USA, 7 min
Directed by: James Sibley Watson, Alec Wilder
Tomatos Another Day (1930) (directed by James Sibley Watson and Alec Wilder) made one appearance at a Boston theatre in the early 1930s, but received such a weak audience response that the creators dismissed it as an outright failure. One can understand the audience reaction: the film itself is so incredibly stilted and awkward (albeit deliberately so) that if you approach it in the wrong mind-set – expecting a traditional melodrama – you're likely to be dismayed at its incompetency. Sibley's son, J.S. Watson Jr., remarked that the film might have proved successful had a popular comedian been involved: "Harold Lloyd, directed by (Mack) Sennet, might have brought it off." Indeed, the film did remind me of W.C. Fields' The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), in which the actors were encouraged to emulate the melodramatic acting style to the nth degree. Watson uses the same deadpan brand of satire, though his actors, rather than hamming it up, adopt a mechanical, minimalistic delivery that makes them sound monumentally uninterested in their roles.J.S. Watson had previously co-directed, with Melville Webber, The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), a wonderful Poe adaptation strongly indebted to Robert Wiene and German Expressionism. To a director with such a prominent visual style, the arrival of "talkies" must have been disillusioning – all of a sudden, popular films had lost the artistic flair of Murnau and Borzage, and had become utterly mundane. Tomatos Another Day was produced to "show the absurdity of talkies that recorded action in pictures with unnecessary explanations of the action recorded in sound." The film opens with a clock on the cusp of two o'clock. Soon after, the minute hand ticks over, the clock chimes twice, and a character unnecessarily remarks "it is two o'clock." Watson's satire is spot-on: I can recall many early talkies that treated their audience in such a manner, inserting such mundane dialogue as "I am alone" merely because the sound technology was available to them. I just wish that all gentlemen's hats sounded so crunchy.
6/10
When you've only got three minutes to tell a story, you'd better make it count. Pixar Studios has always excelled at such an efficient brand of storytelling: Geri's Game (1997) is a masterpiece in four minutes, and For the Birds (2000) and Lifted (2006) have always been crowd- pleasing favourites. Kiwi! (2006) is a student film by Dony Permedi, and it was produced in much the same mould. The short certainly looks like a student film, the CG animation terribly crude by modern standards (though, admittedly, it's unfair to compare any animated film to the standards of Pixar). However, the technical detail doesn't necessarily matter, as long as it succeeds in telling an emotionally-absorbing story. This it does pretty well. An ambitious little kiwi, long confined to the earth by his measly ratite wings, fulfills his lifelong ambition to fly – or, at least, to approximate the sensation of flight. The moment of success is oddly touching, and the single tear that slips from beneath his eyelid would be familiar to anybody who's ever achieved his lifelong dream. Still, I didn't find Kiwi! quite as life-affirming as many viewers seem to have – for me, it was an amusing little aside, and certainly not a bad way to spend three minutes of my time. 
D.W. Griffith is certainly not a name associated with comedy, but he did direct a few of them early in his career {including his debut, Those Awful Hats (1909)}, before briefly returning to the genre with The Battle of the Sexes (1928). This comedy short from 1909 – The Gibson Goddess – might also be considered a "battle of the sexes." On a trip to the sea-shore to enjoy some peaceful reading time, a beautiful woman (Marion Leonard) is harassed by group of male admirers, who follow her along the beach like a pack of hungry hounds. After several unsuccessful attempts to evade her followers, the woman strikes upon the perfect solution to dispel their interest in her: she gets changed into a leg-revealing beach costume. I'd have thought that revealing her body would only fuel the men's lust, but apparently not – each man apologetically excuses himself from her company, some unable to disguise their revulsion.
Walt Disney stated that his prime inspiration for creating Mickey Mouse was Chaplin's Tramp character. However, the Mickey seen in 
Lying in bed with a sore throat, I needed some cheering up. Buster Keaton didn't let me down. Cops (1922) is generally typical of the comedian's two-reelers of the early 1920s, though with a lesser emphasis on the ingenious gadgets exhibited in 
They say that W.C. Fields was unique among comedians, and I'm not going to argue. The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), generally ranked among his best efforts, wasn't as consistently hilarious as I'd been hoping, but one does certainly recognise that Fields had a style that was all his own. The film opens in the frozen Yukon goldfields, where a prospector sits huddled in the primitive shelter of a wooden hut – I immediately thought of Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925), but then the characters started speaking and the spell was broken. The loose plot concerns a simpleton prospector whose son travelled to the city and was consumed by the bottle, eventually winding up in prison for three years. It all unfolds in mock seriousness, with every character shamelessly hamming their lines to the camera in broad, ridiculous accents. From Fields' apparent contempt for his own storyline, I'd say he was satirising a type of film that was relatively common in the early sound era, the sort of sombre morality tale about the corruption of the Big City on impressionable rural minds.
