[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to Cinema Hounds, a lower-hounds podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Alicia and this episode is part of our Oscar season 2026 coverage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Please do listen to the kickoff episode that David and I did about a week ago with a preview of the 10 best picture nominees and other surprises, snubs and stats.
[SPEAKER_03]: And before that though, I did also do two sort of unofficial solo episodes about short films.
[SPEAKER_03]: This episode today completes that trilogy, but this time I will be joined by Brandon from short-stick to discuss the three categories of Oscar-nominated shorts animation documentary and live action.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm happy to say that five of the short films I've recommended in the Oscar qualifying shorts for Laura Hounds episode did go on to get an Oscar nomination so we'll be discussing them again today and I did also the second shorts episode I did was dedicated to all the long listed BAFTA shorts
[SPEAKER_03]: So, five of those have now been nominated as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Congratulations to the three best British short animation nominees, cardboard, solstice, and two black boys in paradise, and congratulations to the five best British short film nominees, Mugged Safar, Nostalji, Terrence.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Enumitriosis, and welcome home freckles.
[SPEAKER_03]: There will be a special coming out just after the spirit awards air next weekend with a preview of all the feature nominees for the BAFTAs and also one before that for the spirit awards.
[SPEAKER_03]: In both of those, I will highlight the movies that were not nominated for Oscars that you might also be interested in and just fill you in on what all the players are in the games if you want to follow along with those awards and also our watch parties for them on Discord.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stay tuned at the end for more information about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But today, again, we're talking official Oscar-nominated short films.
[SPEAKER_03]: Best animated short, best documentary short, and best live-action short, without further ado.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and I'm here with Brandon from Short Stick.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Brandon, welcome.
[SPEAKER_03]: God, you could join us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, thanks for having me, Alisha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love what you guys are doing at the lower hounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a great network of a wide variety of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's great to be on here and talking about shorts with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you were a recent addition to our discord.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I hope to see you more there.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you, a short stick, you have a blog and a podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the name and the fact that you were here on this episode suggests a little bit of the subject matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: But do you want to tell us about short stick?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I created short stick just because I was kind of looking at shorts for the Oscars and everything and noticed a lack of coverage compared to other categories where you'd have these sites like variety in the Hollywood reporter being like predictions in every category and then they would just leave out shorts kind of thing so I was like there needs to be more of a voice in this space because there are a lot of really good short films out there few seek them out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I created short stick with a few friends and
[SPEAKER_00]: We go to different film festivals, whether it's virtually or in person, and kind of watch what they have to offer and talk about the best shorts that we feel are at the festivals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we also recently started up a podcast where we interviewed directors and kind of talk about our Oscar predictions for the short lists and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not super regular.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more sporadic as for when we have content.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, we have that as well that it can be found
[SPEAKER_03]: And regular listeners might not be able to believe this, but I think you watch even more movies than I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know about features, but yeah, short stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every short film that I can kind of get my hands on to watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm watching it.
[SPEAKER_03]: How far in advance were you done with the shorts categories for these nominees?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, for the nominees, when they came out, I still hadn't seen the three sisters, and I think we'll talk about why, when we get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's like, shorts are kind of weird, so they don't have like a set release date where they like go into theaters.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very long process of festivals, can play up to a couple of years before the Oscars.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the first one I saw was Jane Austen's period drama
[SPEAKER_00]: back in May of 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: So almost two years ago now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also that there's other ones like bad hot stitch was an IDA nominee not this past IDA words with the one before perfectly strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was at TIFF in 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: there's lots throughout 2024 that kind of make their way into the the 2025 season.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of difficult to say like what is a 2024 short?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is a 2025 short?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just kind of depends on when they qualify, which has a completely different window than regular features and everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and here's hoping that some of the hundreds of shorts I watched this year, qualify in future years as well then, but do you want to run through quickly?
[SPEAKER_03]: How does a short qualify for the Oscars?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a few different methods.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most common one I would say that probably over 50% of the shorts go this route is if you win qualifying festival award, which the Academy has a list of which festivals have these awards.
[SPEAKER_00]: You then are allowed to submit to the Oscars, not all of them choose to, most of them do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other two routes are putting it in theaters for a week in one of, I believe it's six U.S. cities that you can do that in
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third one is just three shorts in each category qualify this way, but through the student academy awards, if you win gold silver bronze, you are then eligible to submit to the Oscars.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think as far as timing goes, the rule is something like within.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have, it has to be done within two years of the end of production.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I think the technical rule is, but yeah, so you can have stuff from 2024 definitely qualifying for the 2025 Oscars and winning in 2006.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I was noticing that there was a bath.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't know how many this year that was dated 2022.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's been out there for awhile.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why would people not submit to the Oscars because it costs money?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them I think fear that they don't have the money to run the campaign anyways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And don't bother with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've never asked a filmmaker why she didn't submit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, pass a ring.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you saw that one this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: played the Manhattan Festival, which is one that kind of goes in theaters across the country automatically qualifies all 10 of the shorts playing in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she was qualified.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was a great short mirror kind of like, oh, like this could maybe make some some waves at the Oscars and then just in submit kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think there there is a lot of money that needs to go into the campaigning and paying for PR, saw that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're not willing to, some filmmakers, if you're not willing to go all in like that,
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we're going to be talking today mostly about films that did submit for the Oscars or maybe entirely.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we are specifically, of course, going to be focusing on the 15 nominees across the three shorts categories that we reserve the right to shout out to others as we go.
[SPEAKER_03]: The order that we're going to discuss these in is we're going to start with the animated shorts, then move on to the documentary shorts, and then wrap up with
[SPEAKER_03]: and there will of course be separate episodes for the animated and documentary features and we might shout out some of these shorts then too.
[SPEAKER_03]: But today we will be talking through mostly those 15 films for each category we'll be doing it in alphabetical order.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's jump into animated shorts and I have to say good news for this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a new thing that some of us have had access to actually last year.
[SPEAKER_03]: My guest on the animated episode was Benoit from Animation Showcase and this year actually there is an opportunity for
[SPEAKER_03]: everyone to watch shorts on animated showcase the way that you do it is that you create a free account on deathracetracking.com that is a website that I've shouted out in the past that is you
[SPEAKER_03]: David is always talking about Oscars DeathRace.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: He likes the simplicity there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've just said DeathRaceTracking.com more my bag because there's more options and it goes a bit further with more data and everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it also got a complete makeover this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looks completely different.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you create a free account there, you can follow instructions there to also sign up for animated showcase and animation showcase.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there you can watch
[SPEAKER_03]: not just the nominated shorts, but I believe, yeah, also the shortlisted shorts as well for the Oscars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and previous years as well, if you're interested in taking a leap back in time a bit, there's some really good ones over the years that are still on there that you can check out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, well, so let's talk through the five nominees just to rattle them off quickly our butterfly forever green the girl who cried pearls retirement day and the three sisters.
[SPEAKER_03]: So starting at the beginning of the alphabet with butterfly or in French papillon.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a 15-minute short directed by Florals Mayu.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the plot is a man swims in the sea, this brings back memories.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are all connected to water, from his early childhood to his adult life.
[SPEAKER_03]: This will be the story of his last swim.
[SPEAKER_03]: And how do we talk about this without spoiling it?
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like what I'd like to say about this one is that the medium really matches the story where it's it's painted by hand and that the paint flows kind of like water flows and it dissolves like water dissolves and the paintings are never like super precise.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot about memory and
[SPEAKER_00]: your memories are never crystal clear as like when they actually happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the medium is like intentionally not super precise and dissolving kind of like memory does goes in and out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's one where I really appreciate the the medium used to describe a story that is based off of true story and is yeah I think it's very powerful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we'll say it does get at some points.
[SPEAKER_03]: You realize that it is a more serious story than an initially seems at first.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, we are gonna hold off on spoilers for this as much as possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I will say this one, if you are listening at the time, this is released, look in the show notes, and there is a link to YouTube.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I can't guarantee how long that link will stay up.
