Friday, November 03, 2006

Animation Oscars

Over at the Risky Biz blog, Anne Thompson offers up her opinions on which films will be nominated for the Best Animated Feature oscar. There will possibly be five nominees this time, rather than three, due to the high number of releases this year. That will make it tougher for any one film to garner votes.

It's a pretty safe bet that Cars and Ice Age 2 will get nominations (though Thompson doesn't include Ice Age 2 in her nominees), but the others are not so certain. I would think that Flushed Away, Monster House, Happy Feet, Over the Hedge and Open Season are in the running. A Scanner Darkly has a good shot at a nomination for being so different from everything else released this year. Curious George stands a chance based on name recognition and holding up the banner for drawn animation.

Each of the above films has its fans, but I don't think there's a consensus in the industry or in the audience as to what film should win.

4 comments:

Steve Schnier said...

On the other hand, considering all the negative criticism of these films that I've read on the animation threads - do you really think these movies are DESERVING of Oscars?

I mean, should a medeocre film be nominated for (or win) an Oscar, just because it's animated?

When I read the comment, "'_________' isn't so bad..." - that's hardly the criteria for Oscar-worthiness.

Thad said...

Why bother having the category this year? To paraphrase Daffy...

Just give Pixar the stupid trophy so we can all go home!

THAD

Anonymous said...

Pixar hasn't won the Oscar the past couple of times they were nominated.

I think Steve is right about giving out the Oscar. The only problem is that the same is true for the live-action films. So far this year, I can't think of one film deserving of a Best Picture nomination.

As for the animation, another "drawn" film is A Scanner Darkly. The computer made it easier than copying under an Oxberry, but it still had to be drawn to be rotoscoped, unless I don't understand something about Bob Sabiston's technique. This film is also the only one that let us use our own imaginations into the well-told story. That's enough to get my vote from the choices provided.

Anonymous said...

I have a feeling that Pixar ain't gonna get the Oscar this year. I just saw Flushed Away over the weekend and thought it a much better film than Cars ... in fact better than most of the other nominations. I haven't seen Scanner Darkly yet, though.