The 2013 Best Animated Short Oscar nominees

Mickey Mouse is up for his first gold in agesTim here. Having already looked at the newly-minted Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees, let's turn for a little bit towards that category's older, smaller sibling, Best Short Subject - Animated. We already briefly discussed these films back when the 10-title shortlist was announced, but now that it has been whittled down to five, let's take a more in-depth look at each of them.

Feral (Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden)
For solely aesthetic purposes, this would be my favorite of the nominees. It's a simple enough story: a boy raised by wolves is brought back to civilization and has a hard time of it. The greatness lies in the marriage of that scenario with rough impressionistic images, some which look like extra-bleak newspaper comics, some which look like somebody was trying a sheet of paper apart using a pencil.

It's the most distinctive of the five by far, looking handcrafted because it so emphatically is: some of the images are drawn on computer, some are hand-painted, but they all have a desperate crudeness that lacks the polish of most animation, and this couldn't be a better fit for the material. It's available to rent for $1 on Vimeo.

Mickey Mouse, friendly witches, and more below the jump

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The Best Animated Feature 2013 nominees

It's Tim, wishing everybody a Happy Nomination Day! Obviously, the above-the-line categories hog most of our attention on this holiest of holy days (and they should – they’re kind of amazing this year), but there are 20 whole categories that have nothing to do with acting. And 19 of those don’t involve gawking at the hypnotically amateurish trailer for Alone Yet Not Alone.

So with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of those other categories, and since I’m the resident animation guy, I assume it’s no surprise that I’m heading straight for Best Animated Feature. A race that is already kind of shocking because of an omission that, if not quite Tom Hanks/Emma Thompson scale in its “my God, did they really snub…” outrageousness, still pulled a pretty big gasp out of me this morning. I refer to the absence of Monsters University, only the second eligible Pixar film to ever miss out on a nod since the category’s creation in 2001. [more...]

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I Dream of Arendelle

Last night, surely prompted by Frozen's Golden Globe win and upcoming Oscar run, I dreamt that I discovered a magical threat to Arendelle. I helped Queen Elsa find enemy spies who were watching her every move through carefully planted glittery baubles placed around the kingdom. Since Disney princesses veritable sweat glittery knickknacks, you can imagine how difficult the foreign objects were to discover and destroy. [more...]

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Wintry Hit Musicals and Anna Kendrick To The Rescue!

This time last year the instant if much-hated hit Les Misérables (2012) was topping Billboard's Top 100 Albums chart, powered largely by Anne Hathaway's belting through hacking fits from freezing pneumonia (or whatever she died of - she certainly wasn't dressed for the snow!). Fast forward one exact year: the instant and much-loved hit Frozen is topping Billboard's Top 100 Albums chart and at the same time it's crossing an incredible $300 million at the box office. That's quite a feat. No Disney toon has topped Billboard since Pocahontas 18 years ago and no Disney toon (sans Pixar) has crossed that box office threshold since The Lion King (1994)... though if you adjust for inflation it's closer to a Beauty & The Beast (1991) level of audience rapture. But still... that's quite a lot of rapturizing!

Fast forward to Christmas/Early January next year. Will it be Annie or Into the Woods moving the most discs/downloads? Both of them are opening for Christmas but -- happy news -- they're not the only movie musicals hitting us in 2014...

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Cartoons for a cold winter's night

Tim here. With a huge portion of the United States either under a heavy cover of snow, or about to become that way, it’s been hard to think about anything else but the deepest, coldest kind of winter. And with Frozen in a shockingly good place to win the weekend box office (in its sixth weekend!), even the movies themselves seem in on the act.

So I figured, why not give in? Frozen reminds us, after all, that wintry conditions can make for some beautiful cinema in the hands of the right artists. Think of Roger Deakins’ unmatchable cinematography in Fargo, or the vivid frozen hell of The Shining. [more...]

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