• I just saw PEARL in the Oscar-Nominated Animated Short show and I thought this story of a girl who goes through teen-aged rebellion against her loving dad was a pleasantly put together short cartoon set to a song. The insistence of setting every shot around a hatchback car may strike the viewer as a bit odd, as if the late Abbas Kiarostami had taken up cartooning. That, however, is why it will likely win the Academy Award.

    Although I saw it in flat-screen, and thought it good, the Academy voters won't see it that way. Instead, they will have seen it wearing headsets that make it an immersive 3-D experience from the front right seat of that hatchback and found it possibly the first such movie to use the techniques effectively. That may well win it the Oscar, and if so, it will deserve it....but it will remain a mystery to those who didn't see it that way.