Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Nominees

Since I've been in meetings all day I'm late to the party, nevertheless:

The Oscar nominees for animated feature this year reflect shifts in an art form that has become an increasingly crucial part of the movie business.

There is the return of an industry giant, Walt Disney Animation Studios, which saw its blockbuster musical "Frozen" collect nominations both for animated feature and original song; the validation of a younger studio player, Los Angeles and Paris-based Illumination Entertainment, which secured its first Oscar nominations for "Despicable Me 2" and that movie's original song, "Happy"; the omission of a category stalwart, Pixar Animation, which was passed over for its prequel "Monsters University"; and the end of an august career, that of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who was nominated for what he has said will be his final film, "The Wind Rises."

"The Croods," the DreamWorks Animation caveman comedy, and "Ernest & Celestine," the hand-drawn French-Belgian adaptation from independent distributor GKIDS, rounded out the category. ...

Since I've got no clue which of the above will win, I'll limit myself to one prediction: Frozen will pick up at least one Oscar, either for song or best animated feature.

As for the rest, may the best .... or most politically connected .... feature win. I'm so old I remember when nobody cared whether an animated feature got ANY nominations. Animation was a sleepy, irrelevant backwater that Hollywood ignored.

Oh yeah. Here's a list of all the nominees.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Frozen will not win Best song Steve. That award is going to Mandela for political reason only. And Frozen possibly won't win for Best Animated Feature over Miyazaki. It's sad cause Walt Disney Animation Studios will not win this award for atleast the rest of this decade! HttyD2 will win for 2014 with ease, while Pixar will win the next in 2015 for either Inside Out/The Good Dinosaur & 2016 for Finding Dory. With Moana 7 years away like you said & no official annoucment on Giants yet, Disney will not win this oscar til atleast the 2020s. ANd thats a BIG maybe.

Grant said...

frozen songs were awful. The film could have been much better without any of them. HTTYD2 won't win anything--I've seen it, it's another dream works cartoon. And that Japanese cartoon was interesting, but not the best animated film of the year. All of them were better than Monsters, U. though

Steve Hulett said...

Never under-estimate Academy politics.

And never under-estimate my second-to-none ability to be wrong.

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