[SPEAKER_03]: They a lot of the shorts that have been nominated,
[SPEAKER_03]: there are links taken down, but for now you can watch it on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, let's move on to Forever Green.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a 13-minute short directed by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears about an orphan to bear cub who finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree until his hunger for trash leads him to danger.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think about this one?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like the animation on this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very tactile and wood-in kind of mixed with kind of your computer, 3D type stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, it wasn't my favorite of the two animated bear shorts that were on the short list, but I still really do appreciate this one and enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a solid story.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'll say that you mentioned of the two bear shorts, the long-listed, other long-listed bear short was snow bear, directed by Aaron Blaise.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that one you can actually find on YouTube right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that a lot of people were hoping that that would be nominated.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we got forevergreen, which is another cute bear shorts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that that's the thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very cute.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it, that's it, that's it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The next one is actually one of my personal favorites.
[SPEAKER_03]: The girl who cried pearls, I actually talks about this in the shorts for lower hounds episodes.
[SPEAKER_03]: This or La Jean-Pierre, de Père, 16 minutes long, directed by Chris Loveys and Machic Shabowski.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is a haunting fable about a girl overwhelmed by sorrow, the boy who loves her and how greed leads good hearts to wicked deeds.
[SPEAKER_03]: The production design, the production design is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a stop motion animation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, you know, so there's not really animated faces, but they do really interesting things with the body animation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just was very into the aesthetics and the story got captured me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I liked the ending a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you think of this one?
[SPEAKER_03]: Were you also a fan or no?
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah i was luckily able to see this one at tiff this year on the big screen which is always like a real real treat to kind of see a big it's supported by the the national film board of Canada so i have a bit of a attachment to this one just being Canadian myself but uh yeah i think it's it's a really interesting children's fable it kind of uniquely blends like a 3D animation for their facial expressions
[SPEAKER_00]: into stop motion puppetry.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like a short that does it all animation-wise where like you said the production design is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story and screenwriting is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It tells a very like a tale that has like consequences kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I really love the adventure that this one takes you on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it does a lot in 16 minutes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Storywise, I'll say, it feels like, you know, if you had it hazy in your memory, you could almost think what that was a feature, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But no, 16 minutes, the whole story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so true.
[SPEAKER_03]: The next one is one of my very favorites, and maybe my favorite to win, let's see.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's retirement plan, a seven-minute short, at Apathy with his life, Ray Dreams of the Beauty of Joy, he will find in his retirement, and this one was directed by John Kelly, and narrated by Donald Gleason.
[SPEAKER_03]: It used to be on the New York or YouTube channel, but I checked just before recording and they've taken it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, really?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, what did you think of this one?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that this one is like one that's really easy to relate to for anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we all kind of just, you know, are worried about what are we doing with our life?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is to come and everything like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: One that where like the academy's full of filmmakers who are a lot of them no longer making work and I think it's kind of existential in the way that'll cause like you to think like yeah What have I accomplished in life what what do I still want to accomplish and like kind of like a almost a feeling of procrastination as well Where you're like oh, I'll do that in five years from now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I think it's just a really great commentary on that with Yeah, the animation throughout just kind of changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this one too
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is one of the ones also in my shorts for Laura Hound's episode and it was one also I showed it to my mom when I was visiting over Christmas and she loved it so much she sent it to all of her friends of course they're at an age where this is especially relevant.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it doesn't matter how old you are just the connects with that inner longing to.
[SPEAKER_03]: just make more of your life to have more energy too and the realization of what's important like how do I prioritize what actually matters rather than a bucket list of neverending to do's.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, that brings us to the last one in this category, the slightly controversial at the moment, one, the three sisters, 15 minutes long, directed by Constantine Bronsett and the plot is three sisters have live a lonely life on an isolated island, each in their own small house.
[SPEAKER_03]: One day, circumstances develop in such a way that they are forged to rent out one of their houses.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you said that this is the one you watched last.
[SPEAKER_03]: You said, for reasons we discussed
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the filmmaker throughout his festival run did not use his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a filmmaker, Constantine Bronsett, who has been nominated several times in the category.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, he decided as an experiment.
[SPEAKER_00]: to not use his real name.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I was seeking this one out beforehand, I was Googling the fake the fake name, trying to find information on this character that doesn't actually even exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of funny that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it played festivals, it submitted to festivals.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was like sort of too pronged maybe the the first reason more
[SPEAKER_00]: like important to him than the the other one, but he wanted to see what his work, how his work would do if his name wasn't attached to it and that the second reason is he is a Russian filmmaker.
[SPEAKER_00]: So whether there's bias against films that are coming from Russia and he's kind of said that
[SPEAKER_00]: If that was like truly the only reason that he was doing it, he would have just gone with a production company that has no Russian attachment, and it would be fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was kind of an interesting experiment for him and his films still seem to get there based off of merit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so he he said that it was from Cyprus and he submitted the name T. More Cognolv Which you know when you look at it's it's they're on this island that looks like oh, yeah, that looks like something somebody from Cyprus would make
[SPEAKER_03]: And I do understand to a certain extent that people want to punish everyone from Russia.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't have any indication that this is a person who needs to be part of, you know, I've seen some of his other animated shorts and things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he seems like an okay dude as far as I can tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have to say, I quite like the short.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was very surprised by it because it seemed so simple.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought it was like, oh, this is just going to be another cutesy, whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I was very engrossed in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a simple story, but it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, there's little moments that'll have you chuckling, kind of like, how I see what he did there kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's a cool animation with kind of almost looks like it's kind of cut out and paste on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I enjoyed this one too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and the cinematography was great, too, how it shows this passing of time without, you know, it uses the camera well and relation to the animation, to do reveals, and to also, there's just like, yeah, there's funny little details, like something will happen, and you'll see the aftermath of that on the shore of the island, just as the shore goes on, yeah, I quite liked it.
[SPEAKER_03]: of these five shorts, what are your personal favorites and who do you think might win?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think retirement plan might win for the reasons that we discussed where I think it's highly relatable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that my favorite would probably be the growth cried pearls.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was kind of looking at historically what the Academy's kind of gone for and the Academy at large just
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you look, I only went back to 2015, but if you look at every single winner, it's not a single one of them are stop-motion animation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all like 2D, 3D, computer generated, that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you look at even last year, like there's a beautiful man and wonder to wonder that we're both excellent in stop-motion and didn't win.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it's, I think that retirement plan is kind of a good mix of the animation that they go for and a story that is relatable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think also the Donald Gleason factor as a certain cache that makes it seem like a bigger film.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I agree.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would love for retirement plan to win, and I do.
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be the one that I would predict, but I would also be very happy for the girl who cried pearls to surprise us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we've never seen an animated like documentary short win, so it'd be cool to see butterfly be the first one to do that from recent kind of memory anyways, usually the the documentary like animated hybrid shorts don't really do that well, so it'd be be great to see that one kind of breakthrough with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And do you have any other favorites?
[SPEAKER_03]: They didn't make the nomination, but were on the shortlist or nominated or longlisted for the buff does?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, one thing that's interesting this year is that this is the first time the Academy at large was allowed to vote on the nominees, where previous years it was only the animation branch that could vote on the 15 shortlisted films to make the five nominees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that probably hurt a bit films like Playing God that are like,
[SPEAKER_00]: more critical.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in typical of like like the animation branch, it's not afraid to get like weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see like things like last year, like I mentioned the two stop motions, one or two under and beautiful men and both touch.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was the kind of the thing that kind of gets heard or like the night boot where this one wasn't necessarily like widely popular, but with the pin screen animation of it is just so cool that I think that the animation economy probably really respected that where the
[SPEAKER_00]: the story didn't really relate as much to the general economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think those two are also very excellent.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I kind of found weird about this category as well is that me, usually the distribution company usually dominates the category.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had three nominees last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had two nominees the year before.
