The 2019 Oscar Shorts: Quite a gut-punch

The 2019 Oscar Shorts (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Unrated, but the live-action entries are patently adult material
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.8.19

I have serious issues with the folks who selected this year’s nominees for live-action short films.

But let’s set that aside, for the moment.

The nominees for 2018’s animated shorts, as often is the case, reflect a delightful variety of subjects, approaches, tone and animation techniques: ranging from thoughtful to satiric or poignant; from traditional hand-drawn cels to the computer-rendered exquisiteness of the ubiquitous Pixar entry.

The latter, director Domee Shi’s Bao, likely will be familiar; it preceded screenings of last summer’s The Incredibles 2. It’s the touching story of an aging Chinese mother who, grieving during a devastating case of empty-nest syndrome, gets another chance at motherhood when one of her hand-rolled dumplings springs to life as a giggling infant boy … with a dumpling-shaped head.

It sounds bizarre, but Shi’s narrative approach is so gentle and heart-warming — so universal, in its depiction of the battle between protective parents and headstrong children — that we quickly fall under its spell. More to the point, Shi builds her film to a deliciously surprising and touching conclusion. Her rounded animation style — no hard edges — also perfectly suits this whimsical little tale.

One Small Step, the other CG entry, is an equally heartwarming little tale from co-directors Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas. The computer tools notwithstanding, their tender drama adopts the look of old-school, hand-painted cels to tell the story of Luna, an enthusiastic Chinese-American girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut. She lives in a big city with her doting father Chu, who supports them with the humble shoe repair business that he runs from his garage.

As Luna grows into teenager and then young adulthood, he’s always attentive to her footwear: even after she has forsaken the lovingly crafted “moon boots” of childhood, for casual flip-flops. This is a sweet tale of believing in dreams, and of parents who — behind the scenes — do their best to make such dreams come true.

The Man Who Invented Christmas: Clever take on a holiday chesnut

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

This is a droll bit of seasonal mischief.

Les Standiford’s scholarly, quasi-biography of Charles Dickens — 2008’s The Man Who Invented Christmas — seems an unlikely source for a mainstream, holiday-themed film; scripter Susan Coyne deserves credit for an unusual (if hardly original) approach.

As Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens, seated) struggles to work his way through the five
"staves" of his new book, he's helped — and hindered — by his imagined personification
of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer).

The result proceeds briskly under the capable guidance of British film and TV director Bharat Nalluri, perhaps best known on these shores for 2008’s charming Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Nalluri and Coyne similarly concentrate on whimsical character dynamics here, presenting us with a 31-year-old Dickens — played with agreeably feverish anxiety by Dan Stevens — beset by all manner of troubles.

The film begins with a brief prologue in 1842, with Dickens celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, his stage readings standing-room-only sell-outs in the wake of his wildly popular novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop. Flash-forward a year and change, and Dickens is in dire financial straits after three published flops, including — most particularly — the unloved Martin Chuzzlewit.

Dickens is at wit’s end: unable to pay the craftsmen appointing his luxurious new home; forever harried by his spendthrift father (Jonathan Pryce, as John Dickens); and newly panicked by the news that his wife Kate (Morfydd Clark) is expecting their fifth child. Worse yet, he’s months into a ferocious case of writer’s block, the public disdain for his recent output having paralyzed his creative juices.

Best friend and sorta-kinda agent John Forster (Justin Edwards) isn’t much help, his advice limited to little beyond “Well, just write another book.” Dickens’ publishers — Chapman (Ian McNeice) and Hall (David McSavage) — are similarly useless: actually worse than useless, when they reject the pitch for his next book.

They hardly can be blamed, as it’s a crazed notion: a vaguely defined story about Christmas. Nobody writes about Christmas; nobody cares about Christmas. As the boorish husband of one of Dickens’ aristocratic readers sniffs, Christmas is “just an excuse to pick a man’s pocket once a year.”

If that line sounds familiar, you’ve recognized one key element in Coyne’s script.

The narrative conceit here is that Dickens overhears and jots down names, comments and possible plot contrivances from family, friends and random strangers. (Young Irish housemaid Tara — winningly played by Anna Murphy — helps him come up with the name “Scrooge.”) It’s a delightful notion, particularly for those well-versed in A Christmas Carol’s characters and quotable lines.