If you missed the oscars, the best speech of the night was Kunio Katô’s acceptance for best animated short film.

Katô’s short, La Maison en Petite Cubes (つみきのいえ), is closer in tone and style to a film like Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville than to your typical Japanese animation. An old man slowly builds his house upwards above the rising flood waters that cover his town. When the man dives back down through the levels of his house, each floor is a slice of his past, frozen in time.

The film is well done, and has a roughness and nostalgia to it that more than justifies the honor it received from the academy last weekend, even though it has also been described as overly sentimental. (A more in-depth commentary is available at the Nishikata Film Review blog.)

Personally, I still wish Oktapodi had won!