[SPEAKER_00]: All three of theirs missed this year and Huracan, shyness of trees, and auto car.
[SPEAKER_00]: all three of those missing were a bit of a surprise to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I would say like playing God and Snowberry that we mentioned are two favorites of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one that was relatively lesser known was one called two ships that I really liked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see that one?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I did
[SPEAKER_00]: It's neat where it's about a couple and one works the night shift and one works the day shift, but it shows kind of what they're doing in the room at the same time, where it keeps half the room light, half the room dark, and it's kind of just like the unspoken communication between the two like their two ships in the night, but they're still doing things to help each other out kind of at the same time, and it's kind of showing like one like putting the dishes into the dishwasher at night, and the other one kind of taking them out in the morning,
[SPEAKER_00]: how there's like kind of an unspoken communication there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really enjoyed that one too, and it was qualified by unfortunately missed the short list.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have to look at that one up.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to add it to my shorts for the sear.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you mentioned playing God was the Frankenstein like one that I talked about in the shorts for lower hounds episode, and her icon was the, you also mentioned, I talked about that in the same episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the one with the check one with the guy with the pig head who's trying to impress a bartender and fails miserably.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I was quite fond of those as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also really like the auto car that you mentioned, which is about it's with a bunch of You know, and anthropomorphic animals, but it's a little girl who's going on a bus trip and In this sort of imaginary journey within a journey that she goes on during the trip
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Betha nominations just out today and I was personally sad not to see overreacting make it that was like that was my probably my actual favorite animated short of the entire year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot to mention that one but it's part of a trilogy and it's the second installment in it and the first installment I know is available on the YouTube for sure by the New Yorker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen the first installment of it?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I guess I guess not.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Night of the Living Dread.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the director item, Elam, is just able to create these stories that are just so relatable, like this one's kind of about like, it's a bit about insomnia, but it's also kind of about like when you're lying there at night and just thinking of all of the embarrassing things that you've done in your entire life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of it manifests physically and she it's kind of a tale to like learn to have grace with yourself learn to like embrace those previous and and be kind to those previous versions of yourself so it's it's a really good one and I thought overreacting was just as effective and she says she's working on the third part of the trilogy but she has very unique character design and yeah I was I was the the the first one in the trilogy was actually nominated
[SPEAKER_00]: three years ago I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was surprised that they didn't nominate this one again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was a bit of a shocker for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was also overreacting was definitely one of my favorites as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: I talked about it more in the BAFTA short episode, which is linked in the show notes, but it's another stop-motion animation one with the sort of textile finish to all the characters, which is great, but it's also just it's something that so many women who have gone through the 30s can relate to in terms of any time.
[SPEAKER_03]: you are anywhere with older, like, especially relatives or family friends or things like that, or, yeah, that people, especially at a sister's birthday, baby shower, people just always want to know, when are you having kids, when are you having kids, when are you like, get off my business.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so this one sets all that very nicely with absurdism and a little bit of music.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a little bit of song and dance there so that that adds some to it and yeah, I thought it was approach the topic really cleverly that anybody can relate to so yeah, it's it's it's a really good one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, do you have any final thoughts about the animated shorts category?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, no, not not really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think looking at the five.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's like I would say that it's the the bet like the best picture of of animated shorts as a whole this year, but there is a lot of like kind of variety there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's a good group of films, I think it probably though nominations could have been a bit better.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like I think the documentary and the live action a tiny bit more than this one, but yeah, that not to say that any of the animated short nominees are bad, but yeah, there I think they missed out on some really great ones as we discussed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, despite that missing out on great ones, I'll say that this is my second favorite batch of the nominees we'll talk about today, where my favorite batch is the live action.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the documentary ones, they didn't necessarily go with the ones I would have picked.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, we're going to take a quick break here when we get back, we're going to jump into the documentary shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did get nominated, and what do I think should have been?
[SPEAKER_03]: See you on the other side.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so welcome back.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are going to talk about the documentary shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, content warning for all the traumas of the world, of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you hang in through the heavier stuff, you will be rewarded with donkeys.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the five nominated shorts in this category are all the empty rooms, armed with only a camera, the life and death of Brett Renault.
[SPEAKER_03]: Children no more were an argon.
[SPEAKER_03]: The devil is busy and perfectly estrangedness.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's start alphabetically with all the empty rooms.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a 34-minute short directed by Joshua Seftel about a journalist and a photographer set out to memorialize the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings and you can watch this one right now on Netflix.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on all the empty rooms?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is a really emotional one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is one that I say, I'll say that I did cry through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a hard one to talk about without getting super emotional about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they take a very hard topic and do it justice where they focus solely on the empty bedrooms of these children killed in school shootings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they don't give
[SPEAKER_00]: like any power to the name of the shooters or who the shooters were it's all about the the children and finding healings for those family through through pictures and it's I think that's just really beautiful and yeah I saw this one at Tiff as well and the directors somebody that you guys if you've been watching the Oscar nominated shorts for a while might recognize he did
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's he has kind of a history in in the documentary short category and I think they they do a really great job of not being like exploit of it all or just like kind of giving giving power to healing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think it is a well-composed short in that way, I think there's a category as a lot of documentaries where I just always personally have the feeling like I'm not the person who needs to see this most, it's not telling me anything I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I am glad that this one, I'm glad that it's nominated and I'm glad that it's on Netflix
[SPEAKER_03]: at the end of the day, this doesn't come down to politics about gun policies or things like that this comes down to children whose lives are lost.
[SPEAKER_03]: And ironically, this is not the only one that's going to be about that in this category.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so moving these like we said these are the the last especially last one is there's donkey's coming okay, but second This is the second one is maybe my favorite of the nominated ones at least one of my top two armed with only a camera the life and death of Brett Brent Renault It is 39 minutes long directed by Brent for no and his brother Craig Renault and by that
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously, as an implies, he is passed away, and that's what this is about, but it's also about his legacy as a person who's gone around the world, capturing, you know, in a journalistic video journalistic way, all of the many tragedies happening everywhere, recording them and enforcing people to face them.
[SPEAKER_03]: to, and so he, there's a lot of his footage included, which is why he gets a directing credit and his brothers, the one who posts humorously pulled it all together.
[SPEAKER_03]: So to summarize it, on March 13th, 2022, filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed by Russian soldiers, the first American journalist to die while reporting on the war in Ukraine.
[SPEAKER_03]: his younger brother and collaborator Craig recovered Brent's body and his final recordings from Ukraine and brought them back to their childhood home in Arkansas.
[SPEAKER_03]: As Brent's journey to his final resting place on folds, the film chronicles the years he and his brother spent covering some of the world's most dangerous conflicts.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this one you can also watch right now, it is on HBO Max.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what are your thoughts on this one?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this one is incredibly sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: The, I think it's going to be very relatable as to like current events just with journal, it says a lot about journalism as a whole right now, I think where like the press, like wearing a press vest used to like mean something and now it's almost like a target on your, on your back because you look at like events going on and
[SPEAKER_00]: Iran right now where they're not trying to let any information out whatsoever and the journalists are almost kind of like the enemy of progress and getting the information out to the wide masses and yeah it's just like I think just with the state of journalism right now it's going to really touch a lot of people to kind of see the work that he did and what he had to go through in order
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I suppose the level of listeners know that I have a background in journalism, not this type of journalism, but I do, I often think about, you know, in a different timeline, this is the life I pursued and I think about how unknowingly happy my mother is that I didn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to cheat here and I'm just going to read my letterbox review because I put it best there, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: I said I will always think of that hope punk moment when a recent MUT recovering in a hospital bed gesturing with blast skined fingers tells him, you and me together, we can change the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: sorry, getting emotional.
