Oscar Shorts 2010

Once again, this year’s nominees for both the Live Action and Animated Short Film Oscars will be playing in a few cinemas, starting this week with the Everyman Screen on the Green.

Short films are the only truly global categories in the Academy Awards, the only place where mordant Swedish character comedy ‘Instead of Abracadabra’ and starkly political Indian slavery drama ‘Kavi’ can go up against American fare like the loquacious, bloody ‘The New Tenants’. All the live-action shorts are remarkable, but the prize deserves to go to ‘The Door’, a harrowing and beautiful Irish-made, Russian-language story about Chernobyl.

Digital imagery has all but conquered the animation category. The exception is ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’, a fun but rather slight Wallace and Gromit adventure. Overall, the quality varies: the prize will surely go to hip but cynical French corporate satire ‘Logorama’, but there’s more fun to be had with sadistic Irish bedtime story ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’.