THE 2004 OSCAR SHORTS

[] (three stars)

Running time: 85 minutes. Not rated (violence, adult themes). At the Cinema Village, 12th Street, east of Fifth Avenue.

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THE claymation short “Harvie Krumpet” is worth the price of admission alone but, as a bonus, this eclectic collection also includes another animated short and three live-action short films, all nominated for Academy Awards.

Adam Elliot’s “Harvie,” which was a surprise winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Short over front-runner “Destino,” is a bizarro flight of fancy from Australia that practically defines the word “whimsical.”

Narrated by Geoffrey Rush, it follows the hilarious misadventures of its title character, a man born with Tourette’s syndrome who emigrates from Poland to Australia, is struck by lightning, joins a nudist colony, falls in love and adopts a Thalidomide baby, along the way collecting a great number of obscure “fakts.”

You’ll wish it was longer than 22 minutes.

The program also includes two live-action shorts depicting the horrors of war: Florian Baxmeyer’s “The Red Jacket,” about a discarded coat that unites a grieving father in Germany and an orphaned Sarajevan boy; and Slovenian Stefan Arsenijevic’s quirky “(A) Torsion,” about a choir that helps ease the pain of a cow in labor.

There’s Chris Hinton’s succinct animated piece, “Nibbles,” about a hungry family’s fishing trip, and Lionel Bailliu’s French-language “Squash,” depicting a gladiator game between a tyrannical boss and his employee.

Problems with rights mean shorts like “Destino” and live-action Oscar winner “Two Soldiers” are missing, but these five prove good things sometimes do come in small packages.