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Meet this year's Academy Award-nominated shorts.

by Sam Adams

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RAPT PUPIL: Implanted human eyes make Madame Tutli-Putli even creepier. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

By the time the Oscars roll around, most of the nominees have been dissected and debated almost to death. But for short films, a nomination means the difference between visibility and invisibility. For the third year running, Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International have packaged the five live-action and animated nominees as two feature-length programs, giving audiences around the country a chance to evaluate the Academy's taste in short subjects. (Getting an edge in the Oscar pool never hurts, either.)

Like many of the less glamorous categories, the shorts nominees are determined by a tiny, habitually conservative subset of Academy voters, which especially hampers the live-action program. It's hard to imagine there were only four potential nominees better than the insufferably antic Italian farce The Substitute; and The Tonto Woman's accomplished but sterile take on an Elmore Leonard story is thesis-film Peckinpah.

But the program has its bright spots, as well. The Mozart of Pickpockets is a French charmer about a pair of bumbling street thieves, while At Night is a solid tearjerker set in a Danish cancer ward. The highlight is Tanghi Argentini, a deft Belgian comedy in which a nerdy office worker struggles to learn the art of tango in time for a blind date. Appealingly shot, sharply acted and briskly paced, it ought to be a shoo-in.

The more varied animation program's high points are twofold. I Met the Walrus sets squiggly hand-drawn animation to a vintage interview with John Lennon, conducted by a 14-year-old boy who snuck into his hotel room during Lennon's "bed-in" phase. Sometimes illustrating Lennon's words and other times riffing on them, Josh Raskin constructs the short as a continuous stream of consciousness. While it doesn't boast the polish of the CGI shorts, Walrus' execution is simply dazzling.

Madame Tutli-Putli, by contrast, is a warping, weaving nightmare set on a moving train, where a lone female traveler is beset by subtly unnerving and overtly terrifying horrors. Shot in stop motion, the film uses CGI to implant human eyes in its protagonist's head, only deepening the sense of unease. While it lacks a sense of development and a satisfying conclusion, the short is sufficiently powerful to overcome its flaws.

Finishing out the program are Even Pigeons Go to Heaven and Peter and the Wolf, both innocuous CGI trifles, and My Love, by frequent nominee Aleksandr Petrov, which marries stunning Impressionist images to an overheated plot that plays like a Tolstoy parody.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)

2007 Academy Award Nominated Shorts

A Magnolia Pictures release