Homer's Travels: Shorts ... How Depressing Can You Be In Less Than Thirty Minutes

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Shorts ... How Depressing Can You Be In Less Than Thirty Minutes

Going to see the Oscar nominated short films has become an annual ritual.  I've gone to see them five out of the last six years (I think).  The short formats, both animated and live action allow for a good mix of serious, funny, and surreal storytelling.  Unlike a few of my other Oscar short outings, the Wife joined me.  This year we added a third set of shorts to our Oscar watching: Short Documentaries.  Since watching all three sets of shorts was a little too much to fit in one night, we watched the animated and live action shorts last week.  Last night we went to the documentaries.

This years short animated and live action nominees were a bit disappointing.  Every year that I've gone there has been at least one short that grabbed my interest and was memorable.  This years group were easily forgotten.

The documentaries ... wow ... where do I start?  There were five shorts.  The first was about a Veteran's Suicide Crisis Hotline (more deaths by suicide than on the battlefield).  Not the most joyful subject.  It went downhill from there.  A mother dying from Cancer, children growing up in the shadows of oil wells in North Dakota, a 'killer' working at a mexican slaughterhouse (five hundred bulls per day, six days a week, for twenty-five years - killed by this man), and a young family coping with a newborn baby with a defect (he stops breathing when he sleeps).  By the end of the last short I think I needed the suicide hotline number!  What a bunch of well made but depressing films.  Are you telling me that no one filmed a short, funny film worth Oscar nomination?  We were so bummed the only thing we could do as we walked to the car and drove home was laugh and say "Wow!"

I may have to reconsider adding the Short Documentaries to my annual ritual.

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