[SPEAKER_03]: This one hit hard because the life and death of this man and so many others like him is a story of someone who plunged themselves into the world's ugliest and most heartbreaking realities to make sure the rest of us would not look away.
[SPEAKER_03]: The best we can honor his and his colleague sacrifices to humanity is to keep looking.
[SPEAKER_03]: Never look away.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why, you know, it's hard to talk about these documentaries, and um, and the documentaries being selected obviously reflect.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are fuzzier documentaries out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will talk about one at the end.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the reason these heavier ones are being selected the past couple years, why I think that's apparent.
[SPEAKER_03]: people want to talk about what's going on in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is, uh, and I saw some people commenting that this one was too disjointed, but I didn't mind that at all because it was just about the throughline story is about one man's quest and, and, you know, how that quest reflects on so many other people to show everything, the dark sides of humanity that we want to ignore and sweep under the rug and forget about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and when you're like putting together like a collection of random footage without the person who shot it, it is going to be a bit naturally disjointed in that way and like I don't I don't see a problem with that either.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it doesn't get any cheerier, because in X1, his called children no more were an argon.
[SPEAKER_03]: This one's 30 minutes long and is directed by Hila Medalea.
[SPEAKER_03]: What it's about is in Tel Aviv, activists gather weekly to scream their opposition to the genocide of war and Gaza with a silent vigil for the children killed by Israel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Their protest considered a betrayal by many is an act of defiance that calls to confront a reality we must not ignore.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... so this one was available to rent but is no longer available to rent uh... what were your thoughts on children no more were in argon yeah i like the observational nature of this one there's not a lot of like interviews or the director physically and and like injecting her opinion into it is
[SPEAKER_00]: very much filming a movement that is going on in Tel Aviv and I think it is a voice that is needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these documentaries that you're seeing about the situation are filmed in in the Gaza Strip or in Palestine kind of thing where this is kind of like taking it to the center of Tel Aviv and showing like, yes, there are people in the city standing against this
[SPEAKER_00]: the protests going on and just you see how different people are reacting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see some people to kind of stop and look at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see some people are trying to argue with these people yelling at these people and you kind of see a bit behind the scenes of
[SPEAKER_00]: How they're choosing these places and their moments to do these protests strategically.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's it's really neat kind of as as an observation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, that's going on is incredibly incredibly awful and it's really difficult to see these children's faces on on a poster.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is again, yes, another really hard one to watch.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, and of course, one of the faces on the, those posters could be Hinderriachab, who obviously we're going to be talking about in the international section.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is, there are a lot of movies about this, this conflict.
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, a lot of movies about Russian Ukraine, a lot of movies about Israel and Palestine, and this is one of the ones that made it through.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think this one making it through just shows that at the end of the day,
[SPEAKER_03]: Connecting with people and what is making people most horrified is seeing the faces of these Children who will never get to become adults Yeah, like I said, this is the second one.
[SPEAKER_03]: It does share a Thematic similarity in a lot of ways to all the empty rooms the first one we talked about yeah Yeah
[SPEAKER_03]: um okay the next one is actually it's it's heavy but it's an easier watch in a way it's called the Devil is busy and it's 32 minutes long this one is available on HBO Max directed by crystalline Hampton and Gita Gandhbir and I have to say that
[SPEAKER_03]: Gita Guntbeer, I hope I'm saying her name correctly, she is twice nominated this year because she was also the director of one of the nominated documentary features, the perfect neighbor, which you can watch on Netflix.
[SPEAKER_03]: So congratulations to her doubly, but this short is about a day on the front lines of women's health care at an Atlanta abortion clinic be seized by protesters, the director of operations Tracy takes necessary risks to safeguard staff and patients.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you think of the devil is busy?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's a really clever perspective that they chose to follow, where it's a security guard who kind of takes you through like a day in the life almost of these protesters outside the clinics and her kind of going through and making sure that those people are protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes a really intriguing religious angle to it as well where she is a religious woman, but she feels,
[SPEAKER_00]: called in that it's her duty to be helping out these women getting the health care that they need.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a really powerful perspective to be shown to these people who are against women's health care and abortion and are outside just screaming vitriol at them.
[SPEAKER_00]: instead of, you know, all of this hate to like kind of show love and acceptance to these people and yeah, I think it's just a very neat perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really drew me into the short.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think just the uniqueness of her perspective, the fact that we find out that the protesters, like at least one of them had burned down a black church and she is a black woman who is showing grace to these people who are daily aggravation in her life and threatening they call them guests who are coming to their clinic.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she's also, she's someone who has
[SPEAKER_03]: been through relatable experiences with these women herself and understands all the complexities of the feelings they're going through even without people shouting in their faces.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's also a religious woman at the same time.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, she really embodies every aspect of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think it was very smart from a filmmatic perspective to focus on her and just a day in her life
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, we've made it to the donkeys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Perfectly a strangeness, 15 minutes, apt title, directed by Alice and MacAlping.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the summary is in the dazzling incandescence of an unknown desert.
[SPEAKER_03]: Three donkeys discover an abandoned astronomical observatory and the universe, a sensorial, cinematic exploration of what a story can be.
[SPEAKER_03]: It will please go ahead start us off and talking about perfectly estrangedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I'm like more of a fan of this one than most people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, since I saw this at TIFF and it probably helped that the cinematography in this one is like just taught here and seeing that on like a massive screen at a film festival is like honestly the most ideal way to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's just a complete vibe for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a welcome contrast also to the four heavier topics here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's kind of,
[SPEAKER_00]: The scenery around you kind of feels a bit like strange and almost alien.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, well, this director came up with this concept while filming her 2018 documentary Celio and Chilli's Celia Observatory.
[SPEAKER_00]: She saw a family of donkeys grazing near the observatory's dome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And although that
[SPEAKER_00]: Moment in it make her the final cut of her film.
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of just is an image that stuck with her and to kind of wondered how do these animals perceive this structure and this vast starry night above because that's what she was filming was the starry nights in a july and desert and it's just kind of like a very unique perspective in like
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is too fake deep, but it feels very relatable.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all just like Donkeys wandering around this cosmos, wondering what's going on kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think, yeah, I think it will be a divisive one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see, like, I can completely see the perspective of other people who are like, yeah, this wasn't for me, but I personally, it's one of my favorite documentaries that I saw in 2024 for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's a pleasant, it's a very soothing watch, say, yeah, there are, this was one that actually a bunch of people in discord got to watch because they shared, what was it?
