A Collection of 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films

Every year at our Oscar party we cross off the short film categories (animated and live action) from the ballots before we hand them out, because no one has ever seen any of the nominees. A Collection of 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films compiles eight of the 10 films in competition, including the animated winner “The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation,” in which legendary animator John Canemaker combines family photographs and various types of animation to tell the moving story of the filmmaker's troubled relationship with his Italian mob-connected father (voiced by John Turturro and Eli Wallach, respectively). The other animated nominees included here are “Badgered,” a cute minimalist piece about a badger whose sleep is disturbed by noisy crows—and the nearby installation of a nuclear missile silo; and the beautiful cutout-style computer-animated “The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello,” a Jules Verne-like fantasy following a navigator's journey aboard a giant dirigible (in a decided triumph, unfortunately, of gorgeous style over pulp substance). The animated nominees “9” and “One Man Band” are not included, but as a DVD extra the disc features Bill Plympton's wonderfully offbeat and poignant love story “The Fan and the Flower,” and the lovely-looking if also somewhat sappy French piece “Imago.” On the live-action side, the hands-down standout is Martin McDonagh's Oscar-winning “Six Shooter,” a very dark and humorous tale from the reigning bad boy of theater starring Brendan Gleeson as a widower who sits beside a remarkably insensitive young man on an eventful train trip. The other live action entries are less impressive, including “Our Time Is Up,” a one-note joke about a psychiatrist who learns that he is dying and begins treating his long-term patients with brutal honesty (which, of course, cures them); “Cashback,” or such are the dreams of an everyday stockboy, whose mind-numbingly long night shifts are broken up by picturing women shoppers nude; “Ausreisser (The Runaway),” a sentimental father and son story with obvious roots in The Sixth Sense; and “The Last Farm,” a laconic tale of a farmer's Rube Goldberg-inspired burial of his dead wife. Given the fact that few ever have the chance to see these honored shorts (the disc is worth the price for “Six Shooter” alone), this is definitely recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)