We streamed two of the Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts:

            The Elephant Whisperers: (40 min. on Netflix) Charming, heart-warming tale of man, woman, and pachyderms at the Mudumalai National Park in South India. Two tribal locals, Bomman and Belli, care for two abandoned young elephants and raise them to adulthood. Five years in the making and beautifully photographed; what the film lacks in conflict it makes up in a stirring depiction of the human-animal bond. Gary said after watching the film, “I can see why they nominated it, but I don’t think it will win the award.” (It did win the Oscar.)

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            The Martha Mitchell Effect: (40 min. Netflix) Ty Burr said, “this capable, angry, and overdue bio-doc of Mitchell, who galvanized the Watergate era with plain talk and plainer outrage before she was shut down by her husband, Attorney General John Mitchell, and the Nixon dirty-tricks brigade.” Gary and I remembered her name but didn’t remember how she was intertwined with Watergate. She was the wife of John Mitchell who ordered the theft at the National Democratic Party offices. Sentenced to 30 years, he said that it could have been worse: “The Judge could have sentenced me to life with Martha.” Gary said, “That was a good one. It told me about a woman whose name I recognized but I didn’t know how she fit into history.”