Review: “Wildwood” is the stop-motion fantasy epic LAIKA has been working toward all along

by Cláudio Alves

The history of Laika is one of classic nepotism by way of Maecenas-like patronage to the arts. It’s the story of how Nike’s owner, Phil Knight, took the Will Vinton Studios from their namesake and presented it to his son, Travis, who was originally one of Vinton’s animators. Some see this as a coup, others as the way studios are always formed in good ol’ Tinsel Town. Not that Laika has its headquarters anywhere near Hollywood. Instead, they’re up in Oregon, in the Portland metropolitan area, pushing out some of the most mind-boggling works of stop-motion feature animation the world has seen for the best part of the last twenty years. There’s a lot of creative freedom and technical innovation when profit isn’t a chief concern for the studio head.

It started with Selick’s Coraline, an early magnum opus, and then came the terrific ParaNorman by Fell and Butler. Annable and Stacchi’s The Boxtrolls felt, in some ways, like a step back, but, looking back, it was more like the studio taking a deep breath before releasing their most ambitious project yet into the world. With Kubo and the Two Strings, Travis Knight became a feature director in his own right, delivering a Japanese folklore-inspired fantasy adventure whose ideas on storytelling are still some of the studio’s most complex conceptual gambits. Missing Link saw Butler return and a more modest play, because, once more, a greater epic was on the horizon, more than a decade in the making. In some ways, it has all led to this, to Wildwood…

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First Predictions: Best Animated Feature

by Nathaniel R

JIM QUEEN is a French gay adult animated comedy about a virus that turns gay men into heterosexuals. It premiered at Cannes.

Every year I hope to become more of a voracious viewer of animated films. There's so much happening around the world in animation but international animation (beyond some films from Japan) rarely hits US movie theaters or stays for a long enough time to build a fanbase. The animation year started out unexpectedly strong with more animated films premiering at Cannes than is usually the case. And Annecy, the annual summer animation festival, is just around the corner -- we'll be reviewing a few titles from Annecy for the very first time -- though sadly we're not travelling TO the festival but responding to screeners. While we would love for the Best Animated Feature race to be a truly competitive international free-for-all each year, the stats suggest that it's always Disney's to lose. More accurately it's always Disney/Pixar's to lose (or at least it was until the 2020s) even if the selected nominees each year paint a broader picture of the artform...

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Oscar Predix: Which Animated Films Should We Watch Out For?

by Nathaniel R

Can ZOOTOPIA 2 overcome the Academy's resistance to animated sequels?

It's often hard to know from a distance whether a year will be competitive in Best Animated Feature or not. It isn't always based on the quality of the eligibility pool. The default situation is that the early hyped Disney or Disney/Pixar stays dominant from first buzz to Oscar night, whether there's week or strong competition (Coco  and Toy Story 4, respectively, being good examples) though occassionally the Mouse House competitor that looks strongest from a distance concedes quickly to a less hyped sibling that proves more popular (Luca to Encanto or Moana to Zootopia). But in a solid amount of years the race eventually does get competitive albeit only between two films.What usually happens is that the original frontrunner manages to stave off an unexpectedly strong or deserving competition (Pinocchio vs Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Soul vs Wolfwalkers). In the past two years, though, we've had a strong frontrunner that lost its strangehold on "Best" prizes when an international title soared in the 11th hour (Boy and the Heron vs Into the Spider-Verse and, even more dramatically, Flow vs Wild Robot). On rare occassions the race gets ultra competitive wherein three or more nominees feel possible (remember 2012?) only for the Academy to default to Pixar again. What kind of year will the 98th Academy Awards bring? 

This year the crystal ball looks quite cloudy...

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The First Oscar Eligibility Lists are Here!

by Cláudio Alves

PIECE BY PIECE is the only film competing in both the ANIMATED and DOCUMENTARY Oscar races.

At long last, AMPAS has started divulging its eligibility lists for the 97th Academy Awards. As is usual, the first categories to be announced are the special feature races – Animated, Documentary, and International Film (click on each category to see their prediction pages). This year, 31 cartoons vie for the Oscar, while 167 docs form the non-fiction race. In Best International Feature Film, this year has 85 official submissions. This state of affairs differs from some of the earlier reports that pointed toward 89 films contending, but we're used to many disqualifications. It's a steep decline from the past few years, and it's the first time since 2018 that the number of total submissions is below 90. We have to go back to 2015, with 82 nations competing, to find a year with even fewer films in contention.

You can read more about such trivia in Nathaniel's extensive two-part overview of the Best International Film race. Still, I added some additional trivia for all three categories in this write-up. Find out more after the jump…

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April Foolish Predictions: What will happen in 'Toon Town'?

by Nathaniel R

Will the new emotions in "Inside Out 2" impress voters?

Last season, we finally saw another hand drawn film take the Best Animated Feature Oscar with The Boy and the Heron emerging triumphant. Will we have another rarity this year or will Oscar voters return to their Pixar and/or American CG habits? Each year we root for the underdogs in this category since great studios like Laika and Cartoon Saloon have yet to take home an Oscar. Sadly, neither of those companies will have a film ready this year. Still, we'll dream that it will prove a truly competitive year no matter what emerges. That always makes it more exciting.

Herewith our April Foolish predictions...

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