For years, the Academy Awards for Best Live-Action and Best Animated Short Film have been lost in the Oscar-night shuffle. Short films have fallen on hard times of late, and consequently most Oscar-viewers take the short film awards as an excuse to make a trip to the kitchen or the bathroom. Thank goodness for Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International, who in recent years have started distributing the Oscar-nominated short films as part of traveling programs in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. By making the films available to theatrical audiences, they’re restoring some of the luster to these oft-overlooked categories. At the very least, they’ve allowed us to care about a race that’s at least as interesting as some of the bigger-ticket categories.
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