{"id":7788,"date":"2019-02-19T06:47:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T11:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7788"},"modified":"2019-03-14T08:48:35","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T12:48:35","slug":"oscar-and-his-shorts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7788","title":{"rendered":"Oscar and his Shorts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Academy<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s become increasingly easy to see the Academy Award-nominated short films\u2014animated, documentaries, and live action, and I\u2019ve enjoyed them a great deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The documentaries generally give an in-depth examination of some small aspect of life or interesting person, usually overlooked and often a moving testament to the human spirit. (I\u2019m thinking about the former prison inmates taught to staff a high-end Cleveland restaurant in last year\u2019s Knife Skills<\/a><\/em> or Joe\u2019s Violin<\/a><\/em> from 2017.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The live action films explore myriad stories of the human condition\u2014last\nyear\u2019s film about the deaf child who wanted to learn sign language\u2014including lighter\nmoments, such as the absurdly funny 2017 Spanish film, Timecode<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not this year. The Academy process resulted in nominees of\nalmost unrelieved bleakness. We skipped the documentaries (on racism, Nazism,\ndying, and the plight of refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe). The\nonly film with a hopeful message was about young women in India trying to\novercome the stigma of menstruation. That they needed to was discouraging\nenough. Maybe these films were truly outstanding, but the topics (except the\nlast) are well-worn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a similarly dubious assessment of the live action shorts\nnominees, noting the heavy \u201cchildren in peril\u201d theme, but made a last-minute\ndecision to see them anyway. It would be a job of work to decide which was most\ndepressing (links below are to trailers): <\/p>\n\n\n\n