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After watching a child laborer in India, a family trying to outrun Chernobyl's lethal poison and an 8-year-old boy and separate pair of male roomies staring down death, a hapless magician seems to have wandered into the wrong Oscar category.
But he and the others are the focus of the five live-action shorts coming Friday to the Regent Square Theater along with the five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, including a Wallace and Gromit entry.
The 10 are a remarkably strong and diverse crop of nominees with a couple that stay with you -- always a good indication. Comedy is standard on the animated side but in short supply on the live-action side.
If you're filling out a complete Oscar ballot with all two dozen categories, this will let you predict what will (or should) win on March 7. If not, you will simply find that less can be more, unless of course you are James Cameron and you're making "Avatar."
The live-action shorts range from 16 minutes to 22 minutes and include one, called "Kavi" and shot in Maharashtra, India, that seems reminiscent of last year's "Slumdog Millionaire."
- Rating: Not rated although some shorts have English subtitles. Live-action shorts contain some adult language and violent content. Animated shorts PG-13 in nature except for "Logorama," which has strong language and violence and will be shown last.
The title character is not an orphan begging on the streets but the young son of a man who owes 10,000 rupees (roughly $215 American) to a brick maker. That debt has turned the boy, who longs to attend school, and his parents into modern-day slaves -- three of the 27 million around the globe, we learn in a note at film's end.
Not heavy enough? Walk through "The Door," the haunting story of a man, his wife and their young daughter swept out of their apartment by the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
"That day we didn't just lose a town, we lost our whole world," the father suggests, in a way that will become achingly apparent as the story unfolds and the literal and figurative value of the door is made clear.
In "Miracle Fish," an Australian boy celebrating his 8th birthday escapes from bullying schoolmates at lunchtime by napping in what appears to be a nurse's office. When he awakens, he finds the hallways and classrooms eerily empty ... until he and we learn the startling reason why.
"The New Tenants" is the only live-action nominee with recognizable actors, including Kevin Corrigan and Vincent D'Onofrio in small roles. Of course it's also the only one that concludes with an on-screen recipe for cinnamon buns, with icing.
In this entry, a man who takes complaining and negativity to Olympian heights and his roommate sit in their new apartment and greet a series of ever-stranger visitors. An old lady looking to borrow some flour shares gruesome history about the previous tenants and touches off a dance with death.
It's like an indie movie, written by Anders Thomas Jensen ("Brothers" and its Danish predecessor of the same name) adapted by actor David Rakoff and directed by Joachim Back, compressed into 20 minutes. It packs a wallop in a most economical way.
And then comes the Swedish "Instead of Abracadabra," about an amateur magician who wants to use his father's 60th birthday party to impress a new neighbor. With guyliner, a magic box he pokes with swords and signature line of "Chimay" (instead of Abracadabra), Tomas pulls out the illusionary stops even as he reminds you of a grown-up Napoleon Dynamite.
On the animated side of the equation, the nominees range from 6 minutes to almost 30 minutes, which makes some entrees seem like appetizers and at least one a full-fledged movie meal.
"Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" is guaranteed to keep her wide-eyed granddaughter up at night as she tells her version of the fairy tale.
Done in traditional and computer-generated animation, it involves an elderly fairy snubbed by "younger, more exciting fairies who all still had their muscle tone." A sly commentary on a world that worships the young, it's darkly delightful.
So is "The Lady and the Reaper" about a tug-of-war over a woman who clearly needed a Do Not Resuscitate order. She's at the comic center of a battle between the Grim Reaper and a hotshot doctor who can yank her back from the brink or beyond.
"Logorama" is set in a brightly colored and labeled world where logos and trademarked characters from Mr. Peanut to Ronald McDonald and the Michelin Man have run amok or been caught in forces beyond their control.
"French Roast," meanwhile, takes place not in a Starbucks but a Parisian cafe where a snobbish businessman discovers he's missing his wallet and stalls for time by ordering cup after cup of coffee. His salvation comes in a most unpredictable way.
The longest animated short, "A Matter of Loaf and Death," stars a couple of familiar and Oscar-winning faces: Wallace & Gromit. This 29-minute short, which won 2009 Annie and BAFTA awards, finds our heroes working in the most dangerous business in town: baking.
A dozen bakers have been knocked off by an unknown killer, and Wallace might make it a baker's dozen in this romcom meets merry murder mystery. All of the signatures of the stop-motion franchise are there: From the elaborate wake-up call for Wallace to daffy details, as with a "Puppy Love" album by Doggy (yes, Doggy) Osmond and a takeoff on the pottery scene in "Ghost."
In a world of 140-character tweets, shorts are made for our shrinking attention span. And in a city where Oscar contenders often arrive late in the game, it's a wonderful treat to be able to see the shorts at roughly the same time as the 5,777 Academy voters.
Thank you, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Animated and live-action shorts, each 101 minutes and requiring separate admission, open Friday at the Regent Square Theater. For times: www.pghfilmmakers.org or 412-682-4111.
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