Dobro pozhalovat / Welcome! (1986) is an (unauthorised) adaptation of Dr. Seuss' 1948 story "Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose." This ten-minute animated short film features stunning paint-on-glass animation, and, not surprisingly, involved the talents of the two Soviet animators best known for the technique – Alexei Karaev {The Lodgers of an Old House (1987)} as director, and future Oscar-winner Aleksandr Petrov {The Old Man and the Sea (1999)} as art director. The latter would make his co- directing debut two years later with the Mickey Mouse tribute 
Robert Benchley was an American humourist whose work extended across various mediums, though he is most remembered today for his short-subject comedic shorts, particularly the "How To..." series that he produced with MGM between 1935 and 1939. He has a understated, droll style of comedy – few of his jokes actually aim to get big laughs, and most of the humour is to be found in words rather than in physical slapstick routines. In 1927, Hollywood embraced the arrival of synchronised sound, a technical innovation that proved perfect for Benchley's kind of entertainment. His first appearance on film was in The Treasurer's Report (1928). The same year, The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928) was released, a subtle and likable little comedy with an eye-catching title. As in many of his short films, Benchley plays a smug lecturer who spouts rather ridiculous nonsense to a rapt audience, in this case a ladies' club, whose members giggle nervously whenever Benchley's analogies become a little too obvious for comfort.
The entrance of Buster Keaton's unnamed character in The High Sign (1921) is, in some ways, reminiscent of Chaplin's Little Tramp persona. The wandering vagrant, named only Our Hero, is booted off a moving train, and lands in an unknown town, the audience denied any back-story or unnecessary exposition. Wandering into a nearby theme park, Buster deftly snatches a newspaper from a moving carousel (done so casually that he doesn't look like he's even trying), and attempts to read the mammoth broadsheet. In search of a job, he happens upon an opening for a talented sharp-shooter, and, despite inadvertently gunning down a duck with his practice shots, Buster feels that he's qualified enough for the position. Chaplin's Tramp was never averse to breaking the rules if he wasn't hurting anybody who didn't deserve it, and Keaton's Hero is no different. By rigging an ingenious dog-powered bell-ringer to falsify the carnival stall, Buster fools his massive employer into believing that he is an ace with the rifle. 
Nick Park's Creature Comforts (1989) beat out competition from the likes of Bruno Bozzetto and Nick Park to win the 1991 Oscar for Best Animated Short. In all honesty, I haven't seen nominee Cavallette (1990), but I still think that the Academy got their ballots mixed up. Just for the record, I find A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit (1989) to be the much better short film, with an entertaining, fully-structured narrative and no shortage of imagination. Creature Comforts has a nice premise and some good jokes, but it's all over so very quickly, leaving only a shallow impression that doesn't bode well for repeat viewings. Nevertheless, the animal characters have that wonderful home-grown "Wallace and Gromit" look about them, always a lovely trademark of Aardman Animations, as well as charming British accents that add some sophistication to the zoo inhabitants' gripes. I’ve always wondered why the British have inherently sophisticated accents.
One Week (1920) was the first of Buster Keaton's independent two-reelers, though The High Sign (1921) was filmed first and shelved until the following year. The story starts out where most romantic comedies end: with a picturesque wedding ceremony, during which adoring relatives toss confetti and, oddly, second-hand footwear. The lucky groom (Keaton) and his bride (Sybil Seely) strike out for their new home, purchased by a well-meaning uncle. Of course, only in a Keaton short must the husband and wife construct their own house, utilising a do-it-yourself kit that goes awry when the bride's former lover switches the numbers around. The resultant dwelling would not have looked out of place in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), though Keaton is evidently proud of his handiwork, and is thus prepared to overlook the most minor of blunders (such as having the front door on the second-floor). This short served as a trial-run of sorts for the feature Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), for here we see an early version of Keaton's famous "saved-by-the-window" falling wall stunt.
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