[SPEAKER_03]: The day of nominations, they shared for 24 hours a link.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is one that, you know, in the response was on the Loham's Discord, the response was, yeah, that was pleasant.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I don't know what that was, but I was pleasant.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you send me?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an allegory action, honestly, but yeah, I do think it is one that would be helped by like seeing it on like the biggest screen possible with the best sound and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really immerses you into the experience and all that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think even watching at home, it is just, it is very gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just, I think maybe even people would have been easier with it if it was under live action.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that, you know, it's like, does this qualify as a documentary?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's not telling anything untrue because it's not telling much at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just kind of showing the
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we see no people or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the director after the screening in the Q&A said that this is a docunerative is what she called it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like kind of half in half out of the documentary in in narrative categories.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you could kind of see this as a bit of category fraud.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose, but yeah, they placed in the documentary categories as there there we are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, do did she say anything about how it was filmed because, um, the tagline says putting a GoPro and a donkey, but some of the shots were drone shots or from specific angles and it almost felt like they're had to have been a human following.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there was something like I can't remember if she specifically mentioned anything to do with that, but yeah, like you said, there's all a different perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was, I don't know if they maybe just kind of took the drones up close and kind of just watched them the wanderer, whether there was somebody up there in personal filming them, but I loved it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so what are your personal favorites from these five and which do you think have a shot at winning?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like, maybe I'm off base with this, but I think all the empty rooms is kind of locked to win the category.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just going to touch the most people and yeah, I don't necessarily think I think of the five, my favorite and I don't know, favorite is like kind of odd term to use with any of these given the subject matter, but I think the most children no more
[SPEAKER_00]: I think would I would consider the best of them, but like I said, it feels awkward even using those terms and comparing tragedies and all that kind of stuff, but it's like if it's about the filmmaking, yeah, if a, if I had a vote, I would vote for a children no more, we're in con of, of the five of these.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like all the empty rooms is probably going to take this, um, if, if not, I would say maybe the devil is busy, which, um, I quite like that would be my second place after the life and death of Brent for no, so that would be my opinions about those.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but there were definitely, I have to say a lot of my favorites did not make it at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: You mentioned earlier bad hostage.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was definitely one of my favorites.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's about the so-called Stockholm syndrome.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it talks about, it's from the perspective of one woman in general, but also comparing her with the original Stockholm syndrome case, and Petty Hearst, and just about where, when you are in a situation where the police actually make you feel more afraid than the person who's supposed to be the
[SPEAKER_03]: I just found that really, yeah, interesting and how women are treated when they don't just defend the police and say, hey, they were the good guys, when they actually say out loud things like you were threatening the lives of my children and no thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that one really touched me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I have a couple others, but what what stood out to you amongst the other shortlisted films.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought bad hostage was maybe going to to make um nomination.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the nominations were like pretty chalk as far as like uh the ones that we thought would make it would make it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But uh, except for the strange remains.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what I was expecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, except when it came to perfectly strangeness, and I think that kind of took the spot of either like a bad hostage, which I think is really well edited, uses the interview, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: format of documentaries really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's maybe kind of the the most standard, but like also intriguing that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other one I thought might make it not because I liked it, but because of his history and the category was was heartbeat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I'm glad to not see it on the list.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: not have to discuss it too much, but yeah, and the other one that I thought might make it, I didn't personally connect with it, but I thought I would connect with Hollywood a lot as all the walls came down, which is about the LA fires, kind of like the after effects, the community of it, and I thought the academy might really relate to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I have a few favorites that didn't make the short list, but I don't know if you want to talk more about the
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I'll just shout out to my other two favorites on the short list of real quick, which is a classroom four, which you can watch on PBS if you're in the U.S., and that is about, I am definitely a sucker for any, any programs or documentaries about programs that are about getting people who have different life experiences in the same room together and to to learn from each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is about students and prisoners studying, basically the theory around incarceration and around abolishing the jail system and just discussion of just incarceration in general and having a whole class about it with this very aesthetic teacher.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I enjoyed that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other one, I think I'm kind of alone in loving this other one, but it's called
[SPEAKER_03]: That one actually you, if you go on the free part of Festival Pro, that one is available till February 22nd.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we were the scenery is from, it's about a couple who were extras in Apocalypse Now, the movie.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so they talk about their experience there.
[SPEAKER_03]: They call, they call the director out, what's his face for the way he eats mangoes, which is very memorable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it doesn't just stop at their experience of being extras on apocalypse.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, it's about just, yeah, their life in general, in Vietnam, and how all this is all wrapped up together.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it touches on a lot of different things, and I don't know, that one really worked for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I remember I was looking back at like my chat with my colleagues on short stick and I said, right after we had put out our predictions before short lists were announced I think we're underrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were the scenery.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really solid one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like has that kind of filmmaking history and it's that the academy really likes to hear facts about but also has a really personal touch to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just want to shout out, by the way, the BAFTA nominees for the shorts, again, I've had separate episodes, I've talked about all those.
[SPEAKER_03]: Unfortunately, Neil Armstrong and the Langham Knights was not nominated.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a nice, that was a cozy dock that I was hoping to see get some recognition.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what were your other favorites you wanted to shout out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll just kind of choose one that's like a more field good feel good one and one that's like kind of fits the the narrative of the of the other four, but the feel good one that I really like was shanti ride shotgun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just looking at a Like a driver who said teacher in the car and she's just kind of like
[SPEAKER_00]: it's just really fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know really how to explain it because she's like not your typical driving instructor and she's like kind of crude but she's like there for her students and everything so yeah I thought that one was a ton of fun it's just like an eight minute watch it's available and I think on Vimeo right now and yeah it's it's a lot of fun and then the other one was
[SPEAKER_00]: Phil Maker talks about her experience of being sexually assaulted by a priest and she actually goes to confession and confronts the priest and kind of has it all on camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll not on camera, I'd like sound like you didn't hear their conversation and her approaching him and kind of like the amount of courage it took for her to kind of confront her abuser and it's a really
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I've not seen that one, so I'll have to add it to my list.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you have any final thoughts about the Dark Shorts category?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think it kind of like I said except for perfectly estrangedness kind of like went with the the bigger more prevalent topics, which is kind of what you often expect for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, yeah, as much as I wanted to see bad hostage, class in four, or we were the scenery in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a solid finalist and I don't mind perfectly estrangedness because at least did something different.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're the scenery, it's also different, just saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, let's take a quick break here again.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when we get back, we'll talk about the final category.
[SPEAKER_03]: My favorite category, live action shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's get into the live action shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this was unexpectedly a great list of nominations just because I think, you know, we often, you know, we talk a lot on the academy of death racers discord about.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's all this nacing or pessimistic predictions.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would say where people are like the ones I hate are going to be the ones nominated.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was pleasantly surprised how how much I really like all five of them that were nominated including.
[SPEAKER_03]: two of my very top rated and others that were really high rated by me as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I have nothing negative to say about any of these five nominees which are butchers stain a friend of Dorothy Jane Austen's period drama The Singers and two people exchanging saliva.
[SPEAKER_03]: So starting at the top with Butcherstein, 17 minutes directed by Meyer Levinson Blown, and the story follows Samir and Ara Butcher falsely accused by his manager of removing hostage posters forcing him to fight for his job in innocence amidst rising prejudice.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you think of Butcherstein?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like you said, I think there is like of the short list, 10 that I really loved and five that I did not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the nominees are from that 10 that I really loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of these are, I think, are great choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you're staying is one of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a bit surprising to me to see it make the nominations not because it's
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a good short, it's that the fact that it got silver in the student academy awards and I'm sure we'll mention this kind of like in our honorable mentions section, but dad's not home got gold in the student academy awards and it's the academy that's voting on the student academy awards.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of weird to see it like that's not home when gold but your silver gets sorry, but your stain gets silver and then but your stain is the one that ends up in nomination.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was kind of a shock to me on that that front but I do think it's a really has a really good message to it that's just anti-hate and anti-hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Air Payton against prejudice and it comes from a perspective of the filmmaker who went to Tel Aviv or who still goes there, I'm not sure if he's graduated yet, and to Tel Aviv University, the film school there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think that it just has a really simple but strong message and knows what it's doing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's one that can be a frustrating watching in an intentional way.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about, you know, it's impossible not to feel empathy with Samir when you see from his perspective, this entire situation, the accusations where that are clearly just being
[SPEAKER_03]: what was his name, uh, near, right, is then a character's name, was played by the director himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, um, well, I won't say too much about him, but it's, it's just you don't know who his friends are in this or who is out to make his life more miserable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then,
[SPEAKER_03]: When you see what it all comes down to in the final frames, what caused all of this in the first place, you was like, oh my god, people are so infuriatingly stupid and yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and just the repercussions for it and everything and yeah, it's the final, I won't spoil anything but the final scene where you're just kind of just like packing everything up,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and the fact that he keeps his mouth shut like he's a bigger man than me Okay, moving on to one that's I think it's one of the lighter or more fun ones a friend of Dorothy 22 minutes long This one was directed by Lee Knight
[SPEAKER_03]: And the plot is Dorothy is the only widow whose body is failing but her mind remains as bright as ever.
[SPEAKER_03]: When 17-year-old J.J. accidentally kicks his football into her garden, he upends Dorothy's daily routine of pills, prunes, and crosswords, and an unlikely friendship blossoms.
