Genre Character of the Week: Mr. Hublot

Last night I went out with friends and family to see the live action and animated short film nominations for this years Oscars.  The films are all pretty great and well worth watching, but the standout for me was the animated short, Mr. Hublot. 

The film focuses on a robotic citizen of a future city, who clearly has a few issues, (OCD being one of them), and his attempts to live a quiet life.

As the film was only 11 minutes long, I don't really want to spoil it past that, but the animation was great, the film created a wonderful world for its characters and I couldn't stop smiling all the way through.

Prepping for the Oscars

With a week and change to go between now and the Oscars, I'm in pretty good shape for this year - I've seen eight out of the nine nominees for Best Picture, and my last one, Nebraska will be available on Video on Demand next week.

In this last week and change I've still got a few movies to go, but what I'm really excited about is the fact that here in Edmonton you can catch most of the Oscar Shorts this year while also supporting the Edmonton International Film Festival.  I was able to take advantage of the offer two years ago and absolutely loved the event as it let me see a number of films I would never have had the chance to check out before.

Although genre films don't tend to make much of an appearance in the big categories at the Oscars, this year there are actually two Science Fiction films, Gravity and Her, that are both well worth the watch and will both end up in my home video collection (although I have to say I'm nervous about how the visual grandeur of Gravity will translate from the big screen to my television).