Oscar Shorts Pt 3: The Live Action Nominees

Chris Reviewed the Animated Shorts. Glenn ranked the Documentary Shorts. Now here's Eric with the Live Action nominees to complete the set.

It’s my third year covering the nominees for the Live Action Short Oscar for TFE, and this batch of hopefuls presents the strongest lineup of those years.  Usually there are one or two clunkers, but this year all five films are intelligently made, run the perfect length, and linger beautifully...

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In Defense of Denzel Washington in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."

By Spencer Coile

Last year’s Best Actor race was highly contentious. Due to an influx of coverage surrounding sexual harassment charges, many people became uncomfortable with Casey Affleck's frontrunner status. This led some Oscar gurus to prognosticate a spoiler victory for Denzel Washington for his Fences  passion project. How close the voting was we'll never know but Washington and Affleck were considered to be neck-and-neck at the end.

Still, Affleck was victorious, leaving many (most notably, Brie Larson) unhappy or furious. While the narrative is not exactly the same for the new Best Actor race, there is one common denominator: Denzel Washington.

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Final Balloting is Underway...

Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (that's AMPAS to you!) can now cast their votes on the Oscar winners in all categories. They have one week to do so with ballots closing on February 27th. The long stretch between nominee and winner voting should ostensibly give them time to screen all the movies they may have been late in getting to and to really suss out their views of "Best" in each category, but strangely this waiting period doesn't usually result in the game-changing upheavals, contrarian impulses, or reconsiderations that you would think would be possible. That's especially true when the precursors march forward in total agreement (as recently discussed in the BAFTA winners post). 

So while we can't bring you DRAMA in these last 12 days pre-Oscar (del Toro, McDormand, Oldman, Janney and Rockwell are all as locked as locked can be) we hope to find other ways to entertain you as we count down and wrap up the film year in these next two weeks. 

Nevertheless if you have a miracle request / FYC to Academy voters put it out their into the universe (i.e. the comments) in a positive 'look at this beauty' way.

Saoirse Preps Her Oscar Loss Face

Chris here, finding ways to cope wherever I can with the increasingly likelihood Lady Bird lands no Oscars in two weeks. And it looks like Saoirse Ronan is preparing herself as well, but with much more good humor. Granted she has lost twice before and has to be one of the cheeriest good sports among this year's acting lineup, so we suspect she (and team Lady Bird) will fare just fine. Have a laugh with Saoirse as she shows off her "Oscar Loser Face" and ponder if I might be wrong: does Lady Bird have a shot at winning any of its five Oscar nominations?

A Glimpse at Oscar's Nominated Animated Shorts

by Chris Feil

Is this an off year for the Animated Short category? It’s (shamefully) my first year to catch the entire lineup, but unfortunately that seems to be the general response. If you check out the films in theatres you will also be treated to a few of the shortlisted contenders, but the package sadly doesn’t include the delightful In A Heartbeat. Even if this is also the least exciting lineup of the three Short categories this year, there are still delights to be found in this category, with animation styles the run the full spectrum from hand-drawn to computer generated to stop motion animation. Let’s look at the nominees...

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