{"id":8962,"date":"2021-04-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8962"},"modified":"2023-05-04T13:33:14","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T17:33:14","slug":"its-shorts-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8962","title":{"rendered":"It’s Shorts Season!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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No, not the kind that guy\u2019s wearing! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The short films nominated for Oscars are on view via various streaming outlets. We watched the five \u201clive action\u201d nominees over the weekend and while, year after year, all the films aren\u2019t necessarily funny or uplifting, they\u2019re almost always interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consciously or unconsciously, the creative teams behind this year\u2019s nominees must have been immersed in the George Floyd aftermath, because four of the five deal with a character\u2019s interaction with uniformed authorities–police, border guards, corrections officers, most of whom are frustratingly intransigent. The fifth nominee lacks cops, but deals with building understanding between people with totally different backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Present\u201d by Farah Nabulsi documents the struggle of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, where even the simplest act leads to a morass of difficulties. Performances were good, but the story is predictable. (Tastes differ. IndieWire<\/a> <\/em>liked this one best.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cWhite Eye,\u201d an Eritrean immigrant buys a used bicycle, which turns out to have been stolen. The bike\u2019s owner wants it back. The police know only one way to react. Nice twist at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFeeling Through\u201d involves a young, homeless black man who encounters a blind and deaf white man and helps him across the street. Produced by Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin, it\u2019s a feel-good movie that shows the blossoming of an act of kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwo Distant Strangers\u201d is an urban Groundhog Day<\/em> with guns. A young black man repeatedly dreams about (foresees?) a dangerous confrontation with an older white cop. In any version of reality, can this ever turn out OK?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Letter Room,\u201d Oscar Isaac plays Richard, a surprisingly genial corrections officer who screens prisoner mail. (The film was written and directed by Isaac\u2019s wife, Elvira Lind.) One of the death-row inmates receives numerous steamy letters from his girlfriend, and another begs Richard to make sure his daughter\u2019s letters haven\u2019t been lost in the system. Two nice reversals at the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not the kind that guy\u2019s wearing! The short films nominated for Oscars are on view via various streaming outlets. We watched the five \u201clive action\u201d nominees over the weekend and while, year after year, all the films aren\u2019t necessarily … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's Shorts Season! - Five Oscar-nominated short films are streaming from a service near you. Storytelling in a intense and dramatic form.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,104],"tags":[1850,124],"class_list":["post-8962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-the-morgue","tag-academy-awards","tag-short-film"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ky","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8966,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962\/revisions\/8966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}