When Oscar and voting season rolls around, the critics get to watch all the shorts and animated shorts. And they’re usually a lot of fun. This year, my wife and I found them dreadfully uninteresting. There were only two shorts we liked.
One of them wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar, but we caught it at the San Diego International Film Festival. It was called Sac de Merde, and starred Arielle Haller-Silverstone. It’s only a matter of time before she becomes the next Jenny Slate.
Seek this out, and be prepared to laugh yourself silly.
The other short we saw that blew us away, was the one that ended up winning the Oscar for best “live action short” — it’s called Skin. And for all of you folks that didn’t know which short to pick on your Oscar pool ballots, well….at least now you can see the best one of the bunch, since Fox Searchlight Pictures is releasing them, on “Searchlight Shorts,” on their YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Skin had only one actor we recognized — Danielle Macdonald, of Bird Box, Dumplin’, and Patti Cake$. She’s married to a skinhead, and they’re raising their boy to be racist and shoot African-Americans. Yet when the young boy sees an African American at a grocery store and they have a playful interaction, it gets misconstrued by the father. The guy ends up getting beat up in the parking lot in a violent attack. That leads to the kidnapping of the racist man. And what what happens to him…is just incredible to watch. I wouldn’t dare spoil it for you, but for those older folks — it reminded me a bit of Bruce Dern in Tattoo in 1981
Both Sac de Merde and Skin, get 5 stars. Watch them both when you have a chance.
