An unique connection is established between two souls who decide to spend their human lives together. Such a feeling of love, knowing that someone cares and looks for you, is hard to equal. So, there is this search in life when we try to find our "soulmate", an experience worth remembering and cherishing. Everyone can love.

"In a Heartbeat" is a very unusual film. Two students from the Ringling College of Arts and Design, Esteban Bravo and Beth David, made this animated short as their final graduation project. That in and of itself is not unusual. However, when the short was released on YouTube, it received 20,000,000 hits in the first five days!! To this date, over 34,000,000 have watched the film. So, considering how popular the film was, as well as the quality of the project, it's odd that it was not nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar for Best Animated Short. In fact, it wasn't even included as one of the commended films when the animated shorts were shown in the weeks preceding the Oscars. I have no idea why it wasn't chosen...especially in light of how incredibly mediocre the actual nominees were.The story itself is very simple and is told without words. A gay young man (I am guessing about Middle School age) is smitten with a classmate. To illustrate this, Bravo and David used a heart...a literal heart...to show the boy's intense feelings. And, like most intense feelings from teens, he's unable to control the heart...and it literally bursts from the boy's chest and begins chasing after the other boy. What's next? See the film.The bottom line is that this film has spoken to a lot of people and it's very well made...so well made that I am anxious to see more from these bright young graduates.

This is unarguably a finely-tuned, short animation that tells a touching, universal story without words. The creators of this short have done noble work, as artists, as story tellers, as social commentators and as humanists. The awards should be forthcoming, and are well deserved.

And this is not art. This is just another short film in the current trend of "let's make animated films that are basically kids movies but sell them to teenagers and young adults because they feel nostalgic for Pixar and haven't yet found out what good cinema is" except that this has a gay twist which means if you hate it, clearly you must be a conservative asshole. But really what does this 'short film' bring to the table? There have been countless short films about young (gay) lovers and there have been probably even more good animated short films that actually try a new style. This just is as clichéd as it gets, just imitate Pixar, make it gay and voila you just tricked the masses who have no appreciation for cinema or short films into thinking "RIGHT WINGERS WILL HATE THIS, THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE". The gag with the heart popping out was kinda cute but the whole love story went way too fast and was predictable the whole way through. Spend your 4 minutes on any other short movie you find.