2011 Best Animated Feature Oscar

I was going to skip this as a poll this time around. Doesn't seem like much to talk about here, the winner is a forgone conclusion. But for the record the nominees are...



How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

its pretty much a no brainer.

How to Train Your Dragon in a huge upset!

yeah, in reality it's a foregone conclusion.

Toy Story 3. Obviously.

__________________
"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

The Illusionist for the upset.


just kidding.

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Might as well vote/talk about which of these we all think should win, since the prediction is so obvious, yeah?

Still Toy Story 3 for me, but I have to imagine we'll have a few though like Dragon a bit more.

Well, even though the winner is beyond obvious and nobody would really argue with the choice, we can speculate on why the Academy went with only three nominations instead of five this year, a year that had plenty of animated fare to choose from: Despicable Me, Megamind, Tangled, Shrek 4, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, My Dog Tulip, Bill Plympton's Idiot's and Angels and the foreign A Town Called Panic (which apparently wasn't eligible for the Oscars). There have been five nominees twice (including last year), and three nominees the other eight years.

I think How to Train Your Dragon was fantastic, completely enjoyable, and up there with Fantastic Mr. Fox as the best non-PIXAR animated movie released by a major Studio in many, many moons. I can see why the emotional impact of Toy Story 3 makes it the more obvious choice for votes, but for anybody who didn't already see Dragon with your kids, it is most definitely worth seeing and is not "just" for the under-ten set.


Also, even though it isn't going to win I am very happy that The Illusionist was nominated. Haven't been able to see it yet, but I loved The Triplets of Belleville (as I think everybody else on the planet did) and think the idea of animating an unproduced Jacques Tati script was fantastic! Belleville was also nominated (the year Finding Nemo won), and I am consistently impressed that a few of the foreign animated features keep making the cut...even if they don't have much chance of winning. And remember, to their undying credit, in just the second year of the award the Oscar did go to Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away....though it should be noted there was no PIXAR entry that year. Nick Park's stop-motion Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has also won this award, and Persepolis, The Secret of Kells and Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle have all been nominees (but they somehow snubbed Waltz with Bashir, which was nominated as Best Foreign Language Picture).

The idea that anyone is going to vote for an animated feature that they haven't already put up for Best Picture, as the last two years have followed, is just plain unthinkable. It wrenches even an iota of drama from this category, but I guess that's just the way it is going to be.

For my money the only time they've obviously screwed the pooch in terms of what actually won here was in the award's first year, when Shrek beat Monsters, Inc. somehow. Objectively I think time will show which of those movies is the better and timeless, and while Shrek made a zillion bucks and spawned ever-incresingly horrid sequels, even the original is not a very well made movie, animation wise or script wise. That's the only time I think popularity wrongly overwhelmed a clearly superior film.

.
.

Attachments

 

I think the rule is that if the Academy feels there were less than 20 legitimate animated releases, then they only go with three nominees. More than 20 equals five, but that hasn't happened very often.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Probably should read:

Which basically means if you haven't seen it yet people, you should get on that. I can't wait to see The Illusionist.

__________________
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I actually looked it up, because I was curious and couldn't remember what the criteria was. It does have something to do with numbers, but the threshold isn't twenty: years that have eight to fifteen eligible features released in the designated Los Angeles theatres, there will be three nominees. Sixteen and higher, it can be up to five.

But here's the strange part: the actual nominees are selected by an obscure and objective rating process!


According to the AMPAS's website, an Academy President-appointed chairperson forms a committee or committees, by inviting Academy members in good standing to be on such a thing. All who accept see the potential nominees, and apparently they see them theatrically and not by DVD screener. Then each committee member is given a secret ballot where they give a 6-10 number rating for the quality of each feature. 10 = excellent, 9 and 8 = good, 7 = fair, and 6 =poor. Those productions receiving an average score of 7.5 or more are then eligible for nomination. And I suppose it follows that if there are seven with scores of 7.5 and above, they take the highest five or three, depending on the sixteen or less rule.

Yowza.

Also, if there is only one, single film that qualifies by this method of the 7.5 rating, the recommendation is that a special, non-competitive award be given that year. If for some reason zero films qualify with at least a 7.5, the category is simply scrapped for that year.


I guess this is how those less mainstream foreign titles are making the cut, which is a plus, but it seems odd to have it based on something so subjective to such a relatively small number of Academy members to decide.

Once they are on the ballot, every Academy member may vote, just like Best Picture.

.
.

Attachments

   

As for the best film last year about animated features? That's easy: it's the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. If you haven't seen it yet, correct that immediately, if not sooner.

I did get to see The Illusionist tonight (in a theater that had a nice crowd for a cold Monday evening). It's quite lovely. Definitely has the spirit of Tati (who even has an unanimated cameo as himself, thanks to a theater in Edinburgh showing Mon Oncle). Bittersweet but gentle ode to the end of an era in live entertainment, brought to life in a painted style that is, itself, anachronistic in this day and age of advanced computer artistry (though they do employ some 3D modeling for some of the most complex sequences). Set in 1959 starting in France, it follows an aging magician who, thanks to the increasing popularity of Rock and Roll, is finding all of his Vaudeville style stages disappearing. A rapturously drunken Scotsman catches him performing and invites him to his small northern village. Once there, just with his slight of hand and personality, a young teenage girl who works in the small pub believes, in her naïveté, that he truly does possess some sort of powers. When he leaves the village, she follows (uninvited), and quickly they find themselves an unlikely duo, looking for work in Edinburgh, staying at a run-down hotel full of other old-style performers finding their services no longer needed: a clown, a ventriloquist, and a trio of Italian acrobats.

It's sweet, refreshingly leisurely and brimming with charm. As with Sylvain Chomet's previous feature The Triplets of Belleville, there is no real dialogue, just a scattering of comic grunts and mumbles in mostly indecipherable French or heavy Scottish accents. But you won't miss a single laugh or emotion.

So glad this one made the Oscar cut, which should cause that many more people to find it when it makes it to DVD down the line.

Attachments

   

How To Train Your Dragon was really, really good, but nothing can compete with Toy Story 3. I grew up with the franchise and seeing it end in such a way had a melancholy effect on me. Everything was incredible about it, and personally I think it's the best sequel to any movie ever. MY OPINION PEOPLE! And I have a very strong feeling it's taking home an Oscar

__________________
We have unfinished business

Toy Story!

In a night full of unsurprising results, perhaps the the least surprising of all was Best Picture nominee Toy Story 3 winning Best Animated Feature.

.
.
.

Attachments