Annie Nominations Embrace "Coco" and "The Breadwinner"

by Nathaniel R

Coco and The Breadwinner are the top competitors for the Annies (and maybe the Oscars)

The Annie Awards first began handing out prizes in 1992 but weren't quite on a calendar year yet with Beauty and The Beast, a 1991 film, honored in that inaugural year. They've since aligned themselves to the calendar and last year their top prize went to Zootopia, which also took the Oscar. Coco leads their nominations for 2017 and also presumably leads the Oscar race with The Breadwinner the widely admired darkhorse at both. Presumably again as we won't know what the Oscar nominations are until January 23rd. 

Both of the leaders are powerfully rooted in cultural specificity (Mexico and Afghanistan respectively) and are, in their own way, tearjerkers, rather than the more traditionally glib action comedies that tend to be the bread and butter of the animated film world... at least in America.

We'd love to raise a glass to the nominations for the streaming series Trollhunters which we're huge fans of but we'd rather throw the contents of that glass inb Annie's face for preferencing Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3 over the insanity of The Lego Batman Movie. If you wanted to honor a sequel, that's really the way you wanna go? The complete list of nominees and a few more comments, cheers, and jeers are after the jump...

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Annie Awards Results. It's Zootopia vs Kubo for the Oscar

The Annie Awards have been happening for 44 years but after some bumpy years in which their loyalties to specific studios were questions, they seemed to have worked things out and their profile is higher each year. Yesterday's even at the UCLA's Royce Hall was a big night for Disney which took 10 prizes. Zootopia continued its dominance by taking the top prize.

Though we should quickly note that Kubo and the Two Strings is still a possible spoiler at the Oscars and took home a few Annies itself. As Kris Tapley recently noted, there is momentum for finally honoring Laika who have never missed a nomination in the Animated Feature category but have yet to win it. While I am in the minority that thinks Kubo is the company's weakest film to date (it's gorgeous, don't misunderstand -- I just think both the episodic plot and the voice work is weaker than in their other films) they're also rapidly outdoing Pixar who have fallen into repetition and sequelizing.

The winners with commentary are after the jump...

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Annie Award Nominations: Kubo, Zootopia, The Red Turtle...

Nominations for the 44th annual Annie Awards have been announced. Zootopia leads with 11 nominations with Laika's Kubo and the Two Strings just behind with 10 nominations. Because the Annies have two separate feature categories (the regular one plus an "indie" category which basically means "foreign") you can probably safely assume that the eventual Oscar lineup will be some mishmash between the two.

nominees and more after the jump...

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Annie Awards Give Love to Pixar (and "Judy" in The Revenant!)

The Annie Awards, now in their 43rd year, seemed to have stabilized after their controversial laden years when people felt they were to beholden to Dreamworks Animation (am I remembering this correctly?) within their voting ranks. But their nominations often still feel quite random as in voice acting where Richard Kind was shut out for "bing bong" in Inside Out. Or Tom Noonan, who voices almost every character in Anomalisa, being ignored. Or their character design and visual effects nominations sometimes specifying individual scenes or categories and sometimes just labelled "all". And the varying number of nominations per category.

In short: their executive body really needs to sharpen up their rules so they feel more respectable / consistent.

But it was a good morning for Pixar since Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur dominated with 14 and 10 nods respectively. As for their competition for Oscar gold, good showings for Anomalisa, Shaun the Sheep and Peanuts with 5 nominations each. The low profile but reportedly excellent Brazilian feature Boy and the World received 3 nominations.

Even some live action films get honored by the Annies since most films get computer animated assists these days so... what's that? The Revenant was nominated? See more after the jump...

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