I bet there’s one category in your Oscar pool that you always have trouble winning. Who on Earth outside of Hollywood has seen the films nominated for best live-action short, after all?
You can. The presentation of “The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012: Live Action” will give you an edge this awards season. And the films themselves are pretty good, too.
They’re an international group, and none of them is over 40 minutes, thanks to academy rules. Two of the five this year come from Ireland. “Pentecost” is very, very Irish. A young boy has been banned from watching his obsession — football, or soccer for those of us in North America — after his last appearance as an altar boy resulted in disaster. He has the chance to make things right — in church and in sport — when he’s needed to fill in for a better boy at the last minute.
The other Irish entry, “The Shore,” is a pleasure thanks to the work of the underrated actor Ciaran Hinds. It’s also a moving story. Two men who were best friends as boys now never speak. Their estrangement stems from the wider world that overtook them in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. But they reunite after 25 years when Hinds’ character comes home to make peace.
“Tuba Atlantic” has similar themes, but this short comes from a very different place — Norway — and has a very different style. Here the man who wishes to put the past in the past is Oskar, a 70-year-old close to death. He’s forgiven his brother for an old argument, and wants to tell him so. But he thinks his sibling is on the other side of the Atlantic, and wonders if he can make amends before he dies.
“Time Freak,” on the other hand, is purely American. It’s a sci-fi comedy about a guy who gets lost yesterday — he’s having some trouble with his time machine.
But a short comedy has to be very, very good to top the dramatic shorts. “Raju” is certainly a case in point. A German couple adopt a needy 4-year-old boy in Calcutta — and then lose him before they can go home. They realize that their good intentions might not be enough in such a chaotic city. This German short proves — along with its fellow nominees — that good filmmaking can happen anywhere.
