Culturebox

Short People

Oscar movies you can watch on the Web.

Even if you consider yourself film-savvy, a few of this year’s Oscar nominees may have passed you by. Did Stubble Trouble come to your local theater? If you missed Og the caveman wrestling with his hairy beard, or any of the other Oscar-nominated short films, you can get a taste—and sometimes more—on the Web.

Two nominated shorts are available in their entirety. You can see all 12 minutes of the live-action Copy Shop, by Austrian director Virgil Widrich, at sputnik7.com. (The film—about a copy shop technician who photocopies his hand and ends up in a world of clones—was made with photocopied digital frames, which were then animated and shot on a 35 mm camera.) And in the animated Fifty Percent Grey, at ifilm.com, a soldier faces an afterworld in which he’s alone with a flat-screen TV.

You can see short clips of the other animated shorts at Animation World News. The Irish snagged two nominations this year—including one for Give Up Aul Yer Sins, which was inspired by a schoolteacher’s ‘60s-era recordings of children telling Bible stories.

If you like going to the movies without leaving your desk, last Oscar season Slate’s Eliza Truitt reviewed ifilm.com and other Web sites to find the best of online film.