[SPEAKER_03]: Despite being rolled apart in every way, the two come to find they have more in common than they could ever imagine.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this one is on Disney Plus now.
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah for me this is like really a comfort short like it's it's not one that you have to think too hard about or you kind of just sit there and enjoy the the blossoming friendship that's happening in front of you i think the acting in it is really great um mariam margolese is
[SPEAKER_00]: place the elderly woman in this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you might recognize her from as Professor Sprout from the Harry Potter franchise and then the young actor in it, part of it, I don't have his name in front of me here, but Alistair, Nua Chukuhu, not Nua Chukuhu.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he is excellent in it and yeah, it's just like I said, a comfort chart and just really really goes down easy and yeah, yeah, I was expecting to see this on the buff list rather than here.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was a bit of a surprise to me that it showed up on the Oscar side rather than the other, but I can just it's a very likable short.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: As is the next one, the next one is one of my absolute favorite shorts of the year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jane Austen's period drama, 13 minutes long, directed by Julia Axe and Steve Pinder.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is said in England, 1813, in the middle of a long-awaited marriage proposal, Ms. Estrogenia Talbot gets her period.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her suitor, Mr. Dickley, mistakes the blood for an injury, and it soon becomes clear that his expensive education has missed a spot.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this one I did talk about this one more extensively in the shorts for Laura Hounds episode, but what are your thoughts on this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this one I really like to say it's a punny delight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the names of all of the characters in there like Estrogenia and it's just so, so funny and yeah, I think they always like,
[SPEAKER_00]: live action shorts, they'll go for certain genres like comedy or horror a lot more than they will with with other categories in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, this is a really great comedy that they've chosen to to nominate.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just have to read off the character name.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we have Estrogenia, Easy Talbot, Mr. James Dickley, La Binea Talbot, Vagiana Talbot, Mr. Father Talbot, Mrs. Bitt's Dr. Bangley, Party the Footman, Juliette the House maid, Rebecca the Washerwoman, and Dirty Drunk Gardener.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the cast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a wonderful cast, and the director, Julia Axe, Axe, and at herself, they're not kind of known for doing, she's kind of known for doing comedy sketches in the past and kind of writing with Steve Pender there, so yeah, they put together something that I think everybody will get a chuckle out of that at some point throughout the run time, and yeah, I'm a huge fan.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge Jane Austen fan in general, and that definitely extends to parodies thereof, and this just nailed it, and nailed it in, you know, production design, costume design, and it nailed it in the tone, but in a way, you know, with the, with the twist, with the, um, making it a, um, spoof.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it nailed it in the commentary on periods in general and how men sometimes react to them and everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, so men who listen, this is this is a man who likes it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't be afraid of this shorts.
[SPEAKER_00]: No absolutely not, no embrace it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's it's great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you need to know about period diarrhea.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's real.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, but this one, I would say one of the nice things about this one is that comedies struggle to get recognition at the Oscars.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, it's really nice to see a comedy on this list.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, yeah, I think there was two comedies that were made the short list.
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely think they picked the better of the two comedies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I was happy with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this one is in the US you can find it through canopy if you have access to that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know in Sweden it's on you are play, not sure about any other countries, but yeah, keep an eye on you'll find the link in the show notes where you can see where it's going to be showing up next with the info and everything and the trailer of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: and that brings us to the singers another one that I talked about in our best up lower hounds episode 17 minutes long directed by Sam Davis based on a Russian short story from the 19th century but very, very loosely it's about a man who walks into a bar and then what unfolds is a genre-bending short film inspired by 19th century short story written by Ivan Turgenev which is it has the same name the singers
[SPEAKER_03]: in which a lowly pub full of downtrodden men connect unexpectedly through an impromptu single.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on the singers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, who doesn't love an impromptucing of honestly, but yeah, I think if there is like this the first year that the Oscars has a casting award and I think if there was a casting award for short films, I would I would give it to the singers because Sam Davis who
[SPEAKER_00]: Sean Wong's cinematographer for D.D.
[SPEAKER_00]: and a short N.A.
[SPEAKER_00]: in Way of the came out a couple years back.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, this is his him directing and yeah, he kind of cast the whole cast off of viral videos of like
[SPEAKER_00]: Like singers in like the subway stations and like just all these complete unknowns other than like that they've been seen on like a viral video and got them all together like these like kind of more gruff looking man and you kind of don't even expect the voices that that come out and kind of just leads to a big grand finale and the he kind of like
[SPEAKER_00]: took his documentary film making a bit with this too where he he kind of just like let them a bit of like hey just start talking kind of thing about whatever and there wasn't necessarily even a script for some of it I believe so it's just a really neat kind of just like chill in the bar with these guys and watch them sing and it's a really great short.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I would say this is one that's like perfectly a strangeness, it's all about the vibes, but do you do get a singing show along with it?
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's great because, yeah, all of these men each have like a different style, so it's a really nice sampler platter of musical moments.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a, yeah, a very pleasant watch I would say it is one that the death Racers are pulling out their hair over right now, but word on the street is And actually confirmed by their PR people it is coming to Netflix, but we do not know what date yet Fingers crossed it's before the Oscars
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm sure we'll be think of a new judge last year where it came out before the Oscars on Netflix.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, I wish we could leave them to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm sure it's coming soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hold on and I think you'll be rewarded with a really pleasant short to watch.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and only 17 minutes.
[SPEAKER_03]: future editor Alicia here, checking in with some good news.
[SPEAKER_03]: The day before this episode is released, variety, released, and official announcement that the singers will be added to Netflix on February 13th, so mark it on your calendars.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's one I could watch on repeat.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the only thing like, is I just wish I could, I mean, I guess I can go on YouTube and find them, but I want to hear
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the the cast list is there and if you are that intrigued, I go on YouTube and kind of see the singers and maybe then once if you're listening to this and you watch the short after you'll be like, oh, that's that guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that guy that I heard kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can kind of if you're you're eager to do some pre research to to this one to to go and seek out the performances.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, okay, that brings us to the last one, which is my favorite overall short this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Two people exchanging saliva or diposone, a shawl de la saliva, 36 minutes long, directed by Natalie Mustietta and Alexandra Singh.
[SPEAKER_03]: and it's about in a society where kissing is punishable by death and people pay for things by receiving slaps of the face on gene and unhappy woman shops compulsively in a department store.
[SPEAKER_03]: There she becomes fascinated by a playful sales girl despite the prohibition of kissing the two become close raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.
[SPEAKER_03]: And part of me is like, is that too spoilery for description?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the official description though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this one's brilliant, honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has great acting, well-known European actresses.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might recognize Vicki Kreeps who does the voice for it, Zara Amir Ibrahimi, who is in big international films like Holy Spider, if you saw that, or Sheda.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have also Luanna Bajrami, who's in the portrait of a lady on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: really talented actresses and in this really absurdist society and has great cinematography.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the hair and makeup too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the bruises on the faces kind of thing not to spoil too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's all these crafts coming together to create this story that honestly, like I hope it gets made into a feature because it's just,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so neat this world that they have created.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I keep comparing it to saying that people who are fans of Yorgos Lentimos and Wes Anderson that they would especially like this, but it's very, it is still very much its own unique world building.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I really appreciate that aspect.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really appreciate the sharp black and white cinematography and how they did the production and costume design to really emphasize
[SPEAKER_03]: used, and I mean the actress is a great, the chemistry is great, and the story is chilling overall.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, don't want to spoil how it ends, but you can find out for yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you watch it at the time that we're releasing this episode, it is still up on the New Yorker YouTube channel, so I'll link to that in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the longest of the live action shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, you might have noticed, yeah, they animated shorts are always the shortest, and the documentary shorts are always the longest, and this is documentary short length, but it really fills the entire 36 minutes in a way that you think it could have even been a feature, but it almost feels like a feature in a smaller space.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the rules of the world are so intricate that you need that time to be able to to explain it all and to be able to see what's going on here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, I'd say that the 36-minute runtime is a bonus, not a negative, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: It gives you more of this to enjoy, because I think you need that long to really sink into this world.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what are your personal preferences amongst these five predictions about the winner?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my personal preferences and the predictions come down to the same two shorts and the last two that we talked about in the singers and two people exchanging saliva.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's kind of a two-horse race there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think two people exchanging the saliva probably has a tiny bit one up on the singers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a lot of really prominent executive producers attached in Julianne Moore and Isabelle Hupair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think there's just something in two people exchanging saliva for every single craft body to kind of like check off the cinematography's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: The costume design, like you said, is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll get the costume designers voting for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The production designers will love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hair and makeup people will appreciate the work done there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think just all these crafts coming together.
