Screen Test

  Ellen Parren in “I'm Not a Robot.”  Image via IMDb.com You may not know the name. But you've had the experience. It's CAPTCHA, the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Whether the acronym is coincidental or intentionally designed to trigger paranoia, it does sound uncomfortably close to  capture. It refers to the squiggly obscured letters and numbers, or the sign-in photo grid on a lot of websites, telling you to click all the boxes with bicycles, bridges or stoplights to prove you're not a robot.  You know what I'm talking about, right? But what happens if you fail the test? That's the premise for “I'm Not a Robot,” a joint production from the Netherlands and Belgium that just won the Oscar for best live-action short. Hauntingly acted and elegantly filmed, it's a story of a young woman (Ellen Parren) who can't convince CAPTCHA that she's human. What follows falls somewhere between the blackest of comedies...

                                            Gene Hackman in “Unforgiven.”  Warner Bros. photo via IMDb.com. It goes without saying that the most touching – and most real – part of most movie award shows is the In Memoriam segment. The recent death of Gene Hackmen along with his wife Betsy Arakawa marked another star going dark in the night sky. Hackman will be remembered, among the year's other great and tender losses, when the Academy Awards return Sunday, live on ABC and Hulu, beginning at 4 p.m. Hollywood time. I used to watch the beautiful people at the Oscars, trying to keep count of how many of them I had met, shared a few minutes with, maybe a handshake, on rare occasions a hug. Quite a few, actually. But over years, then decades, the migration began. Gradually, more and more of those gorgeous striders on the red carpet were young strangers. And more and more of the ...