Movie Nation

Silly Chloe Grace Moretz. Did you never see the French drama, “The Piano Teacher?” Scared of movies with subtitles?

If you had, you’d have dashed for the door the MOMENT Isabelle Huppert sat at the keyboard and launched into Liszt’s “Liebestraum.”

“Love Dream” or not, that petite French sixtysomething is not to be trusted in that “teacher” guise, or as “Greta,” the Social Security-eligible, piano-playing stalker in this quiet, chilling thriller from the director of “The Crying Game.”

Its suspense is of the lull-you into complacency variety. The jolts are real-world shocks, a recent college graduate/NYC waitress (Moretz) who realizes the sweet, lonely widow she just returned a lost-purse to has “lost her purse” more than once, has charmed and engendered pity from other young women before her.

And once Greta Hideg has taken a shine to you, she will, as Glenn Close once put it, “not be ignored.”

Rich girl Franky and rich Smith College classmate Erica (Maika Monroe) share a tony loft in Manhattan, where Erika spends Daddy’s money and does a lot of yoga and Franky gets her Manhattan feet wet by waiting tables at a swank restaurant.

Franky is no small town girl. She’s from Boston. So Big Apple-wise Erica’s “This city’s going to eat you alive,” seems a tad unjustified.

But Franky is a trusting soul, insisting on returning the purse she finds on the subway, submitting to the friendly entreaties of its owner, Greta, who lives in a rundown brownstone and apparently has a daughter she misses.

Franky misses her mom. She died less than a year ago.

Shared meals, a visit to the pound to find Greta a shelter dog to ease her loneliness, it’s all a bit much for the roomie, who abruptly accuses Franky of adopting “this woman as your surrogate mom!”

Franky? “Where I’m from, this is what we do” — be nice, polite and compassionate.

It takes no time at all for Franky to figure out the jaded New Yorker was right, that there’s something creepy about Greta, clingy beyond clingy.

And tearing away from the woman she promised she’d stick with, as friends, “like chewing gum,” proves damn near impossible.

Jordan, who made his name on the big screen with 1986’s “Mona Lisa,” and most recently gained notice for TV’s “The Borgias,” isn’t known for thrillers. He does like his twists, though. And violence. And he always gives his actors the close-ups that close the deal on us making our minds up about characters.

Moretz sells Franky’s instant alarm bells and rising discomfort at how Greta can inject herself into her life, regardless of whether she’s wanted there.

Greta knows where she works. She can figure out where she lives and has a good idea of who she lives with. Things are about to get real.

All-knowing Erica has warned Franky and us that “The crazier they are, the harder they cling.” And Greta clings hard. She’s got leverage, too. Franky worries about what she’ll do, and about the dog she just took in. As do we.

The money shot in “Greta” would be when Huppert turns that “like chewing gum” line around on us all — chewing away, coldly letting Franky know that “We need to talk” and no, she’s not going anywhere until they do.

The plot, co-written by Jordan, is conventional to the point of elemental. Jordan introduces the cops into the situation early, teases us with possible easy resolutions to this living nightmare and teases us again when those turn out to be red herrings.

But Huppert makes Greta scarier than she has any right to be. Moretz makes us believe that there are “Mommy Issues” driving her fear of this stranger.

And Monroe, Moretz’s “Fifth Wave” co-star (best-known for “It Follows”), has just enough edge to make Erica a New Yorker newcomers to the city might want to listen to when she barks out a warning, even if it’s hard to take somebody this into yoga — and yoga pants — that seriously.

MPAA Rating: R for some violence and disturbing images

Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Isabelle Huppert, Colm Feore, Stephen Rea

Credits:Directed by Neil Jordan, script by Ray Wright and Neil Jordan. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:38

A thriller about a college-age kid (Chloe Grace Moretz) who falls under the gaze of a French lady stalker (Isabelle Huppert).

Maika Monroe plays the best friend, and we ALL know what happens to best friends in thrillers — they either buy the farm, or save the day.

“Greta” opens March 1.

It always looks so neat, clean — pristine even — in combat movies or in TV news coverage.

The grainy video shows the guided bomb or missile hurtling straight into its target — a direct hit.

The commandos charge into action, squeezing off rounds into “enemy combatants,” somehow avoiding “collateral damage.”

And the soldiers? Clean cut, brave, patriotic and all about “the mission,” Semper Fi and all that.

