In Contention

Tag: Best Animated Feature

  • Pixar on growing up, and playing for the big Oscar

    As Kris noted in our Oscar Guide for Best Animated Feature (and whatever the Annie Awards would have you believe), the category doesn’t promise much of a race this year — as has been the case for the last three years running, Pixar faces an obstacle-free path to the award, despite quality competition. And with two-thirds of your votes in our “should win” poll, most of you are okay with that.

    But the thrill of winning the ghetto category year after year has to get old, and as their rather aggressive campaign for “Toy Story 3” has made clear, Pixar has designs on more substantial recognition. They certainly aren’t afraid to say so in this New York Times profile of the studio by Melana Ryzik:

    The Pixar team would dearly love to win a best picture Oscar. “I would be overwhelmed with emotion, I think, that our peers recognized how we make our films, and that we use the same tools and that we take ourselves so seriously,” said Darla K. Anderson, a producer of “Toy Story 3” who has been with Pixar for 18 years. Their painstaking approach “has been with this ferocity of intensity,” she added, “to make a great movie, plain and simple — not a great animated film, but a great film.”

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Nomination week

    • In case you’ve just emerged from a coma, “The King’s Speech” led the Oscar nominations on Tuesday with 12 bids.

    • “The King’s Speech” was also the surprise winner at the Producers’ Guild Awards, drastically shaking up the Best Picture race.

    • In the wake of these developments, Kris adjusted his winner predictions accordingly.

    • In a special mid-week edition of Oscar Talk, Guy and indieWIRE’s Peter Knegt joined Kris and Anne to break down the nominations.

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  • Not one pundit?

    Thanks to reader Graysmith for pointing out this Hollywood Reporter piece, in which Tim Appelo poses the semi-annual small-beats-big argument about the Oscar nominees. To this end, he points to the Best Animated Feature category, where bijou art film “The Illusionist” beat out major money-spinners “Tangled” and “Despicable Me,” and gets this quote from understandably overjoyed Sony Pictures Classics chief Michael Barker:

    The Illusionist won against those big studio pictures. Not one pundit predicted it. This is animation done the old-fashioned way, without CGI, like Disney did.

    Ahem. And just so I’m not tooting my own horn, Steve Pond, Nathaniel Rogers and Sasha Stone, among others, saw it coming too. Make no mistake, Sylvain Chomet’s film was an underdog — and that narrative suits it nicely — but it didn’t exactly fall from the sky either. I’m really happy for you, Mr. Barker, and immalitchoofinish, but give us pundits some credit.

    [Image: Sony Pictures Classics]

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Animated Feature Film

    The animated feature field unfortunately fell one film short of the required 16 eligible contenders to expand the category to five nominees this year. As a result of this bewildering and arbitrary “rule,” some great work was left off the list in this, a pretty decent year for animation in general.

    Nevertheless, the animators proved once again that they value the craft and artistry above all else, as a delectable, modest yarn beat out some stiff commercial competition to join two heavyweights that already seemed destined for inclusion. The resulting trio, despite being limited in number, is therefore a vibrant snapshot of the year in animation and one of a few categories that is absolutely stacked this season.

    The nominees are:

    “How to Train Your Dragon” (Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois)
    “The Illusionist” (Sylvain Chomet)
    “Toy Story 3” (Lee Unkrich)

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  • THE LONG SHOT: A new year wishlist

    [Guy’s updated predictions here.]

    Okay, I won’t lie to you: I initially conceived this column in my head last week as a Christmas Eve wishlist, but then got too busy mulling wine and Christmas shopping in Dublin snowdrifts to actually write it.

    So a New Year’s Eve wishlist it is, then. Under either name, with the season currently in stasis until January’s Guild awards usher in the next phase of competition, here’s a list of ten open requests (or distant hopes) for Academy members currently hemming and hawing over their ballots.

