Oktapodi

Like last year, I went to a special showing of the Oscar-nominated animated short films. However, unlike last year, in addition to the nominees, several "commended films" were also shown. In this review I'll make my predictions, though if it's anything like last year's choices, I'll probably once again pick the wrong shorts as my favorite for the award.

OKTAPODI is a cute computer generated film about two octopi who are in love. However, when the lady octopus is taken for someone's dinner, the male responds in super-hero fashion to rescue her. So, he goes bouncing about the streets of what appears to be Greece--chasing the delivery truck that has his mate.

Oddly, while this film is lovely to look at and sweet, it also is only about three minutes long--making it incredibly short to receive the Oscar nomination. Because of this, the great similarity of the work to a typical Pixar or Dreamworks film and the slightness of the plot, this film seems very, very unlikely to win the award. I enjoyed the film but by the time I was starting to really get into the film it was over!! I would really love to see what this French studio could do given a longer format, as they are very talented and clever.

UPDATE: LA MAISON EN PETITS CUBES was the winner this year. Not surprisingly, I got this one wrong but at least saw the film as a strong contender.

Something I notice about the comments is that people do not seam to know that Gobelins is an Art School, so for a student film to be nominated for an Oscar, and for winning the Sigraph 08 audience and best of show award, is a great achievement. And I would have loved to have seen for them to have won the award, just to see what it would bring to them in the, animated, future.

I loved the short, the animation was original, the comic strength of the octopuses was great and the overall look, tinging and feel of the move was inspiring for an animation student as myself. The best to you all.

Make it grand.

The French animated short "Oktapodi" tells the story of a pair of octopuses (octopi?) who refuse to get separated. It doesn't have the most sophisticated plot or animation, but I liked it. Like many cartoons, it shows that a story doesn't need words. The setting looks like a Greek village. Some of the octopus's stunts look like what we see in action flicks.

"Oktapodi" has several credited directors, including Emud Mokhberi, who spent part of his childhood in Iran and France, but is now a US citizen. It got nominated for Best Animated Short Film at he 81st Academy Awards but didn't win. It's not a great cartoon, but I think that it's worth seeing.

Nicely fit with a violin playing on the background; Oktapodi offers a fast paced, very well crafted short animation. It has the style of the famous "Coyote & Road Runner series" of Warner Bros:

1/ Full throttle in action and humour 2/ No dialogue based script 3/ Excellent coordination between character movements, voice-overs and sound effects 4/ Follows the beats and notes of the playing instruments to transform action into humour

Oscar nomination is very well worthy. In my opinion, this could've been won the Oscar if:

1/ Octopuses haven't been urged on like dolphins jumping out of water or like grasshoppers hopping between locations 2/ Octopuses could've been more real-like, more ugly, more dirty, more clammy, more thick-skinned 3/ The rat race could've been more outlasting

Viewable by all ages -especially children- , watchable on Youtube and downloadable on KickYoutube; Oktapodi is noteworthy.

The animation here is not perfect; not something comparable to what the preeminent studios do. However, take into consideration that it is from a Gobelins L'Ecole de L'Image graduate student and we are left speechless. A cute love story with tentacles, ink, chase, slingshotting, and Greece.

Regardless of merit (which is most definitely there), this short film includes two of my favorite things: Octopuses and Santorini. Then again, the word octopus does come from Greek, and the plural for octopus in Greek? Octopodes.