Military myth-making dies hard in “Combat Obscura,” perhaps the most unfiltered account of American boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Miles Lagoze was a Marine Corps combat videographer, shooting combat and off-duty on-base footage for Marine Corps videos, Armed Forces Network and American TV “pool coverage” of our men and women fighting overseas.

But Lagoze, in titling his movie with a pun on “camera obscura” (a primitive pinhole camera with a tiny field of view), points out that the sanitized and controlled “official” version of what happens in a war zone, is wildly inaccurate.

With a small RCA camera not unlike one a lot of newspaper journalists like me were issued at that time (2011-12), Lagoze shot on-message footage that turned up on CNN and other places.

“We filmed what they wanted, but then we kept shooting,” he relates on an opening credit to “Combat Obscura.” And so he did, and with that footage, a lot of the myth-making and image-varnishing that the “official” record took on, gets dashed to pieces.

The myth of the “surgical strike” disappears in a flash, a cloud of smoke and BOOM just across the village from where Lagoze and the Marines he was with were calling in artillery fire.

“Was that not the WRONG building?”

“That WAS the wrong building! Yeah BOY!”

Profane hoots and hollers all around.

The Marines curse the natives in English, like generations of Jarheads and GIs before them, curse words the Afghans don’t understand.

“Why you so angry? Cheer up? ” jeering at the locals, leering at underage Afghan girls.

“Come over HERE kids. We wanna have a rock fight with you!”

Hearts and minds are thus “won” in a combat zone. Well, that, and games of soccer with kids which the Marines are almost sure to lose.

Soldiers stand-off from an Afghan man as they make him strip, at gunpoint, to see if he’s armed and dangerous — not uncalled for, and nothing wrong with that.

But admitting, “Well, we can’t really torture people” maybe hints that there are guys who will cross that line. Jokingly “painting” a kid with a laser sight for laughs?

“You’re not recording THAT, are you?”

A couple of guys start checking an enemy combatant’s body “just like a deer,” rolling the man over, pointing to the bullet wounds.

Only, “He didn’t have a gun.”

“This his shop? Oh man, we killed a shopkeeper.”

Time for quick thinking. Let’s move the body.

“This is no good for anybody to see.”

Off-duty, we watch hashish crumbled into cigarettes, a Pringles chip can turned into a bong.

“Luckily for us, Afghanistan’s a hash farm!”

Off-camera, Lagoze jokes, “I’m gonna put it in the movie!” Which he does.

There’s blurry action of Lagoze and whoever he is following that day caught in “the adrenaline rush” of firefights, shouts of “Sniper SNIPER,” men graphically wounded in the head, “gut shot,” shouts into the radio of “We’ve got a sucking chest wound, here!” Alarm all around when a comrade is hit, all efforts re-centering around keeping him alive until the airlift out arrives.

The men themselves don’t have their faces blurred, though you’d have to know who you were looking for to positively ID these combat veterans from seven years ago in the footage. Or post stills to Facebook.

Lagoze struggles with the men he has to sit down and talk to on camera, and those who don’t “get” the process.

“Get the f— outta my shot. I’m interviewing him.”

Soldiers recite rote quotes about mission, duty, the work, etc., with Lagoze begging, “Could you maybe say it in your own words?”

All that said, “Combat Obscura” is no more “negative” a portrayal of infantry life than the first modern cinema verite account of fighting men in action and on R&R. “The Anderson Platoon” was filmed during the Vietnam War, and many combat documentaries that have followed stuck to its mix of violent action, the tedium of being “in country” and the bizarre things that happen in “The Fog of War.”

An image from that 1960s movie that sticks with me is that of a chopper accident in a drop zone. No enemy fire, just a pilot’s miscalculation of how close that palm tree was, and CRASH — injuries, the works.

War is like that, that film, “Restrepo” and scores of lesser-known documentaries point out. It’s messy, it’s tense, guys are “over it” in a hurry and tend to be over-the-top when they’re drinking or smoking, rapping or dancing back in camp.

“Surgical strikes” are, like neat, conclusive firefights with a guerilla force any where in the world, a myth.

And the soldiers? Not clean-cut, All American “squared-away killers,” as one Marine confesses to the camera with a grin. “These are the most messed up people I’ve ever been around.”

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Credits: Directed by Miles Lagoze. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:10

The production design is impressive and the animation manages to put clearly visible peach fuzz on the hero’s CGI face.

