Welcome to the new and current Academy Awards. Sure, there are your dramas and your foreign films, but this year, animation is where the action is. Twenty animated films from this lackluster year of film have been chosen and submitted to the Academy for consideration.
These twenty films cover all aspects of animation, going from a couple of chipmunks in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, to a lonely old man who somehow gets his house completely tied to balloons, allowing it to go Up!. Thanks to the twenty films being submitted, you might look out for the entire category during the Oscar race to up the ante to 5 instead of the measly 3 choices it used to have. By rules created by the Academy, if a certain category of film has more than 16 choices submitted, there could be 5 nominated for that golden statue; if it’s less than that, you’re stuck with 3 nominations.
Now, the Academy has many choices to mull over. Depending on how it all goes, we might end up seeing a ragdoll living in a post-apocalyptic world with a number as a name stomping out the competition, while a “Bah Humbug” echoes from the back of the Kodak Theatre. Stay tuned to see what happens.
Here’s the list, check to see if your favorites made the cut:
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Astro Boy
Battle for Terra
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Disney’s A Christmas Carol
The Dolphin — Story of a Dreamer
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Mary & Max
The Missing Lynx
Monsters vs. Aliens
Planet 51
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
A Town Called Panic
Up
Nominations will be announced on February 2nd.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Wait, so were nineteen nominated or were twenty nominated and you accidentally left out a movie on the list?
November 12th, 2009 at 5:37 am
I’m placing my bets:
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Up (W).
Or maybe not.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Why are nominations being announced now? I thought the Oscar nomination was in January, for films released between Jan 1 – Dec 25 of the previous year.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Sorry, other movie up for submission is 9. It’s such a small movie title, no wonder it got lost in the shuffle
November 12th, 2009 at 7:43 am
I agree with Ignacio. There is an outside chance The Princess and the Frog wins just for being old school, but Up was certainly better received than anything else on the list, and I don’t expect P&F to exceed it.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:08 am
And you are right, these are only the contenders that could possibly become the nominees in February. All of these films either been released after January 1, 2009 or will soon be before hitting the deadline of midnight on December 31st.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I believe it’s in the Oscar bylaws that all Pixar movies get nominated automatically – it’s why they only do one a year. John Lasseter gets to choose the second nominee himself (as part of his agreement to take over Disney), so Ponyo will get the nod.
Fantastic Mr. Fox stands a fair chance based solely on its director, Wes Anderson, and Coraline for its writer, Neil Gaiman.
Princess and the Frog is also a likely candidate, but it needs to be a hit. Disney does not have the same lock on a nom as Pixar does.
Of this list, I think Meatballs stands a chance – it had a solid plot and did well in the theaters. 9 went over everyone’s head.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Well, I obviously haven’t seen Mr. Fox or Princess & the Frog yet (though I look forward to them both)… But Up was easily the best movie I saw all year. I didn’t love it quite as much as I did Wall*E, or The Incredibles for that matter, but I still loved it. A LOT.
I know it’s getting cliched to honor Pixar every time out, but honestly… I can’t imagine anything beating it. I’d like to see Up get a Best Picture nod, and with the expanded field now it just might get that nomination that Wall*E didn’t get last year (unless there’s some dumb rule about not being elgible for both catagories?).
I should add that I loved Coraline too… Wonderful children’s book, wonderful movie. Not quite as good as Up, but damned close.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I can imagine an animated film making it into the best pic list (Beauty and the beast did it, no?) but it’ll be twice as hard now that there’s an Animated category. Harder for people to see the film moving up to “real” film status.
Even if it did, I dobt it’d win, just as I don’t expect to see a comedy or a scifi film getting it. To most people, Great Film means drama. LOTR was a costume epic in most people’s eyes, and not a fantasy film.
December 27th, 2010 at 2:21 am
I was thinking of starting something similar on my free blogger blog, it’s still recently new but I enjoy my time writing about similar stuff, or totally general stuff about me and my personal life.. what do you think a good choice for hosting would be?