The 5th Short Film Hall of Fame

CT, I'm sure you will enjoy and understand exactly how each of us felt after watching it.

I'm sure it will win as well.

It is a really amazing piece of cinema.

This isn't an "eat your vegetables" film. It is really great and powerful, but also artful.

To be clear, I don't have any issues with it being in this thread. I've seen it a few times and I already know what to expect from it. Yes, it's horrifying, but I think the film is incredibly important given that so much holocaust denial and antisemitism still exists in the world today. Also, as a couple other people mentioned, it will likely be the film which wins this Hall (and that would be a much deserved win).

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Story of a detective looking for the Queen's baby, which appears to be an alien. The King lost the baby to a gangster in a card game.

I don't have much to say but "what the heck did I watch?!?". They must have been on some psychedelic drug when making this short.

This is some computer/video game animated film. Are you sure this isn't a long trailer film to a video game?

Not to my taste.

Also, the baby looks like Mr. Bill

Exactly, I thought it was an important film for myself to see. I've seen a bunch of stuff on WWII and Nazis and the Holocaust and those films aren't fun to watch but they really opened my eyes to just how easy it is for a group of people to seize power, then let their fear and hatred turn on others who can't so easily defend themselves. I wish the world wasn't like that, but truth is it doesn't take much to turn humans into monsters.

Malice in Wonderland

This was some sexual drug-induced psycho version of Alice in Wonderland. Filled with all types of creatures and sexual imagery. Let's say this again "What the HECK did I watch?!?"

It was better than Goodnight Mommy but yeah, not my style.

Goodbye Mommy (2019) -

The animation style wasn't for me as it hurt my eyes as I watched it. I don't think I'll watch another animated film like this unless it's about as long or a bit shorter than this one. However, I still enjoyed my time with this short for a few reasons. In spite of how crazy the animation gets, that the world depicted in the short remains coherent from beginning to end is impressive. I also found the story compelling, particularly for its portrayal of the detective as a troubled man stuck in the wrong time and setting. While his character isn't always likable, you still feel sympathy for him both due to how he recognizes his past mistakes and his treatment from those who rule the city. Also, even though the animation style wasn't for me, I did enjoy a few touches to it such as some text boxes next to various characters (i.e. "Killer Speaks" and "Killer Listens") as, while these touches would feel jarring in most other films, they feel quite appropriate and coherent in this short. Also, while the tragic backstory cliché tends to bug me, I enjoyed the way the one in this short was presented. I think my only issue with the short's aesthetic, aside from the visuals hurting my eyes, was that the sound mixing of the dialogue wasn't that good since much of it ranged from too loud to near-unintelligible. Overall though, while I don't think I'll ever rewatch this short, I didn't mind checking it out.

Next Up: A Gun for George

A lot of talk last night (it was last night for me, down here in this corner of the world) about how prepared people would be to watch a short where a human being is dissected, or if Night and Fog is too distressing to watch. Just personally, I wanted to say that I'm one of those people who will watch anything. I have the curiosity-urge of a cat, and in any case, I've watched all those human anatomy episodes where Gunther von Hagens (that guy who plastinates people and puts them on display around the world) gives lessons to students. It's really interesting, but of course it's challenging to watch.

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This year's Eurovision really ruined that phrase since it's all I could think about after reading this line haha.

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I like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy - it seems like they were both great guys, and when I watched the BBC production of Stan, and the recent biopic Stan & Ollie I became much more interested in them. I'd seen Mud and Sand (1922), which only featured Stan Laurel, but I can't recall having seen a specific Laurel and Hardy film before, although I'm pretty sure I have. Regardless, I've seen many excerpts from their films, and I'm of course well acquainted with them. Their fame lives on nearly a century after their best work. Brats came out in 1930, when the pairing was only 3 years old and sound was a new thing to cinema. In fact, Brats had been repurposed for silent cinema in some areas where cinemas were yet to install equipment that would allow for the showing of sound films.

I got a few laughs from Brats, so all in all it's not bad, and must have played really well back in 1930. I thought it was clever to have Laurel and Hardy play both the roles of adult and child in respect to themselves, and for 1930 those effects are pretty good - including at one stage an animated mouse. Silly phrases such as "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led," just go to show how good the writing was on these early shorts (I'm assuming that the act started to get stale much later on down the track.) There's a whole host of credited and uncredited writers involved in this, so it was a real team effort and I'm assuming there was some improvisation going on as well. I'm not a massive fan of the slapstick stuff - verbal comedy does much more for me than visual, but the checkers and pool scenes were pretty good. Spending a day as Laurel or Hardy (or their clone kids) must really make a person sore - in real life they'd all be blind by now, with all those pokes in the eye.

