Fresh Guacamole (2012)

Transforming familiar objects into fresh guacamole.

Director:

PES

Writer:

PES

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 1 nomination.

Storyline

In the delicate hands of an inspired and picky gourmet chef or a dedicated foodie, a ripe avocado fruit screams "Guacamole", Mexico's famous spread. The recipe is quite simple. After halving and dicing the avocado, you chop some coriander, a small onion, and a juicy red tomato. Of course, don't forget the indispensable chilli pepper and a splash of lime. ¡Buen provecho.

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Plot Keywords:

lightbulb | pincushion | guacamole | baseball | monopoly the board game | 

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Taglines:

In this follow-up to his stop-motion hit Western Spaghetti, director PES transforms familiar objects into Fresh Guacamole.

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Genres:

Animation | Short | Fantasy

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

2 March 2012 (USA)

Also Known As:

Свежий гуакамоле

Filming Locations:

Torrance, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

PES Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

2 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD

Did You Know?

Trivia

The hands featured in the film are PES's.

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Connections

Featured in The Oscars (2013)

User Reviews

Creative, fun and technically impressive

This is a very short film and indeed one of the reasons it appears to have had so many votes and comments on IMDb is that it is known for being the shortest film ever nominated for an Oscar. The film is about a man making guacamole, dicing up the ingredients, mixing them and ultimately serving them up with chips. The method of delivery of this is live-action stop-motion animation (for which the correct term is pixilation) and we see other objects being used in the place of the regular food stuffs – so for example a hand grenade instead of an avocado, poker chips instead of potato chips. Additionally when something is "diced" with a knife, it literally becomes a load of dice.

As a short stop-motion film it is very cool and I liked a lot the way it takes odd ideas and runs with them. We all have things flash into our minds at times, whether it is the obvious stuff like a banana being held like a gun, and essentially that film takes these silly connections and makes them work – so the starting point is that an avocado reminds the maker of a hand grenade and it goes from there. The animation is impressively smooth which is very hard to do when working with real people as we are here. The transition to dice and smaller dice is also impressively done.

In terms of the Oscar nomination I'm not sure why this film was selected when there are so many great stop-motion projects out there, but then in fairness I am not really sure how the Academy narrows the field down to a short list for nomination. I take the nomination of a film like this as recognition not just for this specific project, but rather acknowledgement and highlight of the many great little short films out there that are free of the pressure to return big profits and instead can focus on creativity and seeing what works and what can be done. Fresh Guacamole is such a film – short, creative, fun and technically impressive, I hope it serves as a gateway for viewers to other similar cool stop-motion projects.