Best Animated Feature Contenders: "Ne Zha"

by Tim

Thus far in this round-up of 2019's animated features, we've been focusing on Oscar hopefuls and the more artsy side of animation. This week's subject, Ne Zha, is neither of those things, but in its own way, this is still as significant as any other film we've looked at. This is a blockbuster of the first order: the second-highest-grossing Chinese film in history (and the second-highest-grossing film made in a language other than English), with the highest single-territory gross for any animated film ever made. And even though stories about the Chinese box office always have to come with an asterisk attached (those numbers are often cooked a bit, especially when records are in play), that is by any means enough of a big deal that it's more than a little frustrating that essentially nobody in the United States has heard about any of this.

Ne Zha is a film the Chinese animation industry has been working towards for a long time. Along with the rest of Chinese cinema, animation has spent most of the last decade looking to beat Hollywood at its own game, providing the kind of opulent spectacle that for a long time was the exclusive domain of big-budget American filmmaking...

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LAST CALL - Do you want a copy of "The Art of Missing Link"?

by Nathaniel R

When Missing Link suffered an ignoble fate at the box office this past spring we worried a bit about its Oscar chances. Not too much mind you, since it's still a welcome visual respite from the all sequels / all CGI world of the major studios. So naturally we've been delighted to share our interview with the director and to see the movie blossom again during precursor season with nominations and citations left and right as it aims for a Best Animated Feature nomination (as well it should).

To celebrate, A CONTEST! Laika has gifted us with some copies of "The Art of Missing Link" and we're passing them out to those lucky souls among you who win. To enter email us with the following...

1. SUBJECT LINE: "Missing Link" 
2. BODY: Your own very short "Dear Sir" letter telling us anything you want to about why you love Laika or Missing Link or coffee table books or anything really.  
3. FROM: Don't forget to include your name and mailing address so we can send you the book if you win! 

Enter by tomorrow morning - actually do it now. Winners will be announced very soon.

Animated Feature Contenders: "This Magnificent Cake!"

by Tim

With no more new animated releases coming up for a while, this round-up is changing focus: we'll spend the next few weeks looking at some of the more noteworthy titles eligible for the Best Animated Feature Oscar this year. And "feature" barely feels like the right word to describe the 44-minute This Magnificent Cake!, but it just makes it according to the Academy's rules (which state that a feature is more than 40 minutes long).

So it might make it to "feature" on a technicality, but it's unquestionably noteworthy. This is the longest collaboration to date from Belgian directors Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels, who have made a cottage industry over the last decade with some of the most distinctive-looking films in the world. Not a claim to make lightly, but it's hard to come up with any other way of putting it. The duo's characteristic style is to fashion puppets out of wool and other craft material, and then give them life through stop-motion animation; it's basically what you'd get if you were told to make a movie using only the things you could find in a fabric store...

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It's a very tight race for this year's Annie Awards

by Nathaniel R

Oops. So much was happening this week we completely neglected the Annie nominations. The ceremony will be held on January 25th. There's no clear frontrunner this year with Missing Link and Frozen 2 tied for the most nominations. Their nearest competitors are not far behind. In other words Klaus, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World , I Lost My Body, and Toy Story 4 were also clearly well liked enough to win big. That's 6 features and when it comes time for the Oscar nominations there can be only 5. We can't discount the possibility that another non-American film besides I Lost My Body might prove a darkhouse spoiler with the Academy's animation branch which has proven open to international films (for nominations if not wins) and isn't always keen on blockbuster sequels.  We should also keep a close eye on Japan's International Feature Oscar submission Weathering With You which got some love here at the Annies, too.

The complete list of nominations and a few comments after the jump...

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"Klaus" is (half) a masterpiece...

Our resident animation expert will be looking at several of the movies vying for a nomination in Best Animated Feature. First up, a Christmas movie.

by Tim Brayton

The new animated feature Klaus is being pulled in a lot of directions. It's the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos, a former Disney animator who splits time between Hollywood projects (as screenwriter, he created the Despicable Me franchise) and nurturing his own company, SPA Studios, based in his hometown of Madrid. It's also the first animated feature produced by Netflix, which has been making sure to emphasize that fact in all of its marketing efforts. And it's not just any old Netflix production: this is part of the streaming service's increasingly deep bench of Christmas-themed movies.

It's hard not to think about this while one is watching the movie. Depending on how you approach it, Klaus is either a masterpiece, or a frankly irritating collection of tin-eared dialogue, odd casting choices, and dated clichés of kids' movie screenwriting...

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