A Peek at Some Oscar Nominees Few Have Seen : Movies: Who’s who in documentary, animated and live-action shorts categories.

The three toughest categories to pick in the Oscar office pool are those for documentary, animated and live-action shorts, the reason being few people ever get a chance to see them all in theaters. To give you some idea what’s going on when the envelopes for those categories are opened at Monday night’s Academy Awards, here are reviews of the shorts in competition.

All this year’s nominees for the Academy Award for documentary short subject contain a strong moral or political message. The better ones show how an idea can be effectively presented on film, while the weaker ones demonstrate the gap between good intentions and good filmmaking.

In “Days of Waiting,” Steven Okazaki presents a biography of Estelle Peck Ishigo, whose refusal to be separated from her Asian husband made her one of few Caucasians interned with the Japanese-Americans at Heart Mountain, Wyo., during World War II. An aspiring painter, Ishigo did sketches of the internees and their children, which add a moving, personal note to the archival photos and newsreel footage. This well-crafted, affecting film pays tribute to the unassuming courage of a woman who never described herself as exceptional.

The other entries tend to prettify their subjects, and the viewer looks in vain for the unflinching edge that gives “Days of Waiting” its strength. Kit Thomas deplores the wanton destruction of the tropical rain forests in “Burning Down Tomorrow,” but fails to present any information that hasn’t appeared in other recent films. The handsome photography of the forest plants and animals looks a bit too much like an expanded National Geographic layout.

“Chimps: So Like Us” by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon never really explores the anatomical and biochemical links that make chimpanzees mankind’s closest primate relative. When narrator Jane Goodall gushes about their maternal bonds, she seems more interested in anthropomorphizing the animals than in maintaining scientific objectivity, and the camera lingers on the cute infants too long. Goodall emerges as an ardent conservationist/animal rights advocate, but the filmmakers ignore the significance of her work as an anthropologist, which includes the discoveries that chimpanzees use simple tools--and conduct wars, an unpleasant fact left unmentioned.

Derek Bromhall’s “Journey into Life: The World of the Newborn” combines microphotography, special effects and computer animation to trace the growth of a human embryo from conception to birth. Unfortunately, these impressive visuals are paired with an icky-sweet narration, which Fay DeWitt delivers in a tone of breathless wonder that quickly cloys: It’s a bit like sitting through a Bio I class taught by Little Miss Marker.

Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders offer a valentine to the family matriarch on her 100th birthday in “Rose Kennedy: A Life to Remember.” The footage of Jack and Bobby supplies some poignant moments, but this rambling film tells the viewer little about Mrs. Kennedy and less about her efforts to help the mentally retarded--its ostensible subject.

Although the consensus among animators and festival-goers is that 1990 was not a particularly good year for short films, the Oscar nominees in both the animated and live-action short categories include some impressive work.

Two of the three nominees for animated short are by Nick Park, a British clay animator, best known for the imaginative commercials he makes at the Aardman studio. (The record belongs to UPA producer Steve Bosustow, who received all three nominations in 1956.)

“Creature Comforts,” Park’s pseudo-documentary about a roving reporter interviewing the animals in a London zoo, combines off-the-wall humor with skillful animation. The expansive gestures of a hilarious, lisping Brazilian jaguar are so well-timed, they seem to be the spontaneous expressions of his flamboyant personality, rather than the studiously calculated work of a filmmaker.

Park began “A Grand Day Out” as a student, and spent nearly 10 years completing it, working between commercial jobs. A light-hearted adventure about an odd little British man and his dog who go to the moon for some cheese to serve with their teatime crackers, “Grand Day” contains some deft touches, especially the dog’s vivid expressions. But Park seems to have lost track of his story over the years, and the film is most interesting as a predecessor of the more polished “Creature Comforts.”

Bruno Bozzetto, the creator of the popular “Allegro Non Troppo,” uses simply drawn line figures to present a fast-paced spoof of the history of warfare in “Grasshoppers (Cavalette).” Although it boasts some genuinely funny moments, “Grasshoppers” feels stale, probably because Bozzetto and other animators have explored the same theme many times in recent years. It doesn’t really represent the best work of this talented director.

Adam Davidson’s “The Lunch Date,” which has already won a student Academy Award and the prize for best short film at Cannes, is the odds-on favorite in the live-action category. This mordant black comedy about a well-to-do woman who sees herself victimized by the homeless people in Grand Central Station satirizes the racial fears and economic barriers in contemporary America. The logical but completely unexpected ending invariably brings down the house.

Peter Cattaneo and Barnaby Thompson use a series of letters to narrate the story of an aspiring novelist who inadvertently writes a wildly successful diet book--and discovers the price of fame in “Dear Rosie,” a comedy made for Britain’s innovative Channel 4. Rosie’s epistolary misadventures are often very funny, but the film’s ending fails to resolve several strands of the plot.

“Senzeni Na? (What Have We Done?),” by Bernard Joffa and Anthony E. Nicholas, traces the radicalization of an apolitical black servant who is jailed, beaten and tortured when the South African police mistake him for a left-wing activist. “Senzeni Na?” contains some powerful images, but too many similar situations, characters and swelling chorale arrangements of African music have been used in other recent films about apartheid.

Raymond DeFelitta and Matthew Gross do an impressive job of evoking New York City immediately after World War II in “Bronx Cheers,” but they fail to generate much interest in their story, an unlikely tale about a punch-drunk boxer and an aspiring songwriter. “Cheers” seems more like an exercise in cinematography than a finished film.

The ghost of the late Rod Serling hovers over “12:01 PM” by Hillary Ripps and Jonathan Heap. A “time bounce” causes everyone on Earth to repeat the same hour for all eternity, but only one tormented man realizes what’s happening. At 27 minutes, this unsuccessful effort to recreate “The Twilight Zone” goes on far too long and leaves the viewer feeling like he’s stuck in a film bounce.