The Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts

A weak field hits this year in the Live Action Short category, screening contemporaneously with the superior Animated Short package at the Nuart.

First is the strained comic allegory "Pentecost," in which a priest psychs his altar boys up for a big mass like a Division I football coach. The short has one joke, badly overplayed, and ends with an action that rings false and wouldn't make sense even if it rang true.