    Go forth into the world: Okay, I’ve given up my fight for a foreign-language Best Picture contender for yet another year. And despite a banner year for the form, a documentary nominee ain’t happening either. But is it too much to ask the Academy to recognize that not all notable filmmaking happens within U.S. borders? We’re looking at the sad likelihood of 90% of the Best Picture race being given over to American productions, with the lone exception, “The King’s Speech,” about as authentically British as a “Mind the Gap” T-shirt. Wouldn’t “Another Year” or “Animal Kingdom” be slightly more interesting stamps in Oscar’s passport?

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘The Illusionist’ producer Bob Last

    It’s been over 10 months since I first reviewed Sylvain Chomet’s dazzling new animated feature “The Illusionist” at the Berlinale, and yet it only finds its way to US theaters tomorrow.

    A more appropriate film to unwrap on Christmas morning, however, you could not ask for.  Both a loving tribute to the creative legacy of French comedian Jacques Tati and an iridescent valentine to the city of Edinburgh, Chomet’s latest is finally a heartbreaker independent of such associations, covering loneliness, disillusionment and renewal in its delicate tale of an outmoded music-hall magician who takes a naïve waif under his wing.

    The crowning artistic glory of a robust year for animation, and among the best films of any stripe in 2010, “The Illusionist” has already taken Best Animated Feature honors from the New York Film Critics’ Circle, as well as a special award from the National Board of Review, a Golden Globe nod and a healthy haul of Annie Award nominations.  And in addition to Chomet himself, the man deservedly basking in the film’s success is its British producer Bob Last.

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  • ‘The Illusionist’ poster, featuring yours truly

    Hey, have you heard that I kinda like a little animated picture called “The Illusionist?” I may have mentioned it once or twice here. Well, Sony Pictures Classics has unveiled a new one-sheet for the film, and while I normally get quite critical about the design aspects of posters, this one has my full approval — mostly, I admit, for the fact that it gives me my first US poster quote. Interesting that they fillet out the “m” word from my February review, given the related debate Kris recently started, but after multiple viewings of the film, I stand by it. Full poster (courtesy of IMPAwards) after the jump. (Thanks to regular reader Speaking English for the heads-up.)

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Supporting ladies gather, London opens, Hardy goes to Gotham

    • Off the Carpet picked out the likeliest runners in a highly malleable Best Supporting Actress race.

    • We checked in on the Best Animated Feature race, where it seems we may be looking at a three-nominee field after all.

    • Away from the awards beat, the week’s big news was the casting of Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman venture.

    • The Academy formally revealed the list of 65 contenders for Best Foreign Language Film.

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  • Brit critics flip for ‘The Illusionist’

    Yeah, yeah, everybody loves “Toy Story 3.” Enchanting, amusing, heartbreaking… all those swell things. We hear it every year: Pixar shames every other Hollywood studio, transcends the limits of animation, etc, etc. Pencil in a second consecutive Best Picture nomination, and stick a fork in the Best Animated Feature race — for the fourth year running.

    Except it shouldn’t be that easy. Pixar may have expertly capped a beloved film franchise, but they haven’t made the best animated film of the year. That title, bar a late-year surprise, goes to Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist,” which knocked me out at the Berlinale in February and thoroughly sustained the magic on a second viewing this weekend.

    It occurred to me that the visually rapturous film, a beyond-the-grave collaboration with French comic master Jacques Tati, would form a neat (if very moist-eyed) double feature with the Pixar juggernaut: both take a melancholic approach to themes of growing up and letting go, but it’s the Chomet film I found more searching and soulful.

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  • A glimpse of ‘The Illusionist’

    The highlight of my Berlin trip last week, and handily my favorite film of this still-young year, Sylvain Chomet’s “The Illusionist” merits all the excruciating magic-based puns that critics will inevitably coin for it in 2010.

    To give you an idea of what I’m so excited about, the following Arte.tv video gives a taste of the rapturous animation on offer. (You’ll need to brush up on your French for the accompanying interview.) It’s one of those irritating self-starting affairs, so I’ve placed it after the cut.

