This year's animated feature race still feels like a mystery: Brave wasn't beloved enough to slide right into Pixar winner position; Frankenweenie wasn't popular enough despite its fun aesthetic achievements; ParaNorman was a hit but not a huge one; Madagascar 3 was very well reviewed and a huge hit but the third in a series Oscar hasn't cared for; and so on.
With 21 eligible features this year we'll have five nominees and unless either Rise of the Guardians or Wreck It Ralph (just opened) are across the board sensations, we'll have a real race.
21 ELIGIBLE FEATURES
- Adventures in Zambezia
- Brave
- Delhi Safari
- Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
- Frankenweenie
- From Up on Poppy Hill
- Hey Krishna
- Hotel Transylvania
- Ice Age Continental Drift
- A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman
- Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
- The Mystical Laws
- The Painting
- ParaNorman
- The Pirates! Band of Misfits
- The Rabbi's Cat
- Rise of the Guardians
- Secret of the Wings
- Walter & Tandoori's Christmas
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Zarafa
Three of the foreign films eligible for Animated Feature
The eligibility list includes several ubiquitous big budget blockbusters, familiar would be blockbusters that didn't quite take off, indies that are aspiring towards the same aesthetics as most animated blockbusters (i.e. comedies with funny animals), shameless commercials for merchandise (Secret of the Wings) and a handful of foreign curiousities like the gorgeous looking Le Tableau from Belgium and the latest from Studio Ghibli, the drama From Up on Poppy Hill (trailer below)
57 ELIGIBLE SHORT FILMS
Here are the 57 Semi-Finalists for Oscar's animated short race... These will be narrowed down again to a finalist list before the actual nominations in January. But congratulations to all of these filmmakers because even making it this far is quite the accomplishment.
- 7596 Frames (directed by Martin Georgiev)
- Adam and Dog (directed by Minkyu Lee)
- Amazonia (directed by Sam Chen)
- Being Bradford Dillman (directed by Emma Birch)
- Belly (directed by Julia Pott)
- Body Memory (directed by Ülo Pikkov)
- Bydlo (directed by Patrick Bouchard)
- Cadaver (directed by Jonah D. Ansell)
- Chase (directed by Tomas Vergara)
- Combustible (directed by Katsuhiro Otomo)
- Daffy’s Rhapsody (directed by Matthew O’Callaghan)
- Dell’ Ammazzare Il Maiale (Killing the Pig) (directed by Simone Massi)
- Dripped (directed by Leo Verriere)
- The Eagleman Stag (directed by Michael Please)
- Edmond Was a Donkey (directed by Franck Dion)
- The Fall of the House of Usher (directed by Raul Garcia)
- Fear of Flying (directed by Conor Finnegan)
- Fresh Guacamole (directed by PES)
- The Game
- The Gruffalo’s Child (directed by Johannes Weiland and Uwe Heidschoetter) SEQUEL TO THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT "THE GRUFFALO"
- Head Over Heels (directed by Timothy Reckart)
- Here and the Great Elsewhere (directed by Michele Lemieux)
- House of Monsters (directed by Dawn Brown)
- The Hybrid Union (directed by Serguei Kouchnerov)
- I Hate You, Red Light (directed by J.M. Walter and M.R. Horhager)
- I Saw Mice Burying a Cat (directed by Dmitri Geller)
- It’s Such a Beautiful Day (directed by Don Hertzfeldt)
- Junkyard (directed by Hisko Hulsing)
- Kara (directed by David Cage)
- Kali the Little Vampire (directed by Regina Pessoa) TRAILER BELOW
- Kubla Khan (directed by Joan Gratz)
- La Détente (directed by Pierre Ducos and Bertrand Bey)
- The Last Bus (directed by Martin Snopek and Ivana Laucikova)
- Lost and Found (directed by Joan Gratz)
- Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ (directed by David Silverman)
- The Maker (directed by Christopher Kezelos)
- The Making of Longbird (directed by Will Anderson)
- The Missing Key (directed by Jonathan Nix)
- Oh Willy… (directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels) TRAILER...
- Overcast (directed by James Lancett and Sean Weston)
- Paperman (directed by John Kahrs)
- Pepe & Lucas (Brainzoo Studios)
- Pasteurized (directed by Nicolas Villareal)
- The Pub (directed by Jospeh Pierce)
- Sammy
- Shift (directed by Daniel Trenkle)
- Reflexion (directed by Yoshimichi Tamura & Fabrice Senia)
- Slow Derek (directed by Dan Ojari)
- The Story of Pines (directed by Musa Brooker) FULL FILM BELOW
- The Tale of a String
- Traces (directed by Scott Stark)
- Tram (directed by Michaela Pavlatova)
- Wiggle Room (directed by Joe Schenkenberg)
- The Wind Girl (La Nina de Viento) (directed by Nicolas Lara)
- Wolf Dog Tales (directed by Bernadine Santistevan
- Zeinek Gehiago Iraun (Who Lasts Longer) (directed by Gregorio Muro)
We'll investigate further as time allows...
Which toons are you excited about?