Oscars: Short films, tough categories but good choices
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With ‘Strangers No More,’ a film about the school project in Tel Aviv that brings children from 48 countries under one roof, winning documentary short, I couldn’t help but feel a sadness that another treatise on the power of school, ‘Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ‘ didn’t make it into the long-form documentary category.
The live-action category was a tough one -- ‘God of Love’ was a jazzy musical meditation on love that was hard to resist. It was also the most embraceable in a field filled with darker looks at human nature, from the domino effect of a couple of kids and a prank gone wrong in ‘The Confession,’ or the way love hurts in ‘The Crush’ and ‘Wish 143.’ The darkest by far, ‘Na Wewe’ on the Hutu-Tutsi fights, was an inventive exploration of what makes someone who they are. All were worthy, but it’s easy to see why ‘God of Love’ took the Oscar home.
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-- Betsy Sharkey
Luke Matheny accepts the Oscar for ‘God of Love.’ Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times