    The Illusionist

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  • The making of a surprise

    The Secret of KellsI think it’s fairly inarguable that this year’s most unexpected Oscar nomination was the deserved Best Animated Feature nod for “The Secret of Kells,” the Irish festival creeper that some journos even admitted to not having heard of. If you had your money on that one, you have my respect in addition to your fortune.

    But behind every Oscar surprise that nobody sees coming lies a lot of planning and calculation: this Wall Street Journal piece looks at how fledgling distributor GKIDS stealthily orchestrated the film’s nomination.

    Specializing in high-end family fare, GKIDS was founded a year ago by Eric Backman, with the objective of landing an Oscar nomination within two years. He’s now one year ahead of schedule, thanks to a passive campaign relying on the film itself to generate buzz.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: BFCA awards, Guilds triple, Rohmer passes

    A still from Claire's Knee by Eric Rohmer• As you’ve just heard, “The Hurt Locker” emerged triumphant at the BFCA Critics’ Choice Awards.

    • Earlier this week, Éric Rohmer, sly giant of New Wave intellectualism, passed away at the age of 89.

    • That same day, “Avatar,” “The Hangover” and “Star Trek” were among the films nominated by the WGA.

    • The ASC slate continued the love for “Avatar,” but a semi-surprise nod for “The White Ribbon” got pundits’ attention.

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  • ‘Fox’ vs. ‘Up’

    UpI can’t help but wonder if there are some hard-working publicists out there getting in the ear of a few people, since we’ve had two pieces in as many days calling the race for Best Animated Feature a potential upset waiting to happen.

    Anyway, first, at The New York Times, Brooks Barnes uses LAFCA and NYFCC wins for Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” over Pixar’s “Up” as a basis for determining the race is bending in the Roald Dahl adaptation’s favor.  Sasha Stone notes the mantra, however: critics don’t vote for Oscars.  Barnes then goes on publish fluffy quotes from vested interests that don’t really make the case one way or the other.

    Meanwhile, at The Hufington Post, Sam Wasson notes that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” manged to force Anderson “out of his world of decadence and ushered him toward a more economical, barebones approach to story.”  Which could go a long way for him with the Academy, Wasson seems to suggest, since his recent work has been a bit inaccessible and it’s been almost a decade since the writer/director was recognized by the organization.

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  • Copycat alert: Globes switch to five animated nominees

    UpAs with the PGA’s switch to 10 Best Picture nominees, the ‘Simon Says’ power of the Academy continues to prove irresistible. Shortly after definite confirmation that the Oscars will be expanding the Best Animated Feature category from three nominees to five, comes news that the Golden Globes are following suit:

    Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association voted last week to expand this year’s number of nominations for Best Animated Feature to five.

    The amended rule now reads: Eligible films must be feature-length (70 minutes or longer) with no more than 25% live action. If less than eight animated films qualify, the award will not be given, in which case the films would be eligible for Best Picture. If less than twelve animated films qualify, the category will be limited to three nominations per year.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Reflections, early predix, animated contenders

    Coraline• Kris boldly offered some early winner predictions … I (and you) followed.

    • AMPAS unveiled the official list of 20 animated feature contenders, guaranteeing five eventual nominees.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column picked through the leading Best Supporting Actor contenders.

    • In The Long Shot, we reflected on a handful of the Academy’s better moves this past decade.

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  • Strike that, make it 20 — AMPAS announces list of animated feature contenders

    Alvin and the Chipmunks: The SqueakquelJust moments after I posted about the animated feature Oscar race pushing 18 entrants, the Academy goes and corrects me by releasing the full slate, including Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” (I have to think way too hard about how to spell that damn title) and “The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer,” bringing the total up to 20 titles in competition and the very real possibility that five nominees will make the cut.

    The full list of qualifying titles (which you can also find in our Contenders section):

    “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 and Max”
    “The Missing Lynx”
    “Monsters vs. Aliens”
    “9”
    “Planet 51”
    “Ponyo”
    “The Princess and the Frog”
    “The Secret of Kells”
    “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”
    “A Town Called Panic”
    “Up”