MOVIE REVIEWS : Animated, Live-Action Oscar Bidders

This year’s Academy Award nominees for animated and live-action short (screening tonight at the American Film Institute in Hollywood) are a very mixed lot. They range from a sophomoric exercise in visual overkill to a work that has been justly acclaimed as a masterpiece of the animator’s art.

It’s a good year for animation. Alison Snowden and David Fine transpose a gritty teen-age romance to a dumpy little old man and his equally frowzy inamorata in “George and Rosemary.” This endearingly silly look at love among the ruined is more entertaining than many recent nominees, and there have been years when it would have easily taken the Oscar.

Bill Plympton’s absurd “Your Face,” in which a man’s head distorts, grows and explodes to the tune of a hoary old ballad, gets laughs whenever it’s shown. But the simple animation and rough designs suggest a student film: Plympton’s work isn’t ready for Oscar consideration yet.

Frederic Back’s exquisite “The Man Who Planted Trees” simply eclipses the other nominees. Based on a true narrative by the French writer Jean Giono, the film tells the story of a humble shepherd who transformed a barren Provencal wasteland into a prosperous countryside by planting hundreds of thousands of trees. Back’s lovely colored pencil drawings capture subtle nuances of movement, and the entire film seems to unfold like a delicate flower. Many industry professionals have acclaimed “The Man Who Planted Trees” as the best animated short in more than a decade.

The live-action nominees are somewhat less distinguished. Writer-director Jenny Wilkes follows a gaggle of dowdy British matrons to a seaside resort in “Making Waves.” Their jolly holiday is spoiled by the gloomy presence of one woman’s son, Joe, who’s either critically ill or guilty of some hushed-up crime. The audience doesn’t really know any more about Joe, his mother or the other women at the end of “Waves” than they did at the beginning, and the film suggests a drab, Cockney adaptation of a Helen Hokinson cartoon.

The premise of “Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall”--that straight businessmen consummate deals while sedately fox-trotting to old Cole Porter tunes--might have made an outrageous skit on “Saturday Night Live,” but at 23 minutes, it’s a bore. Writer-director Bryan Gordon can’t seem to decide whether he’s trying to spoof male bonding, the business world or the El-Lay life style.

Tom Abrams seems to be the only film maker who realizes that even a 10-minute short needs a beginning, a middle and an end. In “Shoeshine,” comedian Jerry Stiller and his son Ben portray a blue collar worker and a yupscale stock trader who meet on the Staten Island ferry. The film may not offer any profound insights into the tensions between older, lower-class parents and the upwardly mobile young, but it does present a sympathetic portrait of two men whose affection transcends social and economic boundaries.

Screenings are at the Goodson Auditorium of the American Film Institute, at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Seating is limited: For reservations, call (213) 652-8000.