And director and screenwriter De DeBlois aims for the heartstrings with a finale that ties up the whole “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy.

But everything that isn’t production design or sentiment in “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” is more stultifying, of dubious entertainment value for anybody over the age of 7, or uninterested in the film’s licensed plush toys — whichever age restriction applies.

This tale of Vikings who have reached a rapprochement with the bane of their raping and pillaging existence, dragons, is less Scottish and thus utterly mirth free — witless, with virtually no laughs.

With nothing particularly funny for their characters to say, the likes of Craig Ferguson, Kristen Wiig and Jonah Hill are wasted on characters who need childish sight gags (and rather poor ones at that) to seem amusing.

Wasting the great F. Murray Abraham‘s villainous turn, as the infamous dragon hunter of the dark ages Grimmel, is almost as criminal as writing a check to his fellow Oscar winner, Cate Blanchett, to voice the thankless role of mother of the now-colorless hero Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, sounding bored and over it), who who probably should get around to proposing to the warrior princess (America Ferrera, meh) he’s sweet on.

Any “magic” in the notion of a dragon whisperer and Dark Ages inventor who talks a Night Fury, “The Alpha” among all the dragons that torment their world, into living peacefully with no-longer-as-Scottish Vikings on The Isle of Berk, is long gone.

“The Hidden World” is all about dragon rescue raids, epic CGI combat between righteous Vikings and dragon-nappers who have their own reasons for wanting large collections of the fire-breathing fliers, about “running away from a fight” and about puppy love — dragon style.

It’s not just the Scottishness that takes a backseat this time. Hiccup’s symbiotic relationship with his Night Fury pal, Toothless, is no longer about two disabled creatures making each one unstoppably stronger whole.

Grimmel (Abraham) is brought in to take trap Toothless by the dragon snatchers, and uses a female white Night Fury that we’ll just call a “Light Fury” — because they do — as bait.

Hiccup has to wholly take charge as chief by the authority of birth. His dad was Gerard Butler, remember. Dad’s old pal Gobber (Ferguson) may call Hiccup “the generation that’s supposed to lead us into the future,” but the boy needs to man up and marry Astrid (Ferrera), “Hang up those (dragon) saddles” and settle the succession, already. You crazy kids.

The assaults of Grimmel — involving knock-out bolts from a crossbow — lead Hiccup to a command decision, seeking “some way to make (the dragon-hating) Them leave us alone.” Let’s run away.

And there was this magical place where “all dragons come from, a hidden world” blah blah blah — borrowed “The Land Before Time” movies and “Ice Age.”

The dialogue has no snap, crackle or you-know-what, the dragons are better defined but aren’t really the focus here. Director Dean DeBlois, who co-directed “Lilo & Stitch,” turned the Stitch-headed Toothless into a cocker spaniel in these movies, never more than in this one — puppy mating sniffs, playing fetch, panting, drooling bouncing and prancing in behavior that’s adorable in any dog park in America.

That’s cute enough, but aside from that, “Hidden World” leans heavily on the blandly-voice-acted leads, and Baruchel and Ferrera don’t have enough to play or do — in animated form — to carry the picture between “Mommy, can I have THAT dragon doll?” moments.

It’s positively sleep-inducing. All these enthusiastic reviews are, one suspects, based on the warm fuzzies the picture delivers in the finale. Yawn.

There’s no sense unloading on something plainly for tiny tots, but if they’re insisting on making three of these when one sufficed (they used up all their ideas there), Universal/Dreamworks deserves the ridicule. After all, there were 13 “The Land Before Time” movies, and there’s a dire need to make them stop before we spiral down that drain with them.

MPAA Rating: PG for adventure action and some mild rude humor

Voice cast: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, F. Murray Abraham and Gerard Butler.

Credits: Written and directed by Dean DeBlois, based on the Cressida Cowell books . A Universal/Dreamworks Animation release.

Running time: 1:44

Are you pumped? I know I am.

Joseph Heller’s cynical/comical anti-war war novel was one of my favorite books as a teen.

Another was “Papillon,” just so’s you know where I’m going with this.

This trailer to the Hulu mini-series by George Clooney gets the darkness right, the somber setting of bomber crews being chewed up by the enemy, and by the strain of a sadistic narcissist of a commander who insisted on increasing the number of missions crews had to fly before they got to go home.

