In what we hope will be the first of a series of posts examining, and embedding, short films of note, we take a look at what is certainly the short of the moment: François Alaux and Hervé de Crécy’s logo-rific ‘Logorama’.

Many of the winners at the 82^nd Academy Awards were painfully predictable. The recipients of the four acting Oscars, for example, were so certain to win, for so long before Oscar night, that the attendance of the other nominees was (regardless of the British media’s concerted hope-raising re: Carey Mulligan) entirely ceremonial. There were, though, still some shocks. As our friends Wael Khairy and Shawn Slovo will enjoy pointing out, Simon and I were slightly shocked that ‘The Hurt Locker’ took Best Picture. But we (and others evidently far better at predicting the apportioning of Oscars than we are) were far more surprised that ‘Precious’ took Best Adapted Screenplay, and positively gobsmacked that neither ‘The White Ribbon’ nor ‘A Prophet’ took Best Foreign Language Film.

But there was a still greater shock: Nick Park didn’t win Best Animated Short. A statuette for Aardman’s latest Wallace and Gromit caper, the Christmas Day television ratings triumph ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’, seemed more certain than any certainty and surer than any sure thing. For Britons, Nick Park is the Sir Steve Redgrave or Sir Chris Hoy of Oscar contenders: no matter how disappointing and ultimately empty-handed our other heavily-tipped prospects are, his gold is guaranteed. He’s simply just better than everyone else – and by an embarrassingly enormous margin. Prior to 2010, the only time he’d failed to convert a nomination into an Oscar, he lost to himself. (In 1991, Park’s ‘Creature Comforts’ beat his ‘A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit’ to the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.)

This year, however, he was actually defeated. What we expected to be the fifth Oscar for Park became instead the first Oscar for the French creators of an eye-catching quarter-of-an-hour cartoon about consumerism called ‘Logorama’. (Actually, it was the first Oscar for the film’s executive producer, but it should have gone to Logorama’s creators.) For whatever importance it has – and it has very little importance indeed – I’ll state clearly that ‘Logorama’ is not a better film than ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’, and did not deserve to beat it at the Oscars. Park’s picture is deeper, richer, more varied and more charming. It displays both more craft and more artistry, and is obviously the work of long-time masters of animation on their best form. ‘Logorama’, meanwhile, is a masterpiece in the original sense: the work that announces an artist’s graduation from apprentice to master.

And yet, discounting the initial surprise it occasioned, ‘Logorama’’s victory feels right. There’s little that another Oscar could do to enhance Nick Park’s career, or the Wallace and Gromit franchise, whilst the careers of those behind ‘Logorama’ (which is a very fine film very much worthy of acclaim) will benefit tremendously from its award. Their film deserves to be seen and, now that it will be forever referred to as ‘the Oscar-winning short ‘Logorama’’, it has far more chance of attracting the audience it merits.

‘Logorama’ is set in a version of Los Angeles built of, and populated by, thousands of logos. Pedestrians are the AOL instant messaging icons; duplicates of the Pringles man drive trucks and chat up the Esso girl; the MGM lion lives in the zoo; all the police officers are Michelin men; and the film’s villain is Ronald McDonald. Once the story starts, the influence of Robert Altman is almost as obvious as the influence of Quentin Tarantino and, in particular, of ‘Pulp Fiction’. There are significant dollops of both Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ and Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’; a few other movies are referenced directly; and the styles and sensibilities of many more are played upon. ‘Logorama’ is a film composed completely of pre-fabricated components but – because of its vitality; it’s commitment to its concept; and its clever turns – it feels sharply original.

The chief reason ‘Logorama’ works so well is that its makers – directors François Alaux and Hervé de Crécy, their co-writer Ludovic Houplain, and the assorted animators involved – truly understand the short film form. This is not a short that’s auditioning to be turned into a feature: it is a 16-minute movie whose style and substance is exactly suited to its length. The points it makes about the ubiquity of branding, and the distance this puts between our advertising-saturated society and the real world, are powerful but simplistic. They seem potent within a short film, but would grow one-dimensional and dull if stretched to anything like feature length.

Similarly, we would soon resent the bright, crowded visuals, and the games of ‘spot the logo’ they inspire, if ‘Logorama’ lasted longer than it does. For the brief time we are exposed to them, however, they are a delight. By keeping their short film short, Alaux and de Crécy ensure that every moment of it is amusing. (Though no other moment is quite as amusing as the hilarious juxtaposition of the Jolly Green Giant and the ‘Parental Guidance: Explicit Content’ sticker.)

Everyone who watches ‘Logorama’ asks similar questions: How is it legal? Why didn’t McDonald’s smother it in lawsuits? How many logos are used? Are any (or all) of them advertising? I don’t have the answers. (Except that, apparently, over 2500 logos are featured. I have no idea if that’s accurate: I’m not going to count.) Although those questions are interesting to me, I care far less about the answers than I do about encouraging film fans to watch ‘Logorama’. It’s time my introduction ended, and that you began to enjoy a marvellous little movie that is, albeit only in the original sense, very much a masterpiece.