I have moments where all my faith in humanity is temporarily restored, only to have it come crashing down again mere minutes later. Tonight they were showing all the Oscar nominated live action shorts at the Scotiabank and since I’m trying to be more thorough in my Oscar prep this year, I decided to check them out. I got to the theatre about half an hour before they were scheduled to start and saw this gigantic line-up in the vicinity of the theatre I needed to get to.
Could it be? Could other people seriously care this much about the live action shorts? I was willing to put aside my distaste of huge crowds in this instance because it would mean that people were actively consuming smaller films on a large scale, and this brought me joy. But my joy was short lived because it turned out that they were just in line for Avatar in IMAX. Come on, people!
Kavi
Wasn’t super enamoured of this one. They definitely wanted to pack an emotional wallop with the stat about the number of people still enslaved around the world, but I think it’s hard to pack the actual film with enough content to make that happen in a twenty minute time frame. I think this might have actually been the director’s Master’s thesis (or so the credits would indicate), so I assume that getting an Oscar nomination should be enough to earn your degree.
The New Tenants
I liked this one in spite of the one character who was purposely written as an obnoxious hipster nihilist and the “Uh oh!” moments of mistaken identity (or at least mistaken occupancy of an apartment). I really enjoyed the jokes revolving around eating a dead guy’s food. Bonus Vincent D’Onofrio in this and even more bonus Kevin Corrigan. Kevin Corrigan!
Also, IMDB claims that if I like this movie, I will also like The Bastketball Diaries, and I imagine the similarities (beside drug use) are the fact that both films feature old ladies getting assaulted. Nice.
Miracle Fish
This film is Home Alone set in a school, minus the Joe Pesci, and plus Elephant. The bloody hand on the back of the door was a bit much, especially when the next shot was of some hand print artwork, but overall this was pretty intense. Also, the teacher in this one is the absolute worst at casting a play.
The Door
Ugh, surprise Chernobyl short. Bleak. Depressing. Radiation poisoning sucks. I’m not sure there’s much else to say.
Instead of Abracadabra
If you’re picturing GOB from Arrested Development but in Sweden and slightly more inept, you are not wrong. Swedish!GOB even talks about his show having “gothic mystery and mayhem”, which is clearly more exciting as random words coming out of his mouth than as an actual show. Instead of abracadabra, he’s come up with his own catchphrase to say at magical moments: “chimay”, complete with elaborate hand gestures. Only, when he says “chimay”, it definitely sounds like “shemale” the first dozen times until someone finally says to him “Wait, shemale?” (Lessons learned: shemale is a legit word in Swedish.) This one is equal parts hilarious, tragic, and utterly embarrassing.