The humor? The hilarity of General Dreedle, the looney hide-from-his-job Major Major Major Major, the dopey stateless capitalism of Milo Minderbender, the comical despair of Yossarian, one of the great anti-heroes of all time?

Hell, I don’t see it. A whole mini-series on this book without the humor intact would be a serious #Clooneyfail.

Mike Nichols took a decent shot at making a “M*A*S*H” era comedy (1970) out of “Catch 22” back in the day. Watchable, almost dark enough, with very funny actors (Alan Arkin, Orson Welles, Buck Henry, Bob Newhart, Paula Prentiss, Jon Voight before he went wingnutty, Michael J. Pollard and Richard Benjamin and Charles Grodin, etc.).

There is only one catch, and that is “Catch-22.” That’s some catch, and it premieres on Hulu May 17.

Showtime slick and boxing picture predictable, “Cradle of Champions” is about the New York epicenter of Golden Gloves boxing.

Journalist/director Bartle Bull picked three veterans of the annual Daily News charity event and followed them on their march towards amateur boxing’s pinnacle in this unsurprising but still illuminating portrait of pugilists facing their ultimate tests.

Titus Williams is a boxer’s boxer, a skilled tactician trained by a colorful former 9/11 firefighter turned trainer, Joe Higgins.

James Wilkins is a brawler in the “angry Mike Tyson” mold. His trainer yells “Body shots, jab and BODY shots!” at him for bout after bout, shouts that Wilkins ignores.

Both men own Golden Globes belts and more importantly — necklaces with actual gold gloves on them. But when Wilkins moved up to 132 pounds, they were destined to tangle. More than once, including the 2015 bout which the documentary captures.

Nisa Rodriguez is a tall, 24 year old South Bronx single mom and a multiple year Golden Gloves winner who dreams of the Olympics.

“Cradle” follows them on their quest, letting them show off their trophies, necklaces and belts, Rodriguez mentoring junior high kids in the South Bronx, Williams heading off to church, Wilkins’ mother showing off all the Bible verses she papers the walls’ to his room with “for inspiration.”

The film’s quick overview of New York Golden Gloves history doesn’t dwell on the winners, but on all the great fighters who were humbled there when they were learning their trade — Sugar Ray Leonard, Floyd Patterson and the young Cassius Clay, later “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, all lost there.

Bull gives a lot of screen time to the charismatic Higgins, who tells stories of pulling brother firefighters out of the ruins of the Twin Towers after 9/11, and who found new purpose after respiratory problems caused by that made him retire.

“They are the humblest of warriors,” Higgins says of fighters. And Titus Williams? He’s “a nice church-going kid from Long Island. He’s just not so nice in the ring.”

Wilkins is here for the contrast, a raging, flailing white working class slugger who resists civilizing influences and training, ignores mid-fight instructions and dreams only of landing that one big punch which will make him famous, let him turn pro and give a lift to his family.

His Bible-quoting mom is almost as colorful as Higgins, shrieking “GET IN THERE JAMES” at ringside. “It’s KNOCKOUT time!”

Bull tries to get in close to his fighters, but never achieves anything more than an arms-length portrait of any of them, with the even-tempered Williams getting the short end of that stick.

Wilkins turns wrestler in one sparring session when he doesn’t like his partner’s tendency to tie him up with headlocks. His motivation for getting into the sport is that cliched “tragedy” that he witnessed as a young teen. You’re glad he did, because who knows how much mayhem this hothead would be stirring up with no boxing outlet?

Rodriguez is the most interesting, but even she’s left without much in the line of explainable motivation for why she took this sport up in her early teens.

“Who wakes up in the morning ready to go get hit?”

The fights aren’t shot like “Rocky,” thank heavens. Just a few rounds just a couple of minutes long each, with head protection and referees quick to call a standing eight count and fighters inclined to throw haymakers that most often miss makes for a more audience-friendly boxing experience.

At this point, finding an angle or fighter or story in this genre of sports films — features or documentaries — is impossible, even though audiences are diving into the “Creed” pictures as if they’ve never seen a fight.

“Cradle of Champions” doesn’t change that, but it does show the sport at its most enthusiastic and hungry, via fighters whose main glory, at this stage, is a pair of golden gloves they can wear around their neck when they win it all.

