The Classy Quickie

By Rebecca Winters Keegan

Thanks to Youtube and Funny or Die, short films haven't been this hip since the days they were made by guys named Chaplin and Keaton. But for a higher-minded sample of the genre than cursing toddlers and Philippine prison dances, pick up the DVD COLLECTION OF 2007 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED SHORT FILMS. The most inventive shorts are in the animation category, particularly two painstakingly made stop-motion movies with not a lick of dialogue. In Madam Tutli-Putli, a woman boards a night train laden with all her possessions--and ghosts. The filmmakers imposed images of real human eyes onto the animation, creating eerily emotive characters. The other wordless film, a dark spin on Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf using puppets and digital imagery, took home the gold statue. The live-action category includes an austere British western, The Tonto Woman; a Danish cancer weepie, At Night; and the winner, Mozart of Pickpockets, about a deaf-mute child who charms a pair of thieves.