MOSTLYFILM: Shortly Oscars 2016

The Oscars are coming! Who's excited? Well, yeah, I see your point. But over the last couple of years, I've been taking an interest in the short film categories: particularly since I discovered the ways in which you can watch them all together, either as a theatrical package or an iTunes downloadable bundle. Indy Datta and I have taken it upon ourselves to watch the nominees for Best Live Action Short and Best Animated Short respectively, and we've reviewed them for MostlyFilm in 2013 and 2015.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that we've just done it all over again. So over at MostlyFilm you can read Shortly Oscars 2016, our joint review of this year's nominees, which I think are overall the best we've encountered since we started doing this.

Back in 2013, it was possible to link to YouTube videos of all the shorts in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Those days are long gone, frankly. If you want to play along before this Sunday's announcement of the winners, you can buy a bundle containing all of the Live Action and a frustrating three of the Animated Shorts on iTunes. As ever, Disney are refusing to let their short into the package: more surprisingly, We Can't Live Without Cosmos isn't in there, despite (or because of?) it being watchable for free on YouTube courtesy of The New Yorker. (Unfortunately, that video is geoblocked outside of the US - feel free to watch it if you live there, or can somehow persuade YouTube that you do.) Anyway, if you're a cheapskate who doesn't want to pay for an incomplete collection of films, you can watch the following bundle of clips 'n' trailers ungeoblocked and for nowt, as the official Red Button Backup Content for the piece.

The playlist includes video material for all ten nominated shorts, in the order in which they're namechecked in the MostlyFilm article. 1-5 are animations, 6-10 are live action.

1. Sanjay's Super Team (making of)
2. Prologue (trailer)
3. Bear Story (trailer)
4. We Can't Live Without Cosmos (trailer)
5. World Of Tomorrow (trailer)
6. Shok (making of)
7. Ave Maria (trailer - note that I reviewed this one at last year's LFF)
8. Day One (trailer)
9. Stutterer (trailer)
10. Alles Wird Gut (trailer)