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Cast: James Wilkins, Nisa Rodriguez, Titus Williams, Brian Adams, Julio Salinas Albino, Teddy Atlas

Credits: Directed by Bartle Bull. A Showtime release.

Running time: 1:40

There’s a rigid formula for coming-of-age documentaries.

Pick a group of disadvantaged schoolkids — dancers or mathematicians, athletes or children just desperate to be selected for the top magnet school in the region, ensuring that college is in their future — and follow them as they battle long odds, family shortcomings, the system and themselves.

Some will succeed, and even in the most “feel good” documentaries in this genre, some will fail.

“Wrestle” is a formula coming-of-age documentary featuring high school wrestlers, their fanatically-committed coach, their families, disadvantages and distractions as they try to gain fame and scholarships from the platform of a failing Huntsville, Alabama high school.

It’s a revealing film that doesn’t skimp on the pitfalls facing the four young men who are its subjects and the blind spots of the white coach who pushes, inspires and badgers them through a long, grueling season.

But the jaw-dropping revelation here is in filmmakers’ Suzannah Herbert and Lauren Belfer realizing, and making us realize, that black or white, seniors or underclassmen, raised by Mom or raised by grandparents, these are lives with zero margin for error.

Of course we’re shown arduous workouts, teammates carrying each other up a hill, at night, in the rain, urged on by their fellow wrestlers.

We get a dose of what it takes to “make weight” when you’re a tall, growing kid who likes to eat.

We get a glimpse of J.O. Johnson High School, stuck in a comatose, opportunity-starved corner of Huntsville.

But the camera crew is in the car when easily-distracted underclassman Jaquan drives his buddy, senior Jamario, to his birthday party and the older teen talks about want to smoke (weed) “just tonight,” and not again this season.

The tape is still rolling as Jaquan, later that night, is pulled over by Huntville’s finest for a “dim brake light.” A “trace” of marijuana later, and his mother is praying aloud as she drives to get him out of jail, to calm herself down and “not do nothing to jeopardize my freedom.”

That’s what being black in Huntsville is like.

The smart, well-spoken star of the team, Jailen Young relieves himself on a roadside in even-less-tolerant Montgomery and faces police hassle and arrest.

“Don’t get smart” turns into “Lose the attitude…you’bout this close” and then to the cop snapping at the documentary crew about he hopes the filmmakers captured “how disrespectful this young man is being.”

They did. And they captured the fact that these are good kids whose lives are under a police spotlight every night they’re out of doors, with no chance of “let you off with a warning” from the white cops they confront.

“Scrib” (Chris Scribner), their coach, shakes his head at the fact that he “made a lot of the same choices they did (drug abuse, almost flunking out)…But I was given a LOT of chances. I don’t know how that’s fair.”

Teague, a white 145 pounder on the team, has attention deficit issues and medications to combat that, medications he doesn’t take. We watch him utterly bollix his future — skipping class, buying weed, scrambling up trees and gym walls and improvising his way around the mat with the same manic energy.

“Teague, that wasn’t even a MOVE.”

His mother wishes he’d get busted “to wake him up.” She begins each day’s drop off at school with a “No crazy stuff today. I don’t need no phone calls.”

Jamario, the senior, could be the J.O. Johnson wrestler who wins it all. But he’s overwhelmed by expectations, mood-swings and distractions. He’s got an older girlfriend who wants to sit in on practices (not allowed) and doesn’t see herself as part of the problem.

“That girl ain’t nothing but drama,” his mother, Lolita, warns, but Jamario isn’t big on listening or following advice.

“Wrestle,” better than most sports documentaries or feature dramas, gets at the grueling, attention-sapping nature of high school sports. The season goes on and on, kids have classes and other things to change their focus.

Kids, with little perspective on how long life is, get burned-out or mess up in other ways.

Scrib is an in-their-lives/in-their-business coach, ridiculed by trying to be too much — their shrink, their life coach, their dad.

The kids laugh off his cussing, cajoling, mothering (he tracks down athletes late for matches, skipping practice) and even violently wrestling them (almost certainly not allowed outside of Alabama) with “He’s from New York. Coaxing “role model” Jailen into giving a speech to one of the team’s sponsors, Coach is “fittin'” (his words) to get worked up.

“You know what I’m sayin’? Be FORCEFUL. Be Obama about it!”

