Which Annie Nominee Has Your Vote For Animated Feature?

The New York Film Critics Circle recently opted out of honoring a best animated feature (and unless I'm mistaken it was an afterthought win for Rango at the NBR since it wasn't in the first wave of articles). Will awards bodies lose their keys to this category since realizing Cars 2 was a lemon? If you stop to think about it for more than two seconds it's decidedly ungenerous at best and horribly offensive at worst. It sheds an unflattering light on the initiable embrace of the animated ghetto categories, suggesting they were only created to honor Pixar to begin with. Which is... rather shameful if you ask me. If the only reason you created a category was to honor Pixar, you shouldn't have created a category. Nobody gives out prizes for "Best Paramount Pictures Release of the Year", you know? Nobody gives out prizes for "Best Weinstein Co. Release of The Year" ["The Academy does!" cried the anonymous heckler. *rimshot*]

What? Rango wasn't good enough for a badge of honor?

So, even if this wasn't the single greatest year for animated film, if you're going to honor the medium, honor the medium. If you change your rules every year who will respect you? (That's a general warning to wishy washy committees, The Golden Satellites, and to the Oscar board of directors themselves who are weirdly starting to act like all their imitators these past few years by second guessing themselves constantly).

But, since the Annie Awards have been honoring animated work for 38 years -- long before Oscar or the critics groups ever thought to honor it --  they'll continute to do just that. They've selected ten "Best Picture" nominees for their 39th annual awards. And even if they felt the need to include Cars 2 to get there, at least they didn't cancel their ceremony when they realized it wasn't revving anyone's engines. I promise to brake break with the car puns no. So sorry!

Annie Awards Best Animated Feature Nominees

• A Cat in Paris - Folimage
• The Adventures of Tintin - Amblin Entertainment, Wingnut Films and Kennedy/Marshall
• Arrugas (Wrinkles) - Perro Verde Films, SL
• Arthur Christmas - Sony Pictures Animation, Aardman Animation
• Cars 2 - Pixar
• Chico & Rita - Chico & Rita Distribution Limited
• Kung Fu Panda 2 - Dreamworks Animation
• Puss in Boost - Dreamworks Animation
• Rango - Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present a Blind Wink/GK Films Production
• Rio - Blue Sky Studios

And even if he isn't nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, Gary Oldman could still win an Annie Award. He's up for best voice acting as "Lord Shen" from Kung Fu Panda 2.

Find this... 'panda'... and bring him to me.
FIND this 'Panda'. And bring him to me.
FIND THIS PANDA AND BRING HIM TO ME!!!"

A complete list of their nominations is after the jump if you'd like to dig deeper. (I was sad that this year they didn't include the info as to which animated characters the individual animators are being honored for designing or animating. If I recall correctly they used to specify which characters, just as in the voice acting honors.)

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45 Animated Shorts: Oscar Will Choose 10... Then 5.

This is the list of 45 animated shorts that the Academy is considering in the Best Animated Shorts category (with links to official sites when I could find them). The Animated, Docs, and Shorts Oscar page is going to be updated piecemeal this week as I work on beating all this information into some form of pundited submission.

Until then, the list. Do you ever try to see the nominees in this category?

A SHADOW OF BLUE (Carlos Lascano)

• A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard (Studio AKA)
• A Shadow of Blue by Carlos Lascano
• Birdboy by Alberto Vasquez (Abrikim Studio)
• Chopin’s Drawings by Dorota Kobiela (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Correspondence by Zach Hyer (Pratt)
• Daisy Cutter by Enrique Garcia and Rubin Salazar (Silverspace)
• Dimanche / Sunday by Patrick Doyon (NFB)

• El Salon Mexico by Paul Glickman and Tamarind King
• Enrique Wrecks the World by David Chai *Annie Nominee Last Year*
• Ente Tod Und Tulipe (Duck Death and the Tulip) by Matthias Bruhn (Richard Lutterbeck – Trickstudio)
• Fat Hamster by Adam Wyrwas (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Grandpa Looked Like William Powell by David Levy
• Hamster Heaven by Paul Bolger (BreakThru Films) Poland

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS (Ann Marie Fleming adapts Bernice Eisenstein's memoirs)

• I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat by Matt O’Callaghan (Warner Bros... 3D Sylvester vs. Tweety)
• I Was the Child of Holocaust Survivors by Anne Marie Fleming (NFB)
• Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest by Kevin Sean Michaels USA
• Kahanikar by Nandita Jain (National Film and Television School) England
• La Luna by Enrico Casarosa (Pixar) -See Previous Post (INTERVIEW)

• Little Postman by Dorota Kobiela (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Luminaris by Juan Pablo Zaramella (JPZaramella Studios)
• Luna by Donna Brockopp (Rainmaker) Canada *see complete short, 7 minutes*
• Maska by Timothy and Stephen Quay (Sem-ma-for) Poland

• Muybridge’s Strings by Koji Yamamura (1 PREVIOUS OSCAR NOMINATION)
• My Hometown by Jerry Levitan, Written and Narrated by Yoko Ono (Eggplant) *see complete short, 7 minutes*
• Night Island by Salvador Maldonado (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Nullarbor by Alister Lockhart
• Papa’s Boy by Leevi Lemmetty (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Paths of Hate by Damien Nenow (Platige Image) Poland
• Romance by George Schwizgebel (NFB & Studio GDS)
• Specky Four-Eyes by Jean Claude Rozec (Vivement Lundi)

THE EXTERNAL WORLD

• Spirits of the Piano by Magdalena Osinska (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Thank You by Thomas Herpich (Frederator)
• The Ballad of Nessie by Stevie Wermers (Walt Disney Studios)
• The External World by David O’ Reilly
• The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (Moonbot Studios)
• The Gloaming by Nobrain (Autour De Minuit) France
• The Lost Town of Switez by Kamil Polak (Human Ark) Poland *debut*
• The Magic Piano by Martin Clapp (BreakThru Films) Poland
• The Monster of Nix by Rosto *with voice work by Tom Waits & Terry Gilliam. It's a horror musical!*
• The Renter by Jason Carpenter (CalArts) *debut, Annie Award nominee last year*
• The Smurf’s A Christmