In praise of shorts

Margo Jefferson in The New York Times sings the praises of short films.

This year I got to see the 10 live-action and animated shorts nominated for Oscars. (I wish I'd seen the documentaries, too.) It was one of the best movie afternoons I've had in ages. So many full-length features dawdle, then pick up force, only to drift off again. With a good short - which runs from less than 5 to 20-something minutes - there's no time for all that. There's time only for that primal movie experience: absolute immersion in another world. And because it happens so quickly, it feels miraculous.