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences narrowed its list of possible nominees for Best Animated Short Film to 10 about a month ago. This category that is usually a key to winning the Oscar pool. The reason is that it is often difficult for the general public to see the nominees before the awards ceremony without going to a special art house screening of all the nominees.

Horror Thoughts ‘14—Steadfast Stanley (2014) ***

NR, 5 min.

Director/Writer: John Kim

“Steadfast Stanley” tells the story of the as yet untold during the inevitable zombie apocalypse—the story of the family dog, the ever-devoted bastion to the family dynamic. We’ve seen families broken up by zombie apocalypses before, but how often have we followed the travails of the tiniest members of the family. I say tiny, because in this zombie flick our hero is the family dog, in this case a Pembroke Welsh Corgi.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—Silent (2014) **

NR, 3 min.

Directors: Limbert Fabian, Brandon Oldenburg

Writers: Limbert Fabian, William Joyce, Brandon Oldenburg

Just because it’s a short animated film, that doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because it pays homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood, that doesn’t mean it’s good. Just because it tells a clever story without words, that doesn’t mean it’s good.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—From One Second to the Next (2013) ****

NR, 34 min.

Director: Werner Herzog

I’m not going to say much about this one because the movie should speak for itself. I must, however, mention that fact that renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog has directed this short documentary about texting and driving. It’s remarkable how a master craftsman and artist can draw power into what is essentially a public service or educational movie. Every driver should be required to watch this movie.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—Get a Horse! (2013) ****

G, 6 min.

Director: Lauren MacMullan

Writers: Paul Briggs, Nancy Kruse, Lauren MacMullan, Raymond S. Persi

Voices: Walt Disney, Marcellite Garner, Russi Taylor, Billy Bletcher, Will Ryan

Since I never saw “Frozen” until this past week, I also never got a chance to see the Academy Award nominated short that accompanied it in theaters. Although I hadn’t seen it, I thought for sure the Academy would award Disney for going back to their roots with this retro-transformation animation that involves an classic style Mickey Mouse cartoon come to life in the new CGI world of animation through a clever plot that pits Mickey against his old nemesis Peg-Leg Pete, who is eventually thwarted when Mickey and his pals quite literally break the fourth wall to enter the modern world and used Pete’s mere two dimensions against him. I was wrong, but they could’ve.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—The Clash: The Last Gang in Town (2013) ***½

NR, 7 min.

Director/Writer: Fred Armisen

Starring: Fred Armisen, Paul Simonon, Mick Jones

Last week I reviewed a new short mockumentary featuring Fred Armisen reprising his fake punk rocker Ian Rubbish from Saturday Night Live. The film, titled “The Sexiest Elbows in Rock”, featured the frontman from the band Split as the owner of the titular body parts. It’s a fun send up of the rockumentary format with many real rockers participating for authenticity. “The Clash: The Last Gang in Town” is another fake rock documentary by Armisen in which his Ian Rubbish interviews two of the members of the iconic punk band The Clash. It’s been nominated for a Webby Award.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life (2013) ***½

NR, 38 min.

Director: Malcolm Clarke

Writers: Malcolm Clarke, Carl Freed

Featuring: Aliza Sommer-Herz

The Best Documentary Short Oscar-winner for 2014 saved me from going 0-3 in the short categories of the Oscar pool this year. That movie was “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life”. I don’t really know why I picked it. Perhaps I connected with its subtitle. Perhaps I just thought the Oscar voters couldn’t resist giving an award to a movie about a sweet elderly woman. I didn’t even know if she was sweet. I just assumed because—like all the films of the shorts categories—I hadn’t seen it; nor had most people who didn’t meet the strict voting criterion of the Academy rules on such films.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—Yellow Sticky Notes: Canadian Anijam (2013) ***½

NR, 8 min.

Directors: Marv Newland, Alison Snowden, David Fine, Cordell Barker, Janet Perlman, Chris Hinton, Paul Driessen, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Jonathan Ng, Malcolm Sutherland, and others

“Yellow Sticky Notes” brings together 15 of Canada’s finest animators, including several Academy Award Winners and Nominees, in a neat little animation challenge. The animators were invited to “self reflect on one day of their lives using only a ‘to do’ list and animated meditation.” The shorts films are presented as if doodled on… what else? yellow sticky notes.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—The Sexiest Elbows in Rock Music (2014) ***

NR, 4 min.

Director: Rod Blackhurst

Starring: Jason Narducy, Fred Armisen, Britt Daniel, Jon Wurster, Bob Mould, Tim Meadows, Margaret Cho, David Grohl

One of the greatest somewhat recent Saturday Night Live skits was a mockumentary about a fake forgotten British punk band called Ian Rubbish & the Bizzaros. Fred Armisen played Ian Rubbish with a pitch perfect impression of a typical punk frontman from the late 70s, equal parts Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. The reason his band had been forgotten, however, was because of the fact that Ian embraced Thatcherism, a decidedly un-punk stance. He had a thing for the Iron Lady.

Penny Thoughts ‘14—Human Revolution: Deus Ex (2014) **½

NR, 12 min.

Director/Writer: Moe Charif

Starring: Moe Charif, Liannet Borrego, Shayna Nicole E’Orio, Antoni Corone

I’m not a video gamer. I’ve never liked playing video games, and despite how much time I spend watching movies, it seems to me that video games devour a great deal of time from their users that could be better spent. Can you tell that my children eat them up?

Penny Thoughts ‘14—A Joke (2010) ***

NR, 14 min.

