It seems strange that we don't see more short films, since the format is so mind-blindingly relevant. What are music videos but short films? What are commercials? And haven't we been told a thousand times that we have teeny tiny attention spans? Yet every year, the Oscar nominees for short films come and go and no one sees them.

The Music Hall's May 5 Wildcard movie night beats back that sad trend, as they will be showing a striking set of seven of this year's Oscar nominated shorts, both animated and live action.

And as it happens, they're wicked good-pointed, concise and deliberate, touching and funny and strange, like long-polished poems with not a frame out of place.

Gopher Broke: a Pixarish comic animation about a gopher's big dreams of a roadside fresh vegetable scam, and the hole it ultimately lands him in.

Two Cars, One Night: a black and white New Zealand film about some kids waiting in a car for their keepers to return. Only a short film could make this premise work, and work it does, reminding us how simple the framework for a great story can be.

Birthday Boy: Computer animation isn't just for toys and talking animals. This film follows the path of a young Korean boy in 1951 as he plays in a world overshadowed by war.

Little Terrorist: a live action short that starts with a boy chasing a cricket ball into a minefield on the India/Pakistan border. It's full of guilt-inducing, "This must be what life is like in countries where they have minefields" moments, alternating with occasional flashes of "Gosh, cricket sure is a cute game."

Rex Steele, Nazi Smasher: a great name, but not the best film of the bunch; winner of some kind of student prize.

Ryan: a wonderful and troubling animation by Chris Landreth, who interviews another animator, Ryan Larkin, whom he meets on the streets of Toronto. Ryan Larkin was once nominated for an Oscar for his animation as well, over 30 years ago, but since then the cocaine and alcohol have broken him. The interviews are real, but the animation is more than that-Landreth depicts people's emotional damage as technicolor physical wounds, so that Landreth himself looks something like a zombie, while Larkin is just some bits of grisly sinews holding up his nose and glasses.

Wasp: winner of the Oscar for live-action short, and everybody's must-see rave. 'Nuff said.