Starting this weekend at various arthouse theaters around the country, dedicated Oscar-watchers will have the opportunity to get head of everyone else in two of the toughest categories to predict: the shorts. The ten animated and live-action shorts nominated for Oscars this year will be showing on the big screen for the following week, offering bite-size doses of absurdity, drama, and even the occasional genius. Check your local listings for the films' availability in your area; they're playing at the IFC Center in New York City and the Egyptian in Hollywood, for starters.

The five animated and five live-action shorts are a mixed bag, of course, though all are Oscar-quality in some way or another. I've got no idea which will win and I won't even try to predict, though the presence of four-time winner Nick Park in the animation category and two movies about children in peril over in the live-action category may stack the deck a bit.

Nick Park has won four Oscars for animated shorts, and he just may make it a fifth with A Matter of Loaf and Death, another adventure with daffy inventor Wallace and his clever dog Gromit. Boasting clever spins on both the romance and horror genres, it flies by in 30 minutes, filled with the familiar daffy British humor and visual gags that have made Wallace and Gromit so beloved over the decades. It's not reinventing the wheel, exactly, but it's a welcome treat all the same.

Three of the shorts feature old ladies as protagonists, probably just a coincidence but still funny in a year when Up is the likely winner of the feature animation prize. In French Roast a haughty businessman comes up with ways to pay his cafe bill when he realizes he's forgotten his wallet, when an old lady sits down next to him who might have a solution. Incorporating several different animation styles and a ton of sharp humor is the beautiful Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, about a bitter grandmother injecting her own opinion into a bedtime story. Also with an elderly protagonist is The Lady and the Reaper, a mordant and witty story about a woman's complicated journey to the afterlife that's like a Pixar short with a few extra doses of black humor. Featuring no dialogue and brilliant caricature work, Lady and the Reaper would be an easy crossover hit with children and adult audiences alike.



It's been getting a lot of attention around the web, but Logorama, a French short set in a Los Angeles that's represented entirely with corporate logos, left me a little cold. Neither experimental enough to erally take advantage of the logo gambit, nor entertaining enough to stand as a story on its own, the movie is sort of a critique of global capitalism, but maybe also just an excuse to make some jokes about corporate logos. At 16 minutes it also feels two times too long.

Unlike most of their short-and-sweet counterparts, the live-action shorts all clock in around 20 minutes, and most deal with some sort of death and destruction-- three even involve children tormented or killed. With the Danish film set in the United States (The New Tenants) and the Irish one set in Russia (The Door), they also represent their fair share of the globe, from the Swedish suburbs to slave-operated brick kilns in India.

The biggest crowdpleaser is by far Instead of Abracadabra, a Swedish take on the Napoleon Dynamite lovable loser formula, about a 25-year-old magician living at home and trying to spark a romance with his pretty neighbor. You don't even need me to tell you what awkwardness ensues. Better at capturing geeky isolation, though, is Australia's Miracle Fish, about a bullied little boy who wishes for everyone around him to just go away, and gets what he wants in a violent, horrific way. The movie's brutal third-act twist feels out of place and almost metaphoric, but writer- director Luke Doolan with his details about childhood and loneliness than he makes the movie a quiet little time bomb.



Speaking of literal time bombs-- The Door tugs mercilessly at your tearducts with a story about a family forced to evacuate their home after a Chernobyl-like explosion. The filmmaking is elegant and restrained, but the storyline about an ailing child feels needlessly manipulative even in such a short running time. Just as brutal is Kavi, about a little boy working in slavery alongside his parents at an Indian brick kiln, and provided with scraps of opportunity to escape. A subplot about cricket goes nowhere, but the movie's intentions are honorable and the film is quick enough to do more than just cripple you with depression.

Weirdest and starriest of all is The New Tenants, whcih opens with a scathing and sarcastic monologue from actor/writer David Rakoff about how we're all doomed, and only getting mordant from there. Rakoff and Jamie Harrold play a couple just moved into a new apartment and plagued by friends and enemies of the old tenants, from a nosy neighbor (Helen Hanft) to a jealous jilted husband (Vincent D'Onofrio) to a violent and unpredictable drug dealer (Kevin Corrigan). Rakoff and Harrold's restrained terror contrasts nicely with all the other over-the-top performances, but the film shifts quickly from dark and funny to just plain absurd, and doesn't really reward all the time spent with it.

The great thing about a shorts program, though, is that if you don't like one thing, it's not long before you move on to the next. This year's Oscar selections offer so much good to offset the bad-- often within the same film-- that they're well worth a ticket at your local arthouse theater.