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THURSDAY JANUARY 30, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Oscar-nominated animated shorts impress
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
In "Possessions," one of five very fine entries in "The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animated," the ghost spirit of a broken old umbrella springs to life, causing a night of splendid havoc for a weary Japanese traveler. A gorgeously realized homage to the concept of "Tsukumogami" — that after 100 years, tools and instruments attain souls and self-awareness — Shuhei Morita's 'toon works as a metaphor for the process of animation itself. Whether the artist is using pencil and paper, or spacewarp software, the inanimate is transformed into something alive and vital. Imagination takes flight.
Flight is the idea behind "Room on the Broom," another of this year's Academy Award nominees. Adapted from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's children's book, this British-German featurette, narrated in whimsical rhyme by Simon Pegg, is about a witch, her cat, and her
broomstick — which acquires a new passenger after each of a number of mishaps. By the end, the soaring sorceress is joined by a veritable Airbusload of companions — a dog, a frog, a bird — all of them pursued by a lumbering, fire-breathing dragon. The CG animation has a bright, picture-book quality, and the voice talent reads like the cast of a promising parallel-universe film: In addition to Pegg, there are this year's supporting-actress nominee Sally Hawkins, plus Gillian Anderson, Rob Brydon and Timothy Spall.
Also adapted from, or inspired by, an outside source, "Mr. Hublot" is a steam-punk fantasy that brings Belgian artist Stephane Halleux's mechanical sculptures into a sublime 3-D animation realm. The titular star of Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares' 12-minute gem is an accountant whose orderly world is upended by a stray, doglike robot. The characters are stitched and soldered from gears and dials, clockwork
mechanisms, metal and leather, and the cityscape has a retro-futuristic Industrial Revolution charm.
"Mr. Hublot" is an animated short that features mechanical sculptures from Belgian artist Stephane Halleux. The steam-punk film is nominated for an Academy Award.
"Feral," from the Rhode Island School of Design's Daniel Sousa, reimagines the "wild child" story of Francois Truffaut's 1970 film, making it something more primal and fierce. The pencil animation casts a noirish sheen over this wordless tableau, in which a boy, living among wolves in the woods, is discovered by a hunter and brought to the city to live. The customs and crowds do not sit well with this edgy urchin.
ZEILT PRODUCTIONS
Linking past with present, tradition with new tech, and starring that iconic squeaky-voiced rodent Mickey Mouse, the Disney short "Get a Horse!" takes the conceit of Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo" — that characters from films can step off the screen into the theater and vice versa — and has a slambang romp doing so.
Joining Mickey in the fourth-wall fray, which toggles from ink-and-paint
black-and-white to vivid CG hues, are assorted vintage Disney figures: Minnie Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, and Horace Horsecollar, and Peg-Leg Pete as the road-hogging
"Get a Horse! " is the short in front of Disney's megahit "Frozen," so it is far and away the most seen of these five
Oscar contenders. Whether it's the most deserving is another matter.
See them all and decide. You won't be sorry.
TELEVISION
NBC halts production on 'Sean Saves the World'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sean Hayes attends the 31st Annual People's Choice Awards held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2005.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Looks as if Sean couldn't save himself from low ratings.
NBC on Tuesday halted production on the freshman sitcom "Sean Saves the World," despite having committed to five more episodes — a move that means the series has effectively been canceled. The comedy, featuring "Will & Grace" star Sean Hayes as a divorced gay dad whose life is thrown into disarray when his teenage daughter moves in with him full-time, was part of the network's latest heavily promoted attempt to reclaim its comedy dominance on Thursday nights.
But the series has generated meager ratings and very little buzz, debuting to an audience of just 4.4 million and steadily falling to a low of 2.58 million viewers last week and notching a paltry .7 rating in the 18-to-49 demographic (which translates to about 900,000 viewers).
when the news broke Tuesday night, Hayes responded on Twitter with good humor: "Thanks to@ SeanSavesWorld actors and crew & @NBC for a wonderful opportunity. Looking forward to Obama's minimum wage increase to $10/hr."
NBC initially ordered 13 episodes of "Sean Saves the World," despite its modest debut, and made a tentative show of support for the series by ordering an additional five in November. Thirteen episodes of the series have already aired, and an additional half-hour installment has reportedly already been filmed. NBC has not said what it plans to do about this last episode, but this Thursday's comedy lineup will be preempted by the "SNL Sports Spectacular" special.
NBC has not addressed the fate of "The Michael J. Fox Show," its other low-rated Thursday night comedy featuring the star of a
beloved former NBC sitcom. Its numbers are not much better than that of "Sean Saves the World," but NBC, betting on Fox's appeal with viewers, made a 22-episode commitment to the project before a pilot was even filmed.
Last week at the Television Critics Assn. press tour, NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt expressed support for both shows but frustration with their low ratings: "Creatively, we think they're good shows, and we're really unhappy that we can't find an audience for them in those time periods. So we're going to still work hard to see what we can do on Thursday nights. It is a real, real uphill battle."
NBC, which also canceled "The New Normal" last year after just one season, has not given up on series about gay families. This week the network announced it had ordered a sitcom pilot produced by Ellen DeGeneres about a pregnant lesbian and her straight male best friend.
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