Oscar-nominated shorts are a strong and diverse batch
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Wallace & Gromit star in "A Matter of Loaf and Death," one of this year's Oscar-nominated short films. Screenings of the 10 nominees start Friday at Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Regent Square Theater. Logos run amok in "Logorama," a short also nominated for an Academy Award.
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After watching a child laborer in India, a family trying to outrun Chernobyl's lethal poison and an 8-year-old boy and separate pair of male roomies staring down death, a hapless magician seems to have wandered into the wrong Oscar category.
But he and the others are the focus of the five live-action shorts coming Friday to the Regent Square Theater along with the five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, including a Wallace and Gromit entry.
The 10 are a remarkably strong and diverse crop of nominees with a couple that stay with you -- always a good indication. Comedy is standard on the animated side but in short supply on the live-action side.
If you're filling out a complete Oscar ballot with all two dozen categories, this will let you predict what will (or should) win on March 7. If not, you will simply find that less can be more, unless of course you are James Cameron and you're making "Avatar."
The live-action shorts range from 16 minutes to 22 minutes and include one, called "Kavi" and shot in Maharashtra, India, that seems reminiscent of last year's "Slumdog Millionaire."
- Rating: Not rated although some shorts have English subtitles. Live-action shorts contain some adult language and violent content. Animated shorts PG-13 in nature except for "Logorama," which has strong language and violence and will be shown last.
The title character is not an orphan begging on the streets but the young son of a man who owes 10,000 rupees (roughly $215 American) to a brick maker. That debt has turned the boy, who longs to attend school, and his parents into modern-day slaves -- three of the 27 million around the globe, we learn in a note at film's end.
Not heavy enough? Walk through "The Door," the haunting story of a man, his wife and their young daughter swept out of their apartment by the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
"That day we didn't just lose a town, we lost our whole world," the father suggests, in a way that will become achingly apparent as the story unfolds and the literal and figurative value of the door is made clear.
First Published February 18, 2010 12:00 am
