Bless me, Father

Seventeen films screened today! I've come to expect the live-action and animated shorts programs about this time of year, but something new has been added.

Oscar®-nominated live-action shorts

Crit

• The Confession--It's a Catholic thing: a too-innocent boy needs a sin for his first confession, and things go terribly and predictably wrong.
• Wish 143--As my companion for the other two programs pointed out, it's funny how the shorts fall into thematic clumps. Here is another young man eager to sin, with a priest in a key supporting role. A cancer comedy, one of only two in this program worth watching, and a dark horse for the award.
• Na Wewe--Genocidal war is bad. Could win, though, if the voters go with their mushy liberal consciences.
• The Crush--Another schoolboy farce, improved only marginally by Irish accents.
• God of Love--Easily the best of the lot, and the only pure comedy, but probably won't win.

Oscar®-nominated animated shorts

Crit

• Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a journey diary)--Lovely watercolor animation, and lemurs!
• Let's Pollute--Nice joke, though at 6 minutes, it outstays its shelf life.
• The Gruffalo--It's just a children's book being read, really, with the title character ripped off from Where the Wild Things Are.
• The Lost Thing--Another theme bump, with another large, ostensibly nonexistent beast, this one sort of an oversized hermit crab in a Kool-Aid pitcher. I guess this is my favorite, though I didn't love any of the nominees.
• Day and Night--Pixar, showed before Toy Story 3, I believe. Blah, but never bet against Pixar.

As always, the animated shorts are so short that 5 of them come to barely an hour, so we got to see a couple of Highly Commendables, or whatever they call 'em:

• Urs--House is falling apart, so man carries his mother to the Promised Land. Or something.
• The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger--Only brilliant thing I saw all day: fantastic artwork, clever concept, beautifully realized.

Oscar®-nominated documentary shorts

Crit

First time I've had a chance to see this program--which is the main reason I went, given an unenthusiastic Times review.

• Killing in the Name--Terrorism? Also Bad.
• Sun Come Up--Global warming? Aw, you guessed!
• The Warriors of Qiugang--Pollution? Yup, also bad. One disturbing shared quality of the doc shorts is the self-congratulation of the swell people who come along to confront the problem.
• Poster Girl--Without a doubt the nominee that hit me hardest, about a young woman who went to Iraq at 17 and will be trying to come to grips with that experience forever. Sad, stealth-funny, moving, and in the end surprisingly uplifting. However, . . .
• Strangers No More-- . . . it's got no chance in hell against this feel-good juggernaut, about a school for refugee children in Tel Aviv, which teaches its students Hebrew the first week and nuclear physics the second. OK, I exaggerate, but it is a pretty astonishing institution. But hell, making an appealing film about a place like this is as challenging as making a cute puppy video. If I were a student there, by the way, I would make an effort every day to be sent to the principal's office.