Fresh Guacamole

I just recently caught this mind blowing little short (and I do mean short..only 2 minutes)at a festival of Academy Award nominated short animated films. Despite the short running time, I laughed my a** off, big time. It's basically some kind of (very)surreal cooking show,where a pair of hands whips up a batch of Guacamole,using all kinds of household objects not associated with food. The results are pretty wacky (in a good way,of course). Veteran stop motion animator PES (who also did equal justice to cooking up a bowl of pasta in his earlier short, 'Western Spaghetti')weaves a few trippy moments of silliness (and also pulls down a cameo as the pair of hands) that some will get giggles from,others...probably not so (it depends on the grasp of surrealism). Not rated by the MPAA,but nothing to offend the staunchest of bluenoses

'FRESH GUACAMOLE': Three Stars (Out of Five)

This 2 minute 2012 animated short film was nominated for a 2013 Academy Award. It was written and directed by PES and is about making guacamole from different objects around the house (that aren't edible), including dice and poker chips to name a few. PES also directed the 2008 critically acclaimed stop-motion short film 'WESTERN SPAGHETTI', about making spaghetti from different objects. Somewhat amusing and colorful but I don't know if it's Oscar worthy. As far as the animation goes I guess possibly so but there's no story here, it's just an animated cooking video with different objects.

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This is a very short film and indeed one of the reasons it appears to have had so many votes and comments on IMDb is that it is known for being the shortest film ever nominated for an Oscar. The film is about a man making guacamole, dicing up the ingredients, mixing them and ultimately serving them up with chips. The method of delivery of this is live-action stop-motion animation (for which the correct term is pixilation) and we see other objects being used in the place of the regular food stuffs – so for example a hand grenade instead of an avocado, poker chips instead of potato chips. Additionally when something is "diced" with a knife, it literally becomes a load of dice.

As a short stop-motion film it is very cool and I liked a lot the way it takes odd ideas and runs with them. We all have things flash into our minds at times, whether it is the obvious stuff like a banana being held like a gun, and essentially that film takes these silly connections and makes them work – so the starting point is that an avocado reminds the maker of a hand grenade and it goes from there. The animation is impressively smooth which is very hard to do when working with real people as we are here. The transition to dice and smaller dice is also impressively done.

In terms of the Oscar nomination I'm not sure why this film was selected when there are so many great stop-motion projects out there, but then in fairness I am not really sure how the Academy narrows the field down to a short list for nomination. I take the nomination of a film like this as recognition not just for this specific project, but rather acknowledgement and highlight of the many great little short films out there that are free of the pressure to return big profits and instead can focus on creativity and seeing what works and what can be done. Fresh Guacamole is such a film – short, creative, fun and technically impressive, I hope it serves as a gateway for viewers to other similar cool stop-motion projects.

I understand that "Fresh Guacamole" director PES has directed a number of short films. I had never heard of him until I saw "Fresh Guacamole". This 2-minute short shows noticeable influence from Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, as a pair of hands uses non-food objects to make guacamole. That's literally all that happens in the movie.

I don't see many short movies, so I don't know what the criteria are for award nominations. I thought that this one was pretty neat. As it stands, this is so far only the fifth nominee that I've seen in any category. It's worth seeing if you have two free minutes. I'm going to have to check out PES's other movies.

I have never tasted Guacamoles and so I was completely clueless about its ingredients while watching 'Fresh Guacamoles'. The 2 minute to-the-point short had a mystery hand preparing 'Guacamoles' in an unconventional manner using everyday objects like a light- bulb, ball, 2 chess pieces, poker chips... hand grenade ( not really an everyday object, is it?).

I could make out how animator PES got his inspiration for a few items, such as the seed removed from the hand grenade which had the number seven on it and resembled a pool ball could be compared to the seven steps used in making the recipe (I counted the steps) or the slightly unimaginative idea of using chess pieces as salt and pepper holders ( could've been more imaginative: I got one that's a bit gross for such animation but nevertheless I'm gonna say it - dandruff for salt and grated incense stick for pepper!... My point is that further experimentation could've been possible). The avocado-hand grenade was more hard to guess because I haven't seen or touched avocados. The most interesting part was watching the dice getting diced further.

I would not have been surprised had this won the 'Most Innovative Concept' award in some Annual Advertisement Award ceremony. In fact, such a concept can be highly useful for targeting children's market for some cereal ad. But when the word Oscar is associated with such a work, I'm slightly taken aback. There are lot many ingenious works on YouTube, one including a condom ad where rubber condoms are modeled (like balloons) into the form of two animals who... well, hump each other till the third one arrives and... joins the sex party! It's a crazy ad but you laugh out loud and it gets across its point. I would not think of that work as an Oscar worthy contender, and neither do I consider 'Fresh Guacamoles' to be one.

While the stop animation used in the short is fantastic and I'm certain my friend, a student animator, would love this film and so would all others who are more aware of the effort going into such works, many common viewers would simply remark 'Nice. Is that it?'. The ending too does not do something adventurous to surprise us. Neither does the film do enough to tempt me to make the recipe myself. Fresh Guacamoles remains somewhat dry and unmemorable.

Had this been an advertisement, I would have given it a 7.5. But looking at it as an Oscar nominated work ( Oscars really changes everyone's expectations) I shall give 'Fresh Guacamoles' for stars out of ten.