For anyone reading this, I really recommend watching Stan - it was originally a radio play by Neil Brand about Stan Laurel's last visit to Oliver after he's had a stroke - and once there, although Oliver can no longer speak, Stan explores some issues they may have had during their friendship in an emotional farewell and the two have a powerful few moments together. It really stuck in my memory as something good.

The House is Black shines a spotlight on a leper colony in Northern Iran and sets about making sure that this community isn't forgotten, and that a connection exists which might help those who have ended up there. It's director is Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, and she narrates the part of the film that is poetic and religious in nature - Ebrahim Golestan, her lover at the time, also narrates, with objective and factual information. He twice delivers the important information that leprosy isn't an untreatable disease, it's treatable and these people haven't been hopeless cases, but instead cast aside by poverty and the 'couldn't care less' attitude of society towards them. The film is vivid, honest and doesn't shy away from showing the deformations of the people who live here, but it's not a horror show exploiting them with a mind to shock and titillate it's audience. In fact, there's a tremendous amount of beauty in it, both visually and in it's poetic narration.

Here in the colony birds are shown flying in the sky, a dog tends to her adorable puppies and children play happily with whatever they can get their hands on. A disfigured man sings happily, and his song is infectious (a bad choice of words perhaps.) A woman breastfeeds her child lovingly. People residing there play games, brush their hair and apply makeup. There's laughter, smiling and dancing. I was really struck by how much joy and beauty there was, infused with poetry and religious scripture, which at first sounds cruelly ironic (God is thanked for hands, feet and things these people have been denied through no fault of their own) but as time goes by seems to reinforce that these people are God's children. The Bababaghi Hospice leper colony did in fact see a remarkable transformation after the film was shown, and many more doctors found their way to it to help these people. Forugh Farrokhzad is said to have shown no fear whatsoever of physical contact with the people there, and inspired not only the people who live there but many who have seen the film.

What can I say about a film like this? A short documentary about a poor leper colony would be initially though of as either something to inspire morbid curiosity or a depressing and sad postscript to the lives of those briefly captured on camera. Instead it's one of the most inspiring and beautiful pieces of filmmaking you're ever likely to see, and transforms a film which doesn't shy away from it's disfigured subjects into a radiantly beautiful and lyrically wonderful 20-odd minutes of moviemaking. It doesn't ask for help for these people, it inspires people to help and change their attitudes. It's a profoundly spiritual film. I had a little trouble reading the subtitles while watching it as they blend in with the bright whites of the black and white photography, but this isn't really the fault of the film itself, just a difficulty inherent in subtitling black and white films overall - if you'd changed the words to black then they'd be disappearing into the black portions.

A profoundly moving film which has a factual and poetic voice, while at the same time letting the people it's about have their own voice, all at the same time. It demystifies, and truly finds what is beneath the skin - showing us simply people instead of lepers.

Un obus partout (Zaven Najjar, 2015)

A solid little story that certainly looks nice but is also exactly what comes to mind when I think of an animated short, at least in a modern context. A little generic but not bad at all and centering it around a football match is a cute idea that also feels totally plausible.

Ueno liked my pick!



It's a work of fiction, but the Lebanon War and World Cup did take place at the same time. A feature length movie from '91 I haven't seen called Cup Final is about the same subject. There's also Waltz with Bashir, which I also haven't seen yet, I'm ashamed to admit.

Shell All (Un obus partout)

This short is just as enjoyable and moving to me now as it was when I first saw it six years ago. I like everything about it, particularly the look and feel, which is appropriately similar to the outrun aesthetic given the setting, but also looks like nothing else I've ever seen. The animation of the bombing especially hits hard for how it captures the chaos of such an event while conveying that to the citizens of Beirut, it's an everyday occurrence. There's also the inspired way the movie comments on the absurdity of war by juxtaposing it with the World Cup. The citizens on Gabriel's side of the bridge are just as invested in the game as the snipers are, so surely, they have more reasons to come together than fight each other, don't they? Another question the movie asks that struck me in this viewing more than in my previous one is if there is such a thing is luck. Could it explain why Gabriel and Mokhtar made it across the bridge or why Gabriel survived the bomb blast? Was the driver in the opening sequence, the poor child whose shoe Gabriel happened upon and the sniper victim at the end simply less lucky? Whether these questions are interesting to you or not, you have to admit that when the movie is exciting, it's very exciting. The drive and its cross cuts to the action of the opening match is as adrenalin-pumping as anything in the best action movies from the last few years. It ends up being a short and sweet action movie that manages to be thrilling without downplaying the horrors of war.

