{"id":362,"date":"2013-03-03T07:52:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T12:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=362"},"modified":"2013-02-28T08:20:38","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T13:20:38","slug":"telling-an-award-winning-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=362","title":{"rendered":"Telling an Award-Winning Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Live-action shorts are to feature films as short stories are to novels. You have to get in fast, establish the scene and your characters, make a limited number of points\u2014and out you go. I wrote about the short documentaries nominated for the Oscar last week. Now that we know Curfew<\/a><\/i> won the live-action category\u2014it got my vote!\u2014here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

\"\"The other four nominees (and all the documentaries) were pretty depressing. True, Curfew<\/i> opens with a young man (filmmaker Shawn Christensen) sitting in a bathtub full of bloodied water, and he\u2019s holding a razor blade. Damage has been done. Still somehow there\u2019s a sense of incipient redemption, because when his sister phones in desperation (\u201cyou\u2019re last on my list\u201d) and asks him to babysit her nine-year-old daughter for a few hours, you know he\u2019ll say \u201cOK.\u201d After he cleans himself up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The unlikely relationship between the uncle and niece develops engagingly. A true story is unfolding there. Curfew<\/i> benefited from the charming, cool, and always on-point performance by F\u00e1tima Ptacek (with Christensen at left).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two other films were about children–young boys living in impoverished circumstances (Afghanistan and Somalia) whose big dreams are hard to hold onto. In Oscar handicapping, these two cancelled each other out. Today\u2019s U.S. child actors are vastly better trained and directed than they used to be. These boys hadn\u2019t had that support and retained some awkwardness.<\/p>\n

\"\"The fourth movie was about an aging gentleman, a concert pianist, facing a confusing m\u00e9lange of past and present, real and unreal, as he searches for his wife. Well done, if a little too predictable and a lot too like Amour<\/i>, so a no-go for this year in such a strong field, the critics agree<\/a>. And the last, Death of a Shadow <\/i>(right), too slow-moving and surreal, short on action and long on atmosphere and outright weirdness. Steampunk clocks, silhouettes of corpses, endless corridors, creepy teeth.<\/p>\n

While all the short documentaries were right around 40 minutes, making for a squirmy evening in only semi-comfortable chairs, all but one of the live action shorts were half that length. Curfew<\/i> packed in so much feeling and character that it was a rich experience, deep if not long. And, BTW, it was edited on Christensen\u2019s MacBook Pro<\/a>!<\/p>\n