[SPEAKER_00]: to create what it, like, I feel is a masterpiece in short film.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that hopefully the Academy feels the same way and then when I also, like, really love the singers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is something that's more completely up my alley.
[SPEAKER_00]: I realize and I don't know if it will have as broad of a love from the Academy as two people who are changing saliva, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think like also with the Netflix support in the singers Netflix generally does pretty well in these short categories.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think I feel like as good as the other three are that it's a two-horse race between those two, but again, shorts are very hard to predict what will happen, so we'll have to see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I keep saying to people exchanging saliva is my favorite.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think it feels like the most complete movie in a way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, it was a very complete story.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I do think that it is the favorite to win.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could definitely see the singer's sneaking up on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is just a lot of love for that short.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as you say, with Netflix coming into the picture, that could change the game a bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't mind if Jane Austen's period drama jumped in there and surprised us.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we said, comedies are always at a disadvantage here, so it is a win to see this short nominated.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think for me, it's a perfect short, it has only 13 minutes and manages to do quite a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's definitely, yeah, I'd love all five of these nominees.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting that when I look at the ones that didn't make it, a lot of them are on the heavier end.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is one that didn't necessarily zag in the heavier way, like the, especially doc category did.
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, beyond silence was a Dutch short about a deaf woman.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also talked about this in the shorts for lower hounds, but it's a
[SPEAKER_03]: about a deaf woman who is looking for an ally in a me two moment more or less.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whereas you mentioned also dad's not home.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a really great one.
[SPEAKER_03]: The one you said one, the gold that the student academy awards that is about a father who has some sort of dementia and his sons are trying to hide it because they don't want to be taken away and put in
[SPEAKER_03]: So, that was a really, woo, a tough one, or extremist, which is on the New York YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_03]: New York a YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_03]: That one is a sort of fictionalized retelling of a true story of
[SPEAKER_03]: of a woman who was just, she happens to be a lesbian and she was doing casual activism in terms of leaving notes in the grocery store about like what was going on in Ukraine and what's being hidden on the Russian news and she ends up being arrested for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, with her other favorites of yours amongst the shortlisted ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you said, beyond silence, I think was one of my favorites of the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was kind of shocked to not see it make the list.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know which should the five other replace it with to be honest, but it's I think that the acting in it is just incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having these three different performances that are all uniquely great in different perspectives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have somebody from like the older generation who didn't have this me to movement behind her.
[SPEAKER_00]: someone who's just trying to advocate for herself, but is limited due to the fact that she's deaf and has her sister, I believe, they're helping her communicate and helping advocate for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the three of them bounced off of each other really well, I thought that one was excellent.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pro-com I thought craft-wise was next level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have loved to see that one in there too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like you said, extremely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think those were like the three that didn't make it that I was just like, more kind of rooting for.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like I said, I'm not even sure who I would take out.
[SPEAKER_00]: In turn of those, they're all just very, very great shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the Pearl comb, you know, I've, that's the one that I've talked about the most in very episodes.
[SPEAKER_03]: I talked about it after the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival.
[SPEAKER_03]: I talked about it in, you know, the Oscar qualified shorts for lower hounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: I talked about it in the BAFTA Longlist episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's surprising to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: that it didn't make either the nominees for the BAFTAs or the Oscars.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I suppose, you know, you know, you know, I had a conversation before.
[SPEAKER_03]: You kind of board me, you're like, you know, genre films.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the the mermaid folk horror one, by the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I was still surprised not to see it there, because we see like two people exchanging saliva, but I suppose it's, yeah, I suppose it's a different, as you say, there's a lot of big names attached to that one as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and there's, I wish there's a little more transparency of how the process worked and how they become to the decision on the five, but yeah, it's one that I think would have just been great to make it as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and also it's shout out one other from the short list that I think I enjoyed more than maybe a lot of others, which is Penny Hose, which is kind of a surreal Um, a surreal short about a couple that's getting ready for some event, and it's not only ambiguous with the event is, but they keep saying all these contradictory things where it's like, are they going to a wedding?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are they going to like a court hearing?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are they and it doesn't really matter where they're going?
[SPEAKER_03]: The point is the petty stupid arguments and how they get caught up in their own, you know They get distracted by things and then they get mad at each other and then I think a lot of couples will find it The press can't be relatable, but I kind of thought it was fun Yeah, which you meant by the other comedy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is and like it's it's all right, like I didn't hate it or anything like that, but yeah, I definitely think like I found Jane Austen's period drama personally to be the better comedy of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm glad to see like kind of like a comedic representation of short films there because I find a lot of short films kind of like it's a it's a good almost like as a like a one liner where you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: put out like a 10 to 15 minute short and just be like kind of around a certain situation and be really funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of short films do that and so I'm glad to see that representation in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will, by the way, put just quick links, a list of quick links to these other shorts that we're shouting out just in case anyone hears something they like once to learn more.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to congratulate the BAFTA nominees in this live action category on the fiction side and which will, of course, go against directly against the documentaries in the BAFTAs.
[SPEAKER_03]: the fiction ones were mugged Zafar, which is the one that I called kind of like the bear.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, it's like the bear because it's that in a kitchen, but it's also very frenetic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's a stillness where their human drama plays out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So definitely I talked about that a lot more in the
[SPEAKER_03]: What did not make it from the long list that I really enjoyed the Pro Co. Again, and
[SPEAKER_03]: what blondie, which is a sort of pseudo documentary where from the perspective of Hitler's dog, with some sort of absurdist inserts, newsreels in between about the, like, pet fascism, basically.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it just, I think that it is a surreal and,
[SPEAKER_03]: grounding take on Hitler looking at him through the idea of through the eyes of his own dog, you know, through everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess I won't spoil in this episode at least what happens at the end of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you know history, you already know.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other one at Wonderwall, I also really loved, which is about a young girl who is just looking for a way to watch Oasis.
[SPEAKER_03]: and she ends up going on an adventure in the middle of the night in her small town in northern England.
[SPEAKER_03]: Were there any others you wanted to shout out in general?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man, there's so many from this category that I could talk about for hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to rattle off a few, I won't go into too much details about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one day this kid, I thought, I know he talked about it in your episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, like, that's one that I saw at TIFF in 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just kind of stuck with me ever since.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of explained it to people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's almost like Moonlight meets after Sun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like a culturely.
