This year's crop of Academy Award nominated Live Action and Animated shorts might well have been called the "longs." It takes nearly 4 hours to watch all ten of them back-to-back. As a whole package, none of them gets anywhere near masterpiece status, but none are particularly awful, either. The longest one, the Danish live action film, At Night, looks to be the sure-fire winner, setting its luxurious 40 minutes in the cancer ward of a hospital between Christmas and New Year's. Three young women (Julie Ølgaard, Laura Christensen and Neel Rønholt) deal with their illnesses in various ways while agreeing to meet up together for their own private New Year's party. This one was practically made for awards.

The 36-minute The Tonto Woman is a mini-Western based on an Elmore Leonard story (it's available in the same collection as "3:10 to Yuma"). But somehow it plods a little too slowly and heavily to capture Leonard's usual zing. It's somber and grave and rather ignores outdoor spaces and rhythms. The French The Mozart of Pickpockets (31 minutes) is a tad cutesy and predictable; two blundering would-be pickpockets find themselves in the company of a mute child -- who happens to be quite skilled at the same job.

Perhaps the only thing better than going to a lot of great short films is to get a night of short cinema's crème de la crème -- wonderfully-shot movies on a much smaller scale. The gala for the Worldwide Short Film Festival was held last week and it featured a great group of award-winners (everything from Oscars to Golden Bears) that covered animation, live action, happiness and bittersweet sadness. They're projects that throw their middle finger up to the notion that acclaimed filmmaking must be serious, and show the many different embodiments of comedy and dramedy. Obviously, a long review could rival the length of these shorts, so here's just a bit to whet your appetites.

Imagine This
Best Irish Short Special Mention, Cork Film Festival

Put together by John Callaghan, Imagine This is a darkly humorous mash-up that pairs George W. Bush with John Lennon -- one that you might have seen across the net in the last year. (The link above will take you to its YouTube page.) It's impressive to see Bush's words collected in a way that makes it seem like he's singing Lennon's Imagine, but what really works about this mash-up short is its ability to show how the meaning of words can change depending on who says them. "Imagine there's no countries; it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" takes on a whole different light under the voice of Dubya, rather than Lennon.