A Gun for George (Matthew Holness, 2011)

So the film bounces between this pulp 70s aesthetic and a more modern one and I think what I liked the most is how everything in the film feels designed to look natural in both styles and as a result its never a jarring shift when they switch between the two. I feel like I've seen a lot of things just put a cheap film grain filter on top of modern looking footage and call it a day so I appreciate the extra effort here. Its obviously designed to be humourous, and it is, but it doesn't diminish the actually somewhat serious drama story being told. The tone is handled pretty masterfully tbh and I've also seen a lot of things totally miss the mark trying almost exactly this (anything by Astron-6 for example).

Directed by James Parrott, Brats (1930) stars the iconic comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The two star as versions of themselves and as their children as well. I nominated this because I am a big fan of Laurel and Hardy and this is my favourite of their short films that I have seen. It's a lot of fun and I loved seeing Laurel and Hardy play children. I really liked the use of oversized props to make them look smaller. Laurel and Hardy are both wonderful here and the dialogue is amusing and clever.

I first saw this on dvd when I picked up the Laurel and Hardy Essential Collection dvd set, which is a fantastic 10 disc set with several of their best shorts and feature films, plus cool special features. It has over 32 hours of Laurel and Hardy and I would highly, highly recommend it to any Laurel and Hardy fans or anyone who appreciates classic comedy.

James Parrott seems to be mostly forgotten today, which is unfortunate. In spite of only living to the age of 41, he directed 84 short films and 6 features. His work and the delightful genius of Laurel and Hardy live on today for their fans, such as me.

What did I just watch? There's something innate in a human's make-up that recognizes creative beauty, where works of art resonate with a pure kind of delight. Hedgehog in the Fog gave me one of those moments where I was truly awestruck with just how perfect this piece of unusual animation looked, and how the narration and music which accompanied it suited that look. It's a fairly simple children's tale of anthropomorphic animals encountering sights that are new to them, and going on an adventure in the wilderness. The titular little hedgehog goes out at night to count the stars with his friend Bear-Cub. He encounters an owl, a snail, a white horse, a bat, butterflies, an elephant, a dog and something mysterious in the river which helps him back to shore when he's adrift. Eventually, after being quite lost, he finds Bear-Cub who is relieved to see him. Hedgehog is happy to be with his friend, but still wonders about that shining white horse he saw out in the fog.

This short film was beautiful. I was quite taken with it. It's like some Russian guy set out to make an animated film for kids and ended up creating a great work of art. Fine drawing with cut-outs animated against the backdrop, and fog simulated by having a thin piece of paper lifted towards the camera which slowly obscures the scenery, or lowered to make it reappear. The water looked real, and I'm assuming it was, along with a floating leaf and a realistic looking tree. Really nice music and echoes, with gentle and lyrical narration. It's cute the way the hedgehog talks to himself, and he doesn't notice at first that the owl is stalking him (in a friendly manner) - he's small, timid but very curious. This is a famous little hedgehog (he has his own statue in Kiev) but it's the first time I've ever seen him, in this beautiful piece of animation. Hedgehog in the Fog is a charming and alluring short film which, although it's for kids, is a superb work of artistry.

Malice in Wonderland is like a sexually active cartoon character's near-death experience. An acid-drenched nightmare/dream with a vaginal fixation featuring screams, dive bombers and ricochet's mixing with voices, cries and discordant sounds in the background. The main effect the animation takes is a transformational one, where vaginas, bodies, faces or creatures morph and change and meld into each other - all this very roughly follows the storyline of Alice in Wonderland, with Alice at the end asking us "Who has had such a curious dream?" and then melting while worms appear from within her shortly before exploding. It's trippy and amusing, with it's bright colours intensifying that sense of being under the influence of an hallucinogen. It's a little rough around the edges, and while not completely without merit it's a little repetitive at times. I thought it's unpredictable nature was fun though, and definitely animator Vince Collins' strong suit. Very much open to interpretation, and a decent psychedelic cartoon.

Malice in Wonderland (Vince Collins, 1982)

Weird to say a film of this length is stronger in the first half but its true lol. The first bit playing a bunch with dimensionality, the camera moving around the characters the way it did created so much depth before eventually flatting out in the later half. All the shit in the second half still rips though and this is the exact kind of shit animation is meant for. Really fun.

@jiraffejustin

Can you please update first page with reviews? I did several the other night.