Oscar Nominated Shorts
Get into the Oscar spirit by checking out these shorts nominated for Best Live Action and Animated Short Film.

Live Action Shorts
This year’s collection features three serious stories about young kids and two amusing dark comedies, making it tough to choose a frontrunner. Kavi, from India concerns a boy forced into slavery by his father’s debt. It’s an absorbing film about injustice, and a potential winner if the Slumdog Millionaire mojo from last year continues. The Door hails from Ireland, but the film is set in Russia. This grim but moving short deals with a family trying to survive after Chernobyl. Miracle Fish, from Australia, about a lonely 8 year-old boy encounters a dangerous situation at school, may be the weakest of the bunch, but it is still interesting. Instead of Abracadabra is a clever Swedish short about a possibly hapless magician who tries to use his powers to woo his comely new neighbor. It’s slight, but winning. Rounding out the shorts is the stylish Danish/American co-production, The New Tenants, which features a hilarious opening monologue by Frank (David Rakoff). Frank and his partner have just moved into a New York apartment, and they get caught up in the neighbor’s dramas involving cinnamon buns, errant spouses, and drugs. As the bodies pile up, so do the uneasy laughs. With any justice, The New Tenants will win.

Animated Shorts
The Academy will probably favor Wallace and Gromit, represented this year by their punny entry, A Matter of Loaf and Death. This enjoyable half-hour short has the pair working as bakers, and finding romance and murder as a “cereal killer” is on the loose. As always, the loyal Gromit says nothing but knows much, and employs various inventions to help his clueless master escape danger. But the best short this year is the dazzling Logorama. Using signage and iconography from pop culture, the plot has Ronald McDonald wrecking havoc in Los Angeles. He is chased by cops who look like Michelin Men, and tries to take Big Boy hostage. Perhaps the most astonishing thing in this fabulous short is how the filmmakers were able to play with all the trademarks—the zoo here features the MGM lion, the Linux Penguins, and a republican flag elephant—and not get sued. The other films in this category range from the cute French Roast, a comic piece about the patrons of a café, to two delightfully devious films where an old woman gets her revenge. Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty, is a smart re-telling of the classic fairy tale and the inventive The Lady and the Reaper has a widow battles it out between a doctor trying to save her life and Death, who is trying to take it. While all of the shorts feature some terrific images and clever, humorous moments, Logorama is the by far the most outstanding of the nominees.


ALSO OPENING
Blood Done Sign My Name
A fact-based drama about the 1970 murder of a black man that went unpunished by a white jury despite eye-witness testimony.

Shutter Island
Leonardo DiCaprio stars alongside Mark Ruffalo and Emily Mortimer in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lahane’s page-turner about an investigation at an island mental institution.