Pear Cider and Cigarettes

This was the closest I've ever come to leaving the theater during a show and it was only 35 min long. Self indulgent story about 2 rich boys who go to China to get a new liver because one of them can't stop drinking long enough to receive one the legal way. Could have maybe interested me if they actually dug into the real nature of addiction or even buying black market organs but instead we got to watch about selfish a**holes.

Offensive not only that this was nominated for an Oscar but that it was 35 min long more than twice as long as any other short nominated. My friend who was with me and also hated it said it best - "Mediocre white men taking up all of the space."

This short, animated documentary/drama is an amazing and deeply personal work of art. It is both beautiful and ugly, showing the struggles of such strong, adult topics as addiction, alcoholism, and death. Although it is at times a very difficult and emotional film to watch, there's still a surprising sense of humor that flows throughout.

It all plays out like a radio show or an audio book, there is no dialogue, just detailed and, at times, hilarious narration. It is told from the perspective of the filmmaker, as he recounts his relationship with his daredevil and at times criminal friend Techno, from their childhood life to his crippling future as an alcoholic to his unfortunate and young death.

Techno obviously wasn't the smartest or nicest guy in the world, but the film allows us to feel sympathy for him.

This is definitely among the leading contenders in the best animated short at the Oscars this year!

I just saw this in a collection of the Oscar nominated shorts this year. While I thought the live action ones were excellent (all of them), it was the animated segment that had me mixed. Some were decent, but others not so much. This one is so conflicting on me that I just have to say something about it. For an animated short it looks excellent, and seems quite reminiscent of a graphic novel. The style and execution of such here is brilliant. The story is also decent, and so is the choice of music.

On the other hand, the execution of anything other than the visuals and music is iffy. The story is one that I believe would make for a good feature-length film, given the right director and screenwriter... but, being 30 minutes only serves to limit how this story can be told, and it cripples it in my opinion.

The story is completely narrated from the first person, as with the animation style. This wouldn't be so bad if a) it worked with the story being presented and b) the short wasn't half an hour long. Surprise! It doesn't work with the story too well and this is the longest animated short of the bunch. The issue with this decision is that it's not as investing as a story like this SHOULD be. It's one with ups and downs, a realistic setting, and the potential for great characters, but all of that feels wasted the 45th time I heard the name 'Techno' narrated to me, an audience member.

My point is: as far as the Oscar shorts for this year, this one is easily the most risqué (I mean, it did give us a fair warning before it played, and it deserved it more than last year), with probably some of the best 2 dimensional animation I've seen in a while... but, given the fact that it's short, it FALLS short on what more it could do brilliantly. For some this will be moving, for me, it just felt like it moved all over the place, way more than it should, and that's a real shame.

Watching this feels like listening to a good friend unhurriedly tell you a deeply personal story about someone they care about. This feels rather unique to animation or even film because potential thematic elements aren't given any more weight than is necessary to describe the situations and characters- in other words "themes" are more the background and less the gravitational mass around which the story revolves.

This is where "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" excels in capturing the feeling of listening to your friend recount something, which usually doesn't involve an intentional theme nor carefully crafted character arcs, etc. Rather, the story is told weaving in and out of chronological order seemingly as the narrator remembers it without pretense.

The frame economy is reminiscent of many Japanese animations that understand how to make one drawing do more that one hundred, while the animation style itself, editing, and cinematography are all something very unique to Robert Valley and absolutely superb.

Combining the animation which is, generally speaking, a very slow and methodically produced medium with the aforementioned storytelling gives the film a very spontaneous feeling- a casualness of narrative contrasted with an elite professionalism of visuals.

Regarding what some call "flaws," I don't see them as such but rather the "character" or "texture" of the film, which fortunately hasn't been polished or edited away and thus feels very personal. Being able to really hear the artist's voice is one of the most powerful experiences a viewer can have, but that means, just like a conversation with a good friend, you can't demand their simultaneous efficiency and fastidious awareness of what they should omit for their audience to the detriment of how they naturally express themselves.

I just saw this 35-minute film at the movie theater, at a show featuring the nominees for the Oscars for Best Animated Short Subjects released in 2016 -- plus two that should have been.

This is not one of my favorites of the set. First, at 35 minutes, it hardly seems right to call it a short subject, Second, it tells its story by means of a voice-over narration. It falls into a class of cartoons that are called slightingly "Radio With Pictures." This means it could have been offered as an audio drama, on the radio back when they offered stories in that medium regularly, or as something to listen to on your car's audio system as you travel down the road.

This is not to denigrate the story. It's a very interesting story about a man who travels to China to keep an eye on an old friend, whose carousing life has nearly killed him, while he undergoes a liver transplant. It's simply that the visual elements are not of primary interest and could be dispensed with entirely.