How can we forget "La Maison en Petits Cubes"?

by Chris MaGee

Well, it looks like I did just that... In all the rush and excitement of the news that Yojiro Takita's "Departures (Okuribito)" had picked up a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Annual Academy Awards I forgot to check some of the other categories. If I had I would have seen that Kunio Kato's "Tsumiki no Ie (La Maison en Petits Cubes)" was up for Best Animated Short. The 12-minute short that depicts an old man's neverending working of adding bricks to his house to keep it from sinking into the water that surrounds was already honoured with the top prize at last year's Annecy International Animated Film Festival considered by many to be the Cannes of animation festivals. Congratulations to Kato-san and thanks to Tokyograph for waking me up about this.