Colman Domingo, Taiki Waititi, and Idris Elba give starpower to the Best Animated Short Oscar race

by Nathaniel R

Colman Domingo in "New Moon" based on one of his plays

This year's Best Animated Short Oscar finalists come from about a dozen countries and feature a pleasing variety of animation strategies. The shorts feature talking animals, naturally, as well as plenty of heightened surreal adventures. All of this is to be expected in this always intriguing category (provided you are able to find the films!).  Less expected: this year the race has more than a little star power via voice casts. We'll review all the films here as we screen them.

Read on for brief run downs of the finalists and if and where you can watch the films right now (if you can). Links go to official sites if we could find them...

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27 Films Eligible for Best Animated Feature for the 95th Oscars

by Nathaniel R

APOLLO 10 1/2: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD

Better late the never the Academy has finally released the names of the eligible lists in their three specialty movie categories (Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Animated Feature). We've already discussed the Best International Feature lists which we've known for some time, so let's talk animation.

There will be 5 nominees this year (as per usual since the threshold to make that happen is so low). Read on for the list of eligible titles and where you can watch the films. Half of the films are easily accessible right now...

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AFI Fest: Guillermo Del Toro dazzles with his take on “Pinocchio”

by Eurocheese

One of the most exciting debuts of the festival was Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. The first thing that stands out about his adaptation, unsurprisingly, is the stunning visuals. Imagine a puppet show with a lush background where frames are so beautiful, singled out shots could easily serve as postcards. Well known characters such as the cricket (given the name Sebastian here) and the Blue Fairy mix deep blues with the monsters that always seem to lurk in Del Toro’s imagination. Think of it this way: If you crossed the animals from Isle of Dogs with the radiance of a stained-glass window, you’d get images like this. 

Del Toro came to present the film and spoke to having total control over the project, not allowing studio notes to mess with his vision (he used stronger language than "mess with")...

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Chart Updates: Best Animated & Documentary Features

by Nathaniel R

"All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" won Venice, but nothing is ever locked for the Documentary nominations as they pass over many frontrunners.

Happy weekend, Oscar fantastics. Figured it was time to finally put up the Documentary Feature chart now that we know several of the potential biggies. How do we suddenly know them given that documentaries arrive each and every week with little indication of whether they'll be Emmy or Oscar fodder? The answer is three key buzz-boosting factors...

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"Holy Spider" and other interesting updates to Best International Feature Film

by Nathaniel R

"Holy Spider" will be released in the US, dates TBA

Lots to tell you about today in the Best International Feature Film race. We are just six days away from the deadline for countries to submit their representative film for consideration at the upcoming Oscars but we know one country that won't be submitting and that's Russia since they're boycotting us given which side we fall on in their war on Ukraine.

We generally know most of the list before that deadline due to press releases from all around the world. But not all. There are usually about 90ish entries and we have 70 announced thus far. You might remember that last year the Academy chucked their (very good and transparent) tradition of releasing the full official list of submissions in early October. If they continue that this year we won't have exact counts for awhile which is quite sad since those films need all the attention they can get and they only have a short window to get that since the all but 10 of them will be culled on December 21st when the shortlist is announced. What's more we thrive on statistics and factoids when getting obsessed with this niche window into global cinema and you cant do that without the exact list. ANYWAY, sorry about all the minutae. There are quite a few interesting new submissions / factoids to share with you after the jump...

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