“Wrestle” may be a formulaic genre picture, but Herbert and Belfer find lighter moments (Jaquon dozing off on the exercycle), a coach taking on Southern African American patois, an irate mother demanding “Did you SMOKE in my baby’s car, Jamario?”

And the filmmakers absolutely NAIL the straight-and-narrow that these kids must follow just to “make it to 18,” the police attention that gives so many African American youth the sort of “zero tolerance” futures circumscribed by having “criminal” records.

Even kids with someone as hellbent on giving them “First in your family to go to college” ambitions and dreams as Coach Scrib can be pinned before the match even starts.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast:Teague Berres, Jaquan Rhodes, Chris Scribner, Jamario Rowe

Credits: Directed by Suzannah Herbert and Lauren Belfer. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:36

An official Marine Corps videographer shot “Combat Obscura,” a documentary of training, combat and down time footage so raw it’s “The Movie The Marine Corps doesn’t want you to see.”

It’s due out in March from the reliably edgy Oscilloscope Labs.

AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, has long wanted to shorten their night-long telecast of self-flattery, the Oscars.

Years back, when Oscar expert Steve Pond had a book coming out, we discussed this and he said “As long as they’re handing out 24 awards (plus whatever honorary prizes they add in a given year), the show’s going to be long.” Very long. Some years longer than others.

There’s the nub. You can nibble around the edges of the telecast, but can you shorten it without thinning the actual “awards?”

This year, they took a serious stab at fixing that. They talked about not performing all the nominated songs. And caved.

They long ago ruined the promise of emotional, moving and memorable acceptance speeches by setting time limits and “playing people off” who got carried away.

That cut into the laundry lists of “I’d love to thank my agent, her assistant, the assistant’s driver…” a bit, but not enough. And it ruined acceptance speeches by Hollywood legends like Martin Landau and others.

Their latest idea, create a rotating quartet of awards handed out during commercial breaks, was bound to get REALLY important crafts guilds like the cinematographers, sound mixers, editors and costumers upset when it was their turn to not get their “I’d like to thank” moments.

I’m not using “REALLY important” ironically or sarcastically. These are the people who MAKE the movies we all see and adore.

So it was no surprise when that “be fair to everybody” attempt folded up under a tornado of criticism from both those impacted and those who recognize who MAKES the movies.

No matter who you choose to honor online instead of on ABC TV, they’re going to be irked.

And actors, producers, directors, composers, editors, costumers — all of them have clout via their guilds.

The answer then, is to move the LEAST interesting categories with the LEAST amount of clout — filmmakers who are LUCKY to be included in the Oscars on TV at all — permanently into those TV commercial breaks.

I’m referring to the three Short Film Categories — Live Action Short, Documentary Short and Animated Short.

Move them to the breaks, and do it permanently and from here on out. The telecast feels like its not long for this Earth, as relevance fades and audience interest in the medium and a show celebrating it wanes. Running time will be irrelevant when it’s just a streaming program we watch on Hulu.

But for now, move these three and be done with it. Let the entrants in these categories howl. It needs to be done.

Aside from animation, the winners and nominees in these categories rarely become feature length success stories. It’s a blip on the cinema’s radar when this live action short filmmaker wins. Rare is the “short” winner who gets to turn his or her short into a feature, or finds real success making full length movies.

“Sling Blade” started life as a short. “Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade” co-starred Molly Ringwald.

“Before I Disappear,” the Shawn Christensen dark comedy about a suicidal young man who has to postpone death because his sister needs him to babysit, was another.

There are other examples of that, but not that many.

Animation is different, but the animated nominees are increasingly dominated by the Big Animation Houses, so while winning an Oscar with a short gives you bragging rights and glosses up an animation director’s resume and can lead to feature success, truthfully, those filmmakers have already won the “Pixar/Dreamworks/Warners/Sony” is MAKING MY (short) MOVIE” prize.

Even in animation, an Oscar for a short is not a career-making moment.

I enjoy programs of shorts, and consider them worthy of Oscar consideration. But we don’t need to see these hard-working unknowns on TV, even when Steve Martin and Steven Wright and other famous folks over the years have made a top drawer short.

Shortening the show requires streamlining the awards presented. You can’t do that without pain. Forget “fair,” cut the stuff viewers are least invested in.

Move the shorts off the telecast and see how long the show runs without them.

This year’s Oscars will be handed out Feb. 24, without a host and without the cuts to running time that producers have been dying to make for years.