The Oscar Eligibility List for Best Animated Feature

The 16 official submissions for the Best Animated Feature Oscar have been revealed. The finalists include expected high-profile entries like Pixar's Inside Out and the still-to-come festival darling Anomalisa, and some you are maybe hearing about for the first time. Here's the list:

• Anomalisa (US)
• The Boy And The Beast (Japan)
• Boy And The World (Brazil)
• The Good Dinosaur (US)
• Home (US)
• Hotel Transylvania 2 (US)
• Inside Out (US)
• Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (Multinational)
• The Laws Of The Universe – Part 0 (Japan)
• Minions (US)
• Moomins On The Riviera (Finland)
• The Peanuts Movie (US)
• Regular Show: The Movie (US)
• Shaun The Sheep Movie (UK)
• The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water (US)
• When Marnie Was There (Japan)

After racking up Pixar's second highest domestic gross, Inside Out is the early frontrunner. Its potential is also boosted by its Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay prospects, and it has the blend of brains and heart that have lead Pixar to more wins in the category than any other studio. There is also The Good Dinosaur coming for Thanksgiving and hoping to celebrate Pixar's first dual release year with dual nominations.

Pixar isn't alone in bringing a high pedigree. Anomalisa stands to benefit from its uniqueness among the pack: already boasting the Academy-approved pedigree of Charlie Kaufman, it's also a rare entry intended squarely at adults. GKIDS, who have found favor in this category with lovely low profile films, have three eligible candidates, including Studio Ghibli's When Marnie Was There. Will Blue Sky's The Peanuts Movie register with nostalgic love or will it have similar poor luck to the other releases by the studio?

This category also has some tricky qualifications to note. The short version is that there could be five nominees (provided every single one of these meets release qualifications), but that depends on how well the nominating committee rates each film. If they think the field is weak, we could see less than five.

Tim's Toons: Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

Tim here. To the right kind of viewer (e.g. the kind writing this review), Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is THE animated event of 2015. Which does not, unfortunately, turn out to mean that it is THE best animated film of 2015, or even in the running for that title. But let us not accentuate the negative; it's still a special and enormously idiosyncratic little movie, and its failures are honorable.

The film is a long-simmering passion project for producer Salma Hayek, one of the many ardent fans to accrue to Gibran's 1923 English-language collection of essays (Gibran was Lebanese, as was Hayek's grandfather). When, exactly, she decided that the adaptation needed to be done in animation is anyone's guess, but it was exactly the right choice: the book consists primarily of a series of spiritual lessons in the form of prose poetry, with the ghost of a narrative connecting them. The film by necessity fleshes out that narrative considerably and literalizes it, but the meat of the film is still those essays: eight out of Gibran's original 26, each handed off to a different luminary in the world of international animation.

Those eight sequences are easily the best reason to see The Prophet.

Click to read more ...

Tim's Toons: Animated features to watch for in 2015

Tim here. Team Experience is in the midst of unrolling our We Can’t Wait list, and Nathaniel has already devoted some attention to some of the more intriguing potential blockbusters that missed out on our top 15. And so now it falls to me as the Film Experience’s resident animation guy to draw your attention to some of the animated features set to show up in 2015. None of the big names here - I assume you’ll be able to find the new Pixar films without my help - this is all about some of the little titles that might otherwise slip between the cracks.

When Marnie Was There

The 20th, and perhaps the last theatrical film produced by Studio Ghibli, is about a lonely young woman sent to the country for her health, who befriends one of the locals, Marnie. But as the two spend time together, it becomes clear that something slightly paranormal is going on.

Click to read more ...