[SPEAKER_00]: culturally different from moonlight for sure, but just more in the way it structures itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you like those two movies, I would definitely suggest that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on the criterion channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: A bear remembers which I think is just like a very like kind of folktaley story as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I love just like kind of the scenery it sets with the mist and just the kind of commentary on change over the years and the great costume design for the bear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I love everything about that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one that I was looking at the letter box for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw that you see, and I don't think you're as high on it as what I am, I would say it's probably my favorite short of the year, but it's very much in my style, but a nervous energy, which
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, if it feels like I sometimes like to, to pair shorts with features that are like, if I had this feature, what short would I pair with in, like, as far as best picture, nominees this year, I feel like we pair with Marty Supreme where it's like, some, somebody who has a lot of drive to accomplish something and is a bit chaotic and in, in their decision making and, um, it's like, I love chaos inside of, of a film and I think it's
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm a huge nervous energy fan.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: The one last one I'll shut out because I was really surprised it didn't even make any long list or short list or much less get nominated is the second time around which is it's sort of soft sci-fi short that I've again I've talked about it a few times by now but
[SPEAKER_03]: nostalgia, love, all these, yeah, it's one that it's also, I don't want to move spoil where it goes.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it is just a lovely little light sci-fi look at memories and romance, I suppose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was kind of disappointed and shocked on to see that one make either Oscars or BAFTA.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought at least hit on one of those, but we had predicted it for the, we thought, we kind of thought a second time around might be like the Oscar thing with the connection with Steven Spielberg and everything, and then a friend of Dorothy might be more of like a BAFTA thing and it turns out that we were completely wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: You never know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just looked up nervous energy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've watched how to while I go, so I didn't remember it well, but I give it three and a half stars.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see you gave it five, but I liked it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's solid, but I... Yeah, it was your favorite, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my favorite of the year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, do you have any thoughts on the live action shorts or shorts overall?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because this is our last category.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, um, like I said, I think they, they did a really solid job of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think last couple of years are seeing like more of the ones that are, that I think the general short film community feels is better making it than less of the ones that were like,
[SPEAKER_00]: like we kind of mentioned earlier that you're predicting because you think it's not that as good and you're questioning the economy's taste, but yeah I think they're they're starting to make more solid decisions especially this year which is good to see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe opening it up wasn't all bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what's going on on short stick?
[SPEAKER_03]: What you were just putting together a 75
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we did a top 75 shorts of the year and it's a whole article if you're interested in reading like short descriptions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have links where where they're available.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can check some of those out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not all of them are available unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made a little montage video as a end of your thing just for fun because.
[SPEAKER_00]: We like making lists.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fun thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think it's like there's four of us who who write with short stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's a really good blend of our very, very different tastes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's that's there on the site.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have on our podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been interviewing
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the filmmakers we talked about today, so if you're wanting more in-depth perspective from our names, the directors, I think we've probably interviewed seven or eight of the nominated directors, so you can check that out, and yeah, we'll just kind of continue with the festival coverage throughout the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might softly cover Sundance, and kind of go from there, we're always kind of just doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of just a vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just figure it out as we go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's our real two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Flying by the seat of our podcasting pets.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I will put in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_03]: There will be links to obviously all of the nominated shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll also put abbreviated links to the other shorts that we mentioned.
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, above all that the links to the short stick blog and to the podcast feed on Spotify.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a pleasure and yeah, hopefully you will get to do this again.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you added so much extra context for these.
[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that you would.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you again to Brandon for that excellent conversation and we hope we've left you with plenty and short films to chew on.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can make a part of your morning routine.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I do.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there will of course be much upcoming coverage of feature films as we get closer to March 15th when the Oscars air.
[SPEAKER_03]: The next episode, kicking off this coming week, will be a Spirit's Awards preview.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, if this is, of course, for the film independent spirit awards, the biggest American independent film and television award show.
[SPEAKER_03]: And since I'm a member of Film Independent, I was able to vote this year, so I will go through what was nominated and what I voted for.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can basically consider this a catalog of movies for Laura Hound's listeners.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will be especially focusing on the films that did not get Oscar nominations that you might otherwise miss.
[SPEAKER_03]: and then next week there will be two more episodes with, uh, first with Lisa, aka Red Zippy, where we talk about production design costumes and hair and makeup that ones already been recorded.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the delightful conversation, and then later in the week there will be an episode dedicated to the international films with special guest Mexican film critic Ecto.
[SPEAKER_03]: On Sunday, February 15th, that is when the Indie Spirits awards air and this air is on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_03]: So super easy to watch wherever in the world you are, it will air at 5 p.m. Eastern time on February 15th.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can watch along with us on the Laura Hound's Discord.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just watch the awards season channel for more information about that on that day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, right after the spirits on the 15th, I will do, like the spirit episode, I'll do a BAFTA feature nominees preview.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I already did the shorts, we're going to talk about the features now.
[SPEAKER_03]: The BAFTA's air on Sunday, February 22nd, keep in mind, this is a British award show, so they air earlier in the day, then Americans are used to, thankfully for the rest of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, that will be 5 p.m. UK time 11 a.m. in the US, although it's possible it will be the broadcast will be delayed in some places, maybe 8 p.m. Eastern time.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will put a link in the show notes where you can see where it is airing, where you live.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, obviously it's going to be BBC in the UK.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just saw an announcement that it's going to be on E in the US and it will
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course there will be more Oscar category episodes each week leading up to that ceremony on March 15th.
[SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise, lots of other things going on in the Lohound's main feed.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got the pit weekly coverage with David and John.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got a night of the Seven Kingdoms Crossfeed, Benenza between the Lohound's feed and properly Howard feed.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got, we had some recent one-offs with the MCU versus DCU 2020-26 preview and now Wonder Man coverage has just started we're doing two episodes on that because David liked it so much So I think all of you will like it so much as well
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was also the recent VFX interview with Leaver Mayor and Percy Jackson, one shot for both of the first two seasons and watch out for the bone temple coming up, we'll time that to coincide with the digital release of that movie, the new 28-years later movie, which is one of my personal favorite franchises.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now supercast and patreon subscribers not only get ad free access to all these episodes they also get extra episodes each month including a recent episode on Fargo and in February it's Diane Keaton months so there's voting going on now as to subscribers are choosing which Diane Keaton film will win and second breakfast the topic is birds and foods.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, and now the music's playing regular listeners know what that means.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is time for our thank yous.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, first of all, I just want to thank all of you who are listening right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is why we do this, uh, we hope that you are entertained.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you are, please do share this episode with anyone else.
[SPEAKER_03]: You think would like to know more about the Oscar nominated shorts.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we always deeply appreciate a rating and review, particularly a positive one, obviously, wherever you are listening.
[SPEAKER_03]: We do always shout out our special thank yous, first of all to our Discord server boosters, Aaron Kay, to live with Riller, Doof 71, Athena Agilea, Listoo, Nancy M, Ghost of Partition, Radioactive Richard and Adrienne.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you to all of our subscribers who make this worth it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But always, most especially to our top tier of subscribers, the Laura Masters, Samarshan Michael G. Michelle E. S. C. Peter O. H. Nancy M. Dubes 71, Brian 863, Frederick H. Sarah L. Garcia, Andre B. Cuong Yu, Nathan T. Sub Zero, Aaron K. Delevy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mothership 61, Naurals?
[SPEAKER_03]: Kathy W. Lestoo, Jeffrey B. Elisee U, Ben B. Scott F. Stephen and Julia F. Colle S. Ill-Mario, Paul K. Rocky-Zim, Jessica A.
[SPEAKER_03]: Red Zippy, The TCS, Dope-Bamini, Catch It.
[SPEAKER_03]: L&R, Mrs. Tennett, AC Wilson, Eli W. Cassie K. Chumberrooney,
[SPEAKER_03]: Katilla, Josh Liu, Paynton, PDX, Cori G, Quinch, and always last Audrion.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all so very much and do also check out the link tree in the show notes where you can find a link to our discord.
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll also find a link to our email right in the show notes and in the link tree you'll find links to all the other affiliates on the network including properly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Howard, where they're kicking off a new season, in addition to part of the
[SPEAKER_03]: Never mind the music, they are putting out episodes like blockwork about where music meets psychology and radioactive ramblings currently covering fallout.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, see you all in a few days for your film independent spirit awards preview.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to Bellore Hounds, please send any questions and feedback to lorehounds at the lorehounds.com, and check out our supercast and patreon paints for ad-free access to bonus episodes, look for all those links, including links to all the other podcasts on our networks in the link tree in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any opinions stated or are personally do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bye!