Ten animated festival favorites have been made available for purchase in Apple’s iTunes Music Store (www.itunes.com). Released by Shorts International, the programming and distribution arm of short films specialist Brit Shorts, the selection includes John Canemaker’s Academy Award-winning The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, as well as fellow Oscar nominees The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello from Anthony Lucas and Badgered from Sharon Colman, as well as Bill Plympton’s 2005 Annie Award winner, The Fan and the Flower.
In The Moon And The Son: An Imagined Conversation, John Turturro voices the role of a son struggling to iron out his turbulent relationship with his Italian immigrant Father, voiced by Eli Wallach. The 30-minute autobiographical piece was nominated for an Annie Award but ended up losing to Plympton’s The Fan and The Flower, an unconventional love story that features the voice of Paul Giamatti. The short was produced by veteran TV producer Dan O’Shannon (Cheers, Mash, Frasier).
Inspired by the works of Edgar Alan Poe and Jules Verne, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations Of Jasper Morello is a gothic horror mystery yarn set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers. The film tells the story of a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. Lucas employs a unique style of computer-generated silhouette animation reminiscent of one of the first animated features, Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). The short’s kudos include the Annecy Grand Prix, the BAFTA for Best Short Animation and AFI Awards for Best Short Animation and Outstanding Achievement in Craft in a Non-Feature.
A grumpy badger just wants the world to let him sleep in Badgered, a hand-drawn cartoon that premiered at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. In addition to scoring an Oscer nomination, the short took the Honorary Best Foreign Film Award at the Edinburgh Int’l Film Festival and garnered a Student Academy Award nomination.
Another short that has done well on the festival circuit is Josh Staub’s The Mantis Parable, a CG fable of longing, rebirth and redemption set in the insect world. The film racked up a number of awards last year, including Best Animation at the Palm Springs Int’l Festival of Short Films, the Winnipeg Int’l Film Festival and the ION Int’l Animation, Games & Short Film Festival.
Lesser-known shorts in the compilation are Chris Mais’ Smile, in which a happy face toy undertakes a daring rescue mission to save his happy face balloon friend; Corin Hardy’s Butterfly, a longer version of the popular animation used as an early Keane music video; Aristomenis Tsirbas’ The Freak, which has a little dancing misfit turning a futuristic utopia on its ear; Sam Leifer’s and J. Van Tulleken’s The Unsteady Cough, which features the voice of Monty Python alum Terry Jones; and Carolle-Shelley Abrams’ Oola Oop L’eau De Ohh, which has a young French girl hatching a plan to woo a hot male lifeguard.
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