Genre Character of the Week: Evan (The Time Traveler's Room-mate)

Last weekend I went out with some friends to see the nominees for the Live-Action Short category of the 2012 Oscars. The experience was actually pretty cool as usually when the Live Action-Short and Animation-Short categories are announced I’ve seen exactly none of the nominees.

Out of the live action shorts, my favourite was Time Freak, a time travel comedy about a guy named Evan who finds out that his room-mate has created a time machine.

Evan comes across as a good friend, and a guy who can clearly see through his buddy’s schemes and plans without a lot of difficulty.

As the film was short, I can’t say much else without spoilers, but if you have the option, definitely check out this little gem as it was a whole lot of fun!

Genre at the 2012 Oscars

Often I'm asked by friends and co-workers why it is I get so excited about the Academy Awards every year considering how little genre is represented in the nominations. Basically if you remove Art Design, Makeup, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Cinematography, Visual Effects and Music (Original Score), you've basically cut out every movie involving Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction.

This year, however, after working my way through seven of the nine Best Picture nominees and the entire Live-Action and Animated short categories there were actually three films which stood out to me as genre films worth watching.

So here you go - my cheat sheet of the 2012 Academy Awards if you just want the good genre stuff.

1. Watch the Live Action-Short and Animated Short films Time Freak, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, and A Morning Stroll. These films involve time travel, mad science and even (SQUEEE!) Zombies.

2. Give the movie Midnight in Paris a shot. Considering I've tended to shy away from Woody Allen films in the past (They all seem to merge into one amorphous blob of neurotic New York self-indulgence for me), I really fell in love with this movie about a man (Owen Wilson) in love with the past and then getting a chance to visit it.