Director: Andy Brown

Writers: Andy Brown, Anton Chekov (short story)

Starring: Matthew Sincell, Megan Tusing

Music: Steve Lavner

I always had a problem with Chekov. I could never find an entry point to his narcissistic heroes whose problems all had the same root source—themselves. It’s not that this observation was an invalid one on the venerated Russian writer’s part—far too many of us suffer these same ailments—but this central characters always seemed to me the only characters in which Chekov had any interest. Now, I haven’t read a whole lot of Chekov, so my observations are most likely a grand generalization, but… there it is.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—Little Duck (2013) ****

NR, 16 min.

Director: James Murphy

Starring: Nobuaki Kaneko, Katsuya

I’m not a follower of LCD Soundsystem, the band for which electronic musician James Murphy is most well known, but after seeing his debut short film I might give them a little more attention. If he’s as good a musician as he indicates he is a film director with this 16 minutes of film, it’ll be worth it. To the untrained eye, the movie “Little Duck” might seem incomplete, but it is accomplished in its style and its execution.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—Wind (2013) **½

NR, 4 min.

Director/Writer: Robert Loebel

I think there’s an interesting critical phenomenon that happens when people stray away from the typical format of anything. Everybody becomes more forgiving. We watch feature length films in general. We judge our movies on how 90 to 150 minutes can be filled. When we start looking at different lengths, especially when those lengths are as short as 3 or 4 minutes, we think everything is great.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—Aningaaq (2013) ****

PG, 7 min.

Director/Writer: Jonás Caurón

Starring: Orto Ignatiussen

Voice: Sandra Bullock

It was a scene that stood out in a movie made up of scenes that stood out. In the midst of the stress-filled events depicted in Alfonso Caurón’s space adventure “Gravity”, where an astronaut is stranded in space when a debris shower from a satellite explosion destroys her spacecraft and fellow crewmembers, Dr. Ryan Stone places a distress call from a Russian satellite down to the Earth’s surface. A man speaking a foreign language answers that call, but doesn’t understand what Ryan is saying. The man identifies himself as Aningaaq.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—Castello Cavalcanti (2013) ***½

NR, 8 min.

Director/Writer: Wes Anderson

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Giada Colagrande

Jason Schwartzman is perhaps the perfect actor for Wes Anderson, who has used the actor in most of his movies and launched the Copolla-related actor’s career with his sophomore picture “Rushmore”. Schwartzman is the perfect Wes Anderson character. He delivers all his lines as earnestly as possible and yet some doubt always seems to linger under the surface of the confidence of everything he utters. He’s the human contradiction Anderson believes all his characters to be.

Horror Thoughts ‘13—Toy Story of Terror (2013) ***

TV-G, 22 min.

Director: Angus MacLane

Writers: John Lasseter (characters), Andrew Stanton (characters)

Voices: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Carl Weathers, Stephen Tobolowsky, Timothy Dalton, Wallace Shawn, Don Rickles, Kristen Schaal, Kate McKinnon

Several years ago, the filmmakers who made the movie “Shrek” restarted the tradition of holiday specials starring popular animated characters from feature films. Finally, the animators at Pixar have gotten into the game of lending their characters to the holiday special with the first “Toy Story of Terror” to celebrate the upcoming holiday of Halloween. With all the original voice talent returning to their popular roles, the animators at Disney/Pixar have put together yet another fun “Toy Story” romp.

Horror Thoughts ‘13—M is for Messiah (2013) ***

NR, 3 min.

Director: Michael Prince

Writer: William L. Bradley

Starring: Nathan Atkins, Ryan Izay, Brynn Izay

I have not seen “The ABCs of Death”, an anthology style horror flick that was released this spring that compiled 26 short films with each focusing on a letter of the alphabet. Apparently, its producers are already compiling the second ABCs film which will feature another 26 horror shorts shot by 26 new directors, including one to be chosen through a contest on the website. A friend of a friend has submitted one for the competition entitled “M is for Messiah”.

Horror Thoughts ‘13—Mickey Mouse in Ghoul Friend (2013) ***½

TV-G, 4 min.

Director/Writer: Paul Rudish

Voices: Chris Diamantopoulos, Bill Farmer

“Ghoul Friend” is a new Disney short from their Emmy-winning series “Mickey Mouse”, which produces new classic style Disney cartoons to run as fillers between Disney Channel shows. “Ghoul Friend” would be their Halloween entry which premiered last week, although I stumbled upon it on the website Zombie Apocalypse Monthly.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—The Scarecrow (2013) ***

NR, 4 min.

Directors: Brandon Oldenburg, Limbert Fabian

Narration: Fiona Apple (performing the song “Pure Imagination”)

“The Scarecrow” is a little bit of message advertizing from Chipotle about modern farming practices of genetically modified foods. I can assume from this angle that Chipotle only uses truly organic foods in their restaurants. I don’t really want to get into that argument, however. I want to look at the short film as a work of art and entertainment.

Penny Thoughts ‘13—Orange Drive (2011) ***½

NR, 11 min.

Director: Mark Lester

Writers: Mark Lester, Chad Reinacher

Starring: Chad Reinacher, Jordan Dunn, Libe Barer, Leah Munson

There is a time in our American lives when we have a special relationship with our cars. It is usually when we are younger and closer to that point when we first obtained a license. It is a time when everything we do seems to happen with our car. “Orange Drive” is a short film that perfectly captures this special relationship and the relationships that take place within that one.