He reappears in a sylvan forest landscape in the afternoon. To his delight the acorn is just 10 feet away. Unfortunately it’s materialized under a rock the size of a Volkswagen. He pulls, he tugs, he strains, all to no avail. So he looks around for a tool. Hey, whaddya know, it’s Excalibur! He races to the rock and pulls the golden sword from the stone. Arthur’s army is not pleased. Quickly Scrat pries the acorn loose and races away with it and the time machine in tow. He zips up a stone wall and hides in a cozy iron tube. Safe. The iron tube is a cannon. Not safe. He goes flying toward a cloud of advancing arrows. He pushes some buttons on the time machine.

ZAP, he’s on the floor of the Roman Coliseum. The crowds cheer. He gets his tail caught in a chariot. The crowds cheer louder. He pries himself free and lands on the acorn. He takes a moment to bask in the crowd’s accolades. Then he looks behind him to discover that they were actually cheering for the growling thing that’s now racing toward him out of an open gate. He pushes some buttons.

ZAP! He’s back in a snow bank at night. Ah, bliss. Then the Titanic approaches out of the fog. He makes a little Scrat-sized indentation in the iceberg. ZAP! He’s back in 20,000 B.C. So is Diego, Sid and Manfred -- and Scrat. The Scrats fight over the acorn. ZAP! Shuttle takeoff. Scrat’s under the main engines. ZAP! Museum -- he’s caught in the middle of a jewelry display with the security lasers on him. ZAP! Ladies’ locker room. ZAP! The French Revolution. ZAP! The base of Ben Franklin’s kite. ZAP ZAP ZAP -- wrecking ball, nuclear bomb, speeding train.

He’s falling desperately through the space-time continuum now, a blue swirl of clocks, calendars -- and the acorn! He must reach it before the whirlpool of time catches him! Reach for it, reach for it -- ZAP! He’s on the grass. He’s next to a tree. The acorn is next to him. It’s a happy ending -- but wait, that tree is covered in acorns. Nut city! This is paradise! But the time machine is acting up, and threatening to zap out uncontrollably, so he smashes it. On to paradise.

Insert your own twist ending here, then catch the real twist ending on DVD -- this Oscar-nominated short is on the Ice Age: The Meltdown supplement. Co-director Chris Renaud is a storyboard artist who worked on Robots and the second Ice Age, and second co-director Mike Thurmeier was a lead animator on Robots and both Ice Age features. Their comedy/pacing/acting chops are all impeccable, and they’ve got a studio full of talent behind them, so this is strong product all the way, but what’s certainly making their job easier is the brilliance of Scrat as an original character design. Neurotic and hyper-caffeinated, with ping-pong-ball eyes bigger than his brain, this is someone who doesn’t have to waste time between extremes; and Renaud and Thurmeier don’t waste a frame. Scrat goes from pose to pose exactly long enough for the eye to read it -- and then he’s off again. By thus applying all the right controls, they keep the action just this side of out-of-control, and strike comic gold.

Mom and Dad never would have met if not for The Danish Poet. © Mikrofilm AS and National Film Board of Canada 2006. All rights reserved.

The Danish Poet
The Danish Poet is a goofily charming shaggy-dog story about star-crossed lovers, based -- with a twist -- on the story of how the animator’s own parents met. It seems that in the years following WWII there was a poet living in Denmark named Kasper Jørgensen. Like every artist, he was afraid he’d never have another good idea in his life; unlike most artists, he was seeing a psychiatrist who specialized in artists with creative block. His shrink told him he needed a vacation, and, because Kasper didn’t speak French, he should go north… maybe Norway. Kasper went to the library to research it, and he found a book about famous Scandinavians who weren’t from the countries everyone thought they were -- famous Swedes who were actually Danes, famous Danes who were actually Norwegians -- and there he read an article about Sigrid Undset. She was a Nobel prizewinner for literature, and her masterwork was a 1500-page trilogy called Kristin Lavransdatter.

The three novels tell the life story of Kristin, a medieval peasant who abandons her arranged marriage to marry her true love. But she loses favor with her father, and eventually dies in shame and despair. Kasper devoured the whole trilogy, and when he found out Sigrid was living in Norway he wrote and asked if he could visit. She said yes, and Kasper got on a ferry. While heading inland on foot, though, it started to rain and he took shelter with a local farmer. Kasper told the farmer he was on his way to see Sigrid, and the farmer said he and Sigrid were distant relatives.

Kasper told the farmer he’d leave when it stopped raining, but somehow it never quite stopped raining, so Kasper found himself staying for most of the summer -- and unexpectedly falling in love with the farmer’s daughter, Ingeborg. He was so in love, in fact, that he couldn’t leave without proposing marriage. But even though she loved him too, she couldn’t marry him -- she was engaged to another local farmer. It was an arranged marriage, and they would do the deed in August.

Kasper smacked his forehead -- boy was this scenario familiar. But before he could talk Ingeborg out of it, she said she’d read that book too, and she knew how it ended, and no way in hell would she do that to her father. Kasper couldn’t talk her out of it, and so he left, heartbroken. Ingeborg stayed, heartbroken, and gave Kasper a lock of her hair, promising she’d never cut it until they were reunited. Kasper went home and couldn’t write. Ingeborg stayed at the farm and couldn’t stop thinking about Kasper. And then, one day, a cow fell on her husband. In an instant she was free! She immediately wrote to Kasper to tell him “I’m yours!” The postman came. The letter went in his bag. The postman went down the road. The letter slipped out of the bag. A goat found it. The goat ate it. No more letter.

Years went by. Ingeborg couldn’t cut her hair, so the local kids helped her braid it. Kasper couldn’t write happy poetry, so he tried to write sad poetry. Then in 1949, Sigrid died. He didn’t want to go at first, but finally Kasper decided to go to the funeral. Ingeborg didn’t want to go, either, but Sigrid was a relative, so she went. And there, over the dead body of a Nobel prize-winning author, Ingeborg and Kasper were reunited.

There’s more, and it’s a well-earned happy ending, but there’s a gentle twist that makes this story of chaos and coincidence even more improbable than your usual how-Mom-met-Dad yarn so I’ll knock off here. The Danish Poet’s characters have a wonderfully endearing cartoon style of pinhole eyes and clean, thin lines reminiscent of Ken Kirkwood’s Peabody children’s books from the 1970s. Director/animator Torill Kove is, in fact, a children’s book veteran, and the 15-minute piece is suffused with good-natured whimsy, including a priceless running gag about Kasper getting off the trans-North Sea ferry year after year followed by the same group of drunks and backpackers. Liv Ullmann provides the sweet, understated narration. It’s funny and poignant and justly deserving of its Oscar nomination.

Taylor Jessen is a writer living in Burbank, California, where diet drinks are plentiful. He can currently be seen on the DVD The Animation Show (Vol. 1-2 Boxed Set), for which he recorded some amusing comments and wrote the liner notes.