Once Upon a Line

I believe this is a very over rated animation. There is no flow of sentiment which is expected from an artist . There is no harmony between the animation and what the director of this animation calls music. The ending is out of the context. I personally did not observe any signs or feelings of love. I believe the reason is lack of life experience of director about meaning of true love that leaded to this disaster. Unfortunately Oscars is an overrated enterprise that pay attention only to rich spoiled kids from corrupted universities. It is beyond my understanding how this animation got nominated for anything. There are tons of other works that are far far better than this in any aspect but unfrotunately they don't come from universities that ask for 200000 dollar tuition.

Despite very simple animation, this American short was my second favorite—better than all but Piper. Using simple lines and a mostly monochromatic color scheme, it wonderfully tells the story about a very dull and ordinary man who lives a very routine life…until he meets a woman, drawn in pink lines. What follows is a lot of upheaval in his life and the ending is bittersweet…but worth the wait.

I was most impressed by this film because it achieved so much while appearing so simple and stark. Much more improbably, it makes you care a lot about these very simple drawings…and shows that Alicja Jasina is an amazingly talented artist and director. Why this film was not nominated for the Oscar and four incredibly unpleasant and, at best, ordinary films were is beyond me....as it was the second best of the eight films shown at the Oscar Nomination special showing, but was listed as a 'commended film' only.

Once Upon a Line (2016)

*** (out of 4)

This here is a pretty entertaining animated short that shows how a man's routine life got a bit of energy after meeting a special woman. The animation to this is quite simple and I guess you'd say old-fashioned as well but that's just part of the charm and it turns out to be rather entertaining. This here was on a short list of films that just missed out on a Best Animated Short Oscar-nomination and I think it could be said that this here was worthy and especially compared to one of the film's that did get a nomination. I really liked the tone of the picture and I thought director Alicja Jasina did a very good job at telling the story and giving it a very good flow from start to finish.

This is a creatively presented short. It takes the most fundamental graphics possible, the use of black lines on a white background. These lines morph into the story of a man's life in a clever, creative way. I see that once again, instead of evaluating the film, they are ticked that it won a couple of amateur awards. Enough to give it a one star rating. This is an artistic effort and deserves some recognition, not treating it like "Zombies in the Bathhouse Prison."

This was on the 10-film Oscar shortlist and is one of three "Highly Commended" films that round out this year's theatrical program. In terms of innovative use of the medium, it's in a league of its own, and I thought it edged Disney's delightful PIPER, which doesn't push the envelope of animation an iota, as the best of the eight. I look for animated films to show us *something we've never seen before*, and ONCE UPON A LINE does that in a way that is transfixing and beautifully artful from start to end -- and yet is fundamentally simple. I suspect it didn't get the nomination because voters knew it was a student film. But that just makes it all the more remarkable.