Ersbel Oraph
I have just finished reading The Arrival by Shaun Tan and I am so impressed. Looking for interviews with him, I have found on youtube The Lost Thing and watched it. Amazing. Very well done. Nice story. Nice parable. I come to find out this short took an Oscar. And that Oscar was won against The Gruffalo. I still like The Gruffalo better, but this one is somehow deeper. I guess the old men and women of the Academy Awards Jury went for the old man sadly looking behind to the lost youth instead of the wise youth theme. Still, it was a tough choice and I can name a few years when all the candidates were of lower quality. But that is life!Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch
ackstasis
'The Lost Thing (2010),' winner of the 2011 Oscar for Best Animated Short, is narrated by Australian comedian and musician Tim Minchin, who I thought an odd choice. The film unfolds like a storybook, so I had envisioned a warm fatherly narrating voice (we can blame Adam Elliot for putting Geoffrey Rush into my head), but Minchin's whiny, apathetic Aussie drawl is completely at odds. But it works. The storyteller is, in fact, a first-person narrator, so it does make sense that he would sound like an ordinary bloke.A young man, while scouring the beach for bottle caps, comes across a bizarre mechanical beast: part industrial boiler, part crab, part octopus (if you can imagine that). The man can't identify this odd creature, but nevertheless gets the feeling that it is lost. He takes it home, where the extraordinary creature is treated with relative apathy by friends and family, so caught up are they in their own dreary lives. The "lost thing" is eventually returned to its home, a vibrant land of mechanical gizmos living in perfect harmony.Co-directors Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan forge a stiflingly Orwellian atmosphere, complete with oppressive shadows, dim lighting, skyscrapers of filing cabinets and administrative forms. The setting is a drab version of Melbourne (as suggested by the trams), set in a nostalgic portmanteau of industrial past and post-apocalyptic future. The graphics are computer-generated, and yet they have all the character and warmth of traditional animation or claymation.
Hellmant
'THE LOST THING': Four Stars (Out of Five) One of the best animated short films nominated for an Oscar last year (2010), this one tells the story of a boy (voiced by Tim Minchin) who finds an odd and mysterious creature on a beach, which no one else seemed to notice. He takes it home with him and attempts to find it a place of it's own to live but finds little help as he discovers no one else seems to care. The film focuses on our modern civilization and how busy and self centered we are to notice amazing thing right in front of us. It of course delivers the message that as a child we still have awe and wonder for such things but eventually grow out of it. It's directed by Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann and written by Tan. The film is quirky, nostalgic and cleverly animated. It's got that classic monster befriends child charm to it. One definitely worth the recognition it's received.Watch our review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBqNUf10kuk
Hereafter
The lost thing rises as a breath of fresh air against an ever rising tide of wise cracking or sickly cute fur balls and violent comic animation fueled by the American market. At around 15 minutes in length "The lost thing" had a production time line sprawled over nearly ten years with the bulk of work done over three years. The required creative control in adapting and complementing a very popular book have clearly been kept in check buy the directorial hand of the original illustrator and author Shaun Tan and very small production team principally Leo Baker, the main animator and computer graphics artist Tom Bryant.It is a simple story which reflects on human natures diminishing observation and appreciation of a world out side the day to day pathway we are all forced to travel by both greater authority and selfish ambition. Childlike observations laced with surrealistic circumstance create the distinctly dream like world of "The Lost Thing" "The lost thing" is short but so visually rich with Shaun Tans remarkable eye for detail it feels complete and invites repeated viewing. If your a little over street wise dudes with stand up comic sarcasm, over blown CGI action coupled with misfiring plots take a medicinal shot of "The Lost Thing". You can not go wrong.
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