Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, the award season podcast from Vanity Fair in Panoply

that's bringing you a new episode every day this week as we make our way to the Academy Awards.

I'm still Katie Rich, the deputy editor of VanityFair.com, and I'm here in person with Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair's film critic. I'm still Richard Lawson. Yeah, and still in Los Angeles is Mike Hook and Vanity Fair's digital director. Hey, guys. Mike, it's now Thursday before the Oscars. I assume the anticipation is building out there and you are polishing some Oscar statues, just to practice your speech? People are freaking out.

Panic in the streets.

Lines at dry cleaners miles long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're already sweating alcohol. No one has eaten for a week. No, that's true. You're not going to the Oscars. You're going to our party, which we'll talk about later, but you're also not eating just in solidarity, right? Well, because we're doing this live stream, I have to fit into a tuck.

So I haven't eaten since January.

That's fair. not eating just in solidarity, right? Well, because we're doing this live stream, I have to fit into a tuck.

So I haven't eaten since January. That's fair. I really got to get on my training.

If only that were true, actually, I'd be in much better condition right now.

So today we're going to be talking about the last batch of short films, the animated films. And then we'll be joined in a crossover effort by In the Limelight's Julie Miller, who has some stories from Inside Vanity Fair Oscar Party's past. And she and Mike can tell us about what all of us plebes have been missing all of these years. But yeah, first we'll talk about the short animated films, which, as we keep saying, these are the things that can make or break your Oscar ballot. Because who has seen these movies? We have. We have. We have seen these movies. And they are

available to rent on iTunes so you can watch them. But as we'll discuss in one of them, watching them on iTunes is really a doing a disservice because it's a 360 movie.

Which I did not know. Yeah. And so I watched it on the screener that we were sent by a kind publicist.

And then someone later was like, oh, did you do the thing? And I was like, I had no idea. Yeah. So this movie, Pearl was produced with Google, I think. Yeah. And if you watch it on YouTube, if you Google it, Pearl short film, you can watch it. And you can kind of like scroll around and, like, do a 360 view of the short film that's all set inside a car. Which is an insane thing to do with animation.

Yeah.

I know.

You know, I watch Pearl without the 360, just kind of straight and regular. And I loved it. I got teary. It's a nice movie. It's just about a girl growing up with her musician dad and she becomes a musician. There's no dialogue really. It's just kind of all visual. I mean, it plays a little bit like a Google ad kind of thing, you know, it's sort of sentimental in that way.

Yeah.

But I thought it was great. I don't know. I was my favorite of the bunch, honestly. Yeah. I thought so, too. I got a little weepy watching it, which is sort of ridiculous for a six minute music video effectively. But it is, it captures the sweep of life, you know, and I also didn't know

watching it that it was 360, but that explains the kind of strange polygonal animation.

You see something like Barrowed Time where these guys are obviously showing off. I mean,

borrowed time is basically all about the hair blowing in the wind. That's like literally why it exists, I think.

Often, that's how it is with these animated shorts.

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