Want to Win Your Oscar Pool? These Are the Nominated Short Films to Bank on

The Oscars are almost over. By the grace of God, or whoever, it’s nearly done. This has felt like the longest, most painful awards season in recent memory. Even more so than the 2021 COVID ceremony that took place on April 25 of that year. Obviously, it all comes down to “Sinners” vs. “One Battle After Another,” as IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast co-host Anne Thompson detailed in her final predictions in all categories earlier this week. While there’s some suspense there, this conversation is getting old.

Anne and I, Ryan Lattanzio, met up last week in New York to share our early predictions, but we left off the short film categories, so this week we look closely at the movies nominated across Documentary Short, Live-Action Short, and Animated Short. One of the movies we both adore is called “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh. Anne thinks it won’t win Best Live Action Short; I do. We go through all the contenders and who you should pay attention to in the podcast below.

This week, we also discuss Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s “Project Hail Mary,” the outer-space sci-fi movie starring Ryan Gosling as a lonely astronaut marooned in a star system that could have answers for how to save the world. Anne and Ryan disagree about one key aspect of the movie: its length. This is a family movie, but it’s almost three hours. Who’s got time for that? It’s a reverently faithful adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel, here scripted by Drew Goddard, but perhaps we could have lost some of the Earth-bound stuff (nothing against Sandra Hüller, who is predictably excellent).

Finally, we also look at what’s playing SXSW, a festival that desperately needs to move off the Oscar corridor. It’s launching this weekend alongside the Academy Awards, which is putting a lot of strain on all of us!

Listen to the podcast below or on your preferred podcast platform.