Recently, I’ve heard of some Best Picture Oscar Nominee marathons, wherein you arrive at a theater and emerge 24 hours later having seen all 10 nominees. I don’t have that kind of stamina or free time, which is why I instead went to a marathon of the Best Animated Short nominees. I recommend this sort of experience, not only because you get to see how moviemakers handle animation and storytelling so quickly, but also because it’s a chance to know what the Oscar presenters are talking about for one of the more obscure categories.

Madagascar, a Journey Diary: French filmmaker Bastien Dubois’ short about a trip into Madagascar for the Turning of the Bones festival is perhaps the most uniquely animated of the shorts. Because it takes the form of a diary, the animation is meant to look like a notebook, detailing the different stops along the way. The transitions from scene to scene are like flipping the pages in a pop-up storybook. The story itself is really a brief introduction to Madagascar culture, showing the people and their customs. Simultaneously put together with crude hand-drawn animations and detailed pseudo-3D sequences, Madagascar, a Journey Diary feels exactly the way it should—like an assortment of memories. It’s not the best of the group, but it’s a solid exploration of a technique—and a country—with which the audience is unfamiliar.

The Gruffalo: Jakob Schuh and Max Lang’s short, by far the longest of the pack, is an essentially perfect children’s story. Based on a children’s book, The Gruffalo follows a clever mouse as he traverses through a dangerous forest, outwitting predator after predator until he meets the fantastically grotesque Gruffalo. With voices from Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, and John Hurt, it’s a charming story that frequently goes into rhyme. It’s great—for children, that is. While I really can’t say anything bad about it, since it is technically near-perfect, it just wasn’t my favorite. I think it has a good chance at the Oscar because of its flawless production quality, but I don’t need to see it again anytime soon.

The Lost Thing: The Lost Thing, from Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann, tells the story of a boy who discovers a lost creature-like “thing”—for lack of a better word—on a beach in a futuristic grey-concrete sort of world. The boy tries to help the thing, which is somewhat like a pet, return “home,” or at least to find other lost “things”; by the end, we know that it’s the boy who’s lost, amid an anonymous world where nothing and nobody seems to matter. It’s considerably darker than the rest of the shorts, and while it’s not worse because of that, it can drag at times—a difficult problem to overcome for a 15-minute movie. However, it’s animated well and the idea behind it is solid, even if the movie doesn’t have enough strength to top the other shorts.

Let’s Pollute: Geefwee Boedoe’s Let’s Pollute, a parody of 1950s informational videos, is hands down my favorite of the shorts. It’s also the shortest, the funniest, and the least roundabout in making its point. An anti-waste satire, Let’s Pollute has no real characters, except for a Joe-Smith-type family acting out the history of waste and the narrator’s advice for how to waste properly. In addition, the movie prominently features the deaths of several smiling woodland creatures, accompanied by a barrage of almost-giddy sound effects. And while the animation and overall quality are nothing revolutionary, the movie’s simplicity and whimsical sarcasm make for a movie that’s just plain fun to watch. If I had my way, it would win the Oscar in a landslide, but it might be too tongue-in-cheek to win over the Academy.

Day and Night: If you’ve seen only one of these shorts, it’s probably Teddy Newton’s Day and Night. That’s because it was the Pixar animated short that came before Toy Story 3. The short follows “Day” and “Night,” who are exactly what their names imply—day and night incarnate. For instance, we see, through Day’s body, a woman relaxing on the beach, while nothing is on the beach when Night stands over the same spot. And we see lit-up Las Vegas through Night, while we see only the tame daytime Vegas when Day stands over that spot. The story, of course, becomes a lesson in getting along with people who are different. It’s a great short, not only because of the quality (the sound effects are extremely clever), but because it presents a story and a message more uniquely than any of the other shorts. I’d say it has the best chance at the Oscar.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.