Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) This also applies to the two sepiae in this very short Oscar-nominated French movie. In these 2.5 minutes, we see a couple of octopuses in love, but struggling to stay together when the female is taken out of the tank to be taken to a restaurant. Her partner immediately goes after the car in which she's transported and a wild chase ensues. His tenacity finally prevails and he manages to free his sweetheart as they're reunited on a washing line. It's a dangerous world though, as he quickly realizes and everything in the end points at a sequel which has not been made yet unfortunately.There's really nothing outstanding about this short film, especially not the animation, but its Oscar nomination proves that a cute little story executed with precision and charm can sometimes be enough for a film to reach accolades and recognition. The violin music fits nicely in with the overall tone of the film as well and I'd recommend this one, especially to animation enthusiasts like myself.

bob the moo An octopus in a shop loses his partner when she is plucked from the tank and loaded for shipment. The octopus gives chase through the Greek town in order to rescue her.A very short film this one in the mould of Pixar animations. The computer animation looks good even if it does owe a debt to that studio in terms of what it does and the story allows for the delivery of a good run of chuckles and action. I did think it was just a little too short and that I could have done with a bit more edge or reference in the humour (if ever a sequence was crying out for a Raiders of the Lost Ark reference, it is the fight in the cab here) but it was still amusing and had a good firm ending. The music is a little obvious and I wasn't really loving it with its obvious Greek soundtrack, but the action on-screen mostly distracted me from it.Fans of the Pixar shorts will enjoy this as it mostly shares qualities with those, despite being not quite of that standard. Amusing and looks good though.

MartinHafer Like last year, I went to a special showing of the Oscar-nominated animated short films. However, unlike last year, in addition to the nominees, several "commended films" were also shown. In this review I'll make my predictions, though if it's anything like last year's choices, I'll probably once again pick the wrong shorts as my favorite for the award.OKTAPODI is a cute computer generated film about two octopi who are in love. However, when the lady octopus is taken for someone's dinner, the male responds in super-hero fashion to rescue her. So, he goes bouncing about the streets of what appears to be Greece--chasing the delivery truck that has his mate.Oddly, while this film is lovely to look at and sweet, it also is only about three minutes long--making it incredibly short to receive the Oscar nomination. Because of this, the great similarity of the work to a typical Pixar or Dreamworks film and the slightness of the plot, this film seems very, very unlikely to win the award. I enjoyed the film but by the time I was starting to really get into the film it was over!! I would really love to see what this French studio could do given a longer format, as they are very talented and clever.UPDATE: LA MAISON EN PETITS CUBES was the winner this year. Not surprisingly, I got this one wrong but at least saw the film as a strong contender.

Polaris_DiB Anybody who's been following animation festivals are probably starting to notice the "Gobelins" production tag appearing everywhere. At least, I've seen it in the recent Animation Show, Spike and Mike, and now as an Academy Award nominee. They're pretty short shorts (this one is one of the lengthier at 2 1/2 minutes), usually mad-cap, and silent (for some reason, all of the animated shorts for this years Academy Awards are silent). In this one, an octopus is on a mad dash through the streets of Greece to save his lover from untimely death via cooking. Using every fibrous elastic muscle in his body, said octopi launch across rooftops, shoot off pulls, and belly-flop off of swimming pools with increasing inventiveness and pizazz.The thing about most of these Gobelins shorts is that they're relatively short on the resolution, too. Like a good old fashioned Looney Tunes moment with its schadenfreude, the two octopi manage to escape the evil death dealing knife wielding human only to have other trouble arise.--PolarisDiB