While it has its fair share of mawkish sentiments, thanks to no dialog and a soft musical score, there's a commentary in Bear Story that didn't quite hit me until I began writing this review. The entire film's moral revolves around a bear continuing to work through heartbreak, sadness, and personal hardships by way of his passion. His meticulous, uncompromising craft keeps him going in many ways, and his zealous artistic ability is what keeps his gears turning like the gears in his many dioramas. The result produces two lofty morals: exhaust the pain away by fighting the tears by doing what you love and, for the umpteenth time, animation doesn't always correlate to being "for children."
As a whole, while there isn't much going on with Prologue, it's a strangely immersive short film. Its largely blank canvas, only decorated with simple pencil strokes of gray, black, and red that realize the ugliness of battle, strangely helps one get sucked into the world before being spit back out when the credits roll. On top of that, the violence here is immaculately conceptualized and the overall effect is strangely satisfying, almost servicing one's questionably human, carnal desires to see violence by way of such an innocent medium. If nothing else, use it as a cautionary tale for the horror of war.
Don Hertzfeldt's seventeen-minute animated short World of Tomorrow, one of the Academy Awards' Best Animated Short frontrunners this year, does an amazing job of examining the flaw that most of us have as people and that's an inability to be satisfied or truly content with the present. We do not appreciate the present until it is the distant or the very-recent past, depending on how we deem the quality of our current situation. We look to the future as a relief or even a catalyst of the conditions we're currently facing, and we struggle to objectively define "self," especially in the age of the internet, where selves can be socially constructed or constructed in the lieu of the moment.
The short's ideas are so expertly communicated that it's unfortunate how the genius animation and look behind it finds itself a secondary feature. The art design and illustration, all handled by Pott, as well, communicates a beautiful, harmonious relationship between the old, traditionalist style of animation coupled with the new, more experimental side that shows that 2D animation can still exercise immense creativity and visual possibilities on a totally different playing field than its counterpart. The result, coupled with dense themes and a true zest to define the world we're currently inhabiting, make World of Tomorrow such a masterwork of animation.
Sanjay's Super Team evokes neon colors to near perfection, as we watch this story unfold with no dialog and a very slow and steady pace, even for such a short runtime. The only issue is that the takeaway from this is pretty slight, even by the recent standards of Pixar shorts (let's just say, it's nice this one got the Oscar love instead of the momentarily sad but utterly frothy Lava). There's not a lot of emotional connection, despite this being a fairly emotional story, and while Patel's passion and heart is here, there's just very little to say, unfortunately.
Finally, Konstantin Bronzit's We Can't Live Without Cosmos is a heartbreaking short film, so much so that you might even chuckle when your eyes well with tears when you realize you're tearing up about characters you've known for only fourteen minutes. That's the power of the animation medium; at times, it has the ability to soften the look of reality, but often, mostly in contemporary times, doesn't lessen the blow of reality or the truly real struggles we face in life. We Can't Live Without Cosmos is a short with a core idea about friendship and its unfathomable, and in this case, literal power that transcends time and universes.
As a whole, while there isn't much going on with Prologue, it's a strangely immersive short film. Its largely blank canvas, only decorated with simple pencil strokes of gray, black, and red that realize the ugliness of battle, strangely helps one get sucked into the world before being spit back out when the credits roll. On top of that, the violence here is immaculately conceptualized and the overall effect is strangely satisfying, almost servicing one's questionably human, carnal desires to see violence by way of such an innocent medium. If nothing else, use it as a cautionary tale for the horror of war.
Don Hertzfeldt's seventeen-minute animated short World of Tomorrow, one of the Academy Awards' Best Animated Short frontrunners this year, does an amazing job of examining the flaw that most of us have as people and that's an inability to be satisfied or truly content with the present. We do not appreciate the present until it is the distant or the very-recent past, depending on how we deem the quality of our current situation. We look to the future as a relief or even a catalyst of the conditions we're currently facing, and we struggle to objectively define "self," especially in the age of the internet, where selves can be socially constructed or constructed in the lieu of the moment.
The short's ideas are so expertly communicated that it's unfortunate how the genius animation and look behind it finds itself a secondary feature. The art design and illustration, all handled by Pott, as well, communicates a beautiful, harmonious relationship between the old, traditionalist style of animation coupled with the new, more experimental side that shows that 2D animation can still exercise immense creativity and visual possibilities on a totally different playing field than its counterpart. The result, coupled with dense themes and a true zest to define the world we're currently inhabiting, make World of Tomorrow such a masterwork of animation.
Sanjay's Super Team evokes neon colors to near perfection, as we watch this story unfold with no dialog and a very slow and steady pace, even for such a short runtime. The only issue is that the takeaway from this is pretty slight, even by the recent standards of Pixar shorts (let's just say, it's nice this one got the Oscar love instead of the momentarily sad but utterly frothy Lava). There's not a lot of emotional connection, despite this being a fairly emotional story, and while Patel's passion and heart is here, there's just very little to say, unfortunately.
Finally, Konstantin Bronzit's We Can't Live Without Cosmos is a heartbreaking short film, so much so that you might even chuckle when your eyes well with tears when you realize you're tearing up about characters you've known for only fourteen minutes. That's the power of the animation medium; at times, it has the ability to soften the look of reality, but often, mostly in contemporary times, doesn't lessen the blow of reality or the truly real struggles we face in life. We Can't Live Without Cosmos is a short with a core idea about friendship and its unfathomable, and in this case, literal power that transcends time and universes.
