Okay. Is Oscar joking? Could the Oscars be more of a parody of itself? This year's Oscar-nominated short films are, as expected, I guess, juuust sooo... Oscar-y. So innocuous. So friendly. So full of emotions. So much Holocaust.

Actually, there's only one Holocaust movie in the shorts, but it feels like fifty. It's called Toyland, and it's about a lady who tells her son that his Jewish best friend is going on "vacation" to

"Toyland," which is probably the worst possible thing you could tell a kid. Because now that kid wants to go to fucking Toyland, too! OBVIOUSLY. You really should have called it Unspeakable Atrocityland. No one wants to go there.

New Boy is about a boy who moves to Ireland from mystical Africa. And the other kids bully him, and he has daydreams about his dusty African classroom and one of those generic men with a machine gun who's always menacing people in movies that are sort of lazily about Africa, and the Irish teacher is all "Jaaay-sis Mehrry 'n' Jhoooooseph!" and then the end.

Manon on the Asphalt made me cry, but of COURSE it did, because it's nothing but an emotionally pandering Pandera's box of pandery pander. Manon, a pretty lady, is riding her bike and gets hit by a car and dies. And while she's lying there, dying, she thinks about all the stuff that she didn't do. "I'll never be old." And some of the things she did do. "Sunday, May 20: last time I got caught in the rain." And then they show her goddamn mom baking a goddamn pie, and her mom doesn't know about her dead daughter yet, and of COURSE I cried a little bit. Maybe you shåuld wear a helmet next time, Manon! When you ride your cloud bike! In heaven! Goddamn it.

The other two live-action shorts are called The Pig and On the Line. They are both okay. The Pig is about an old man in the hospital who falls in love with a painting of a pig. It is actually funny and charming. ("I'm here to have surgery." "Where?" "In the butt." "I meant what ward.") On the Line, despite my great hopes to the contrary, is not, in fact, a condensed version of the 2001 romantic comedy in which a pre-gay Lance Bass experiences love at first sight. Instead, it's about a security guard who is a coward and fucks up something important. I vote for The Pig.

The animated films come out better—none of them made me want to punch Oscar right in his emotional golden nadsack—they're more fun, more weird, more inventive. Lavatory Lovestory is disgusting because it involves tile and male urination. Next! Octapodi is about octopi in love, and I love octopi because they are smart enough to conquer humans but they don't because they are too shy. Wonderful. Presto was made by Pixar, which means I have already seen it. This Way Up is a funny little macabre fantasy about two funeral directors trying to transport a corpse—but, as usually happens when corpses and top hats and Satan's fiery furnace are involved, shenanigans ensue.

But my absolute favorite is La Maison de Petits Cubes, a hazy, quiet thing about a world that's constantly, gradually, being submerged in water. As the water level rises, the people build upward—the lonely remnants of cities are now just tiny islands at the tops of ramshackle underwater towers. Looking for his lost pipe, an old man literally scuba dives down through his submerged memories, and it's so sweet and so sad. This is how you pull off corny, Oscar. This is corny done right. recommended