Best Animated Short Film of 2009

French Roast portrays the dilemma faced by a middle-to-upper class man sitting in a cafe who discovers that he has forgotten his wallet and cannot pay for his coffee. He's already been accosted by a homeless man begging for change—actually, he's accosted several times throughout the movie by this same man—when he finds himself without any cash to pay the bill. So he keeps ordering coffee, and a strange cast of characters comes and goes around him throughout a very long, odd day. It's a cute movie, a French import, with very little dialogue, so the characters have to convey the emotions they are feeling without getting to say much. The central character is particularly expressive, and there's a little old nun who's quite hilarious.

The title character of Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty is a very loud old woman who's retelling of the fairy tale quickly devolves into an obvious rehashing of her own grievances against those who are younger and have better "muscle tone." She's allegedly telling her granddaughter the story in order to help the young girl fall asleep, but the grandmother figure is so incredibly obnoxious and frightening, it would be tough to rest around her. And her Irish brogue is almost impenetrable at times, making the plot itself somewhat tough to follow. The film's creators have certainly done a consistent job with her characterization here, but I don't think I'd want to see an entire feature with her at its center.

The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) is a Spanish tale about the struggle between the Grim Reaper and a "doctor" for the soul of an elderly woman. The doctor's task is, apparently, to rescue people as they are being taken away by Death; if he manages to revive the person, then Death has to wait for another chance at the body. The Reaper is, naturally, reluctant to lose out to the doctor. The funniest sequence in this film, to me, is a series of deaths and revivals as the body of the old woman is yanked back and forth between the two men, and there are chase scenes that rival those of the old Tom & Jerry cartoons. This film, like French Roast, relies on very little dialogue, but unlike that other film, The Lady and the Reaper is much more action-oriented.

Logorama has a very clever idea as its premise. The logos for various companies are the characters or places. It's a world of nothing but brand names and images, and part of the fun of watching the film is seeing how many of them you can recognize. The Michelin Man is, for example, a police officer. Actually, there are several Michelin Men here, all of them cops and all of them rather foul-mouthed. Ronald McDonald is a criminal trying to escape capture who takes Big Boy hostage outside a restaurant frequented by the Pringles faces. Visually, this film is quite stunning to watch. The plot, however, is rather flat and disjointed. I enjoyed seeing such icons as the AOL man walking or running around the city created by the use of large logos, but aside from the visual delights here, I don't think the film holds up very well.

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the latest adventure of Nick Park's famous duo of Wallace and Gromit. They're working as bakers, with Gromit (as usual) doing the bulk of the work and keeping Wallace out of trouble (or rescuing him when he does get into trouble). Wallace falls in love with Piella, a former Bake O Lite girl. It's up to Gromit to prove—in his silent, long-suffering way—to prove that Piella is the person responsible for the deaths of twelve bakers and is now looking to have Wallace complete her "baker's dozen." As with the other Wallace and Gromit films, A Matter of Loaf and Death has wonderful sight gags, such as the method Gromit has to use to wake up Wallace in the mornings. And the puns are delightful. A personal favorite of mine is the poster for Citizen Canine on Gromit's wall. This is the only one of the nominated films to use stop-motion animation, and it's as much of a gem as the other Wallace and Gromit films I've seen over the years.

Oscar Winner: Logorama had to have been a surprise choice in this category. It is certainly inventive in its use of different corporate logos, but its plot was merely a rehash of any typical cop show of the past thirty or more years.

My Choice: A Matter of Loaf and Death is such a charming, delightful fun. There's so much to admire here visually, and the storyline is just dark enough to keep an older viewer interested. However, if you also like tender romantic moments, you can't do much better than the gentleness with which Park handles the scenes between Gromit and Fluffles, Piella's very sensitive poodle. (Fluffles has some of the longest and most expressive eyelashes you'll ever see, by the way.) Gromit is one of my favorite animated characters of all time. No one does a slow burn better than he does.