Adam Blackwood

ShortsHD is once again bringing the wildly popular Oscar nominated short film program (Live Action, Animation, and Documentary) to theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe beginning February 10th. The theatrical release of the Academy Award nominated short films has met with enthusiastic audiences ever since its launch 6 years ago, giving people around the world an opportunity to see the nominated films prior to the Academy Awards ceremony on February 26th.

An English dreamer experiences both the beauty and harshness of nature when he relocates to the Canadian prairie.

He's Irish, he's ageing, he drinks, is a touch cynical and when he has time writes a newspaper column. On the eve of the country's first election as an independent state, Dan Starkey's life is about to change after he finds the young woman he has just made love to dead and his only ally is a nun

William Carey sailed in 1793 to India with a reluctant wife and four children to bring the message of Jesus. There he encountered so much hardship it is amazing he didn't abandon his mission and go home. But he stayed for over 40 years.

When Scottish young gentleman David Balfour's father dies, he leaves school to collect his inheritance from uncle Ebenezer, who in turn sells the boy as a future slave to a pirate ship. When staunch Stuart dynasty supporter Alan Breck Stewart accidentally boards the ship, he takes David along on his escape back to Edinburgh. They part and meet again repeatedly, mutually helpful against the Redcoats and respectful, although David is loyal to the English crown, but learns about its cruel oppression. Both ultimately face their adversaries.

1839. The young Nell Trent is leading a happy life with her grandfather in his curiosity shop. Wharf owner Daniel Quilp has given large amounts of money to Nell's grandfather as an investment, expecting a large profit. But when Quilp finds out the old man has lost all the money with playing cards, he is determined to get the man in a madhouse as revenge. Nell and her grandfather are forced to leave their house and to start traveling across the country. But Quilp isn't sitting still, his spies are everywhere. Meanwhile a stranger is also looking for Nell's grandfather.

When the ailing husband of an adulterous wife is discovered bludgeoned to death and suspicions fall on the older woman's young lover, the newly widowed woman claims that it was she who was solely responsible for the death despite evidence that points to the contrary in this dramatic account of true-life 1935 trial that shocked all of England. Though notable evidence and strong suspicion suggests that the murder may have been of crime of passion perpetrated by the jealous lover only half her age, Alma Rattenbury (Helen Mirren) confesses to the murder of her husband and is soon brought to trial. Despite the fact that Alma is already being deemed guilty by the general public for her adulterous indiscretion alone, her lawyer, star attorney T.J. O'Connor (David Suchet), remains convinced that his client will eventually be cleared of all charges.

The Doctor is summoned before the High Council of Time Lords to stand trial for the charges of harmful interference to the course of events during his travels which have threatened the sanctity of the universe. Indignant at these accusations, the Doctor pleads his case to the Inquisitor with the hope that she will see him as a source of hope and goodwill for existence. However, his prosecuting attorney, a sinister Time Lord known simply as the Valeyard, begins a crusade against the Doctor with the motive of framing him as a villainous renegade.

Set during the period of growing influence of the Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the story begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela Quested, who is joining her fiancé, a city magistrate named Ronny Heaslop. She and Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore, befriend an Indian doctor, Aziz H. Ahmed.

Devon 1940. The boys of the local public school are alerted after a German parachute drop and as members of the Local Defence Volunteers they prepare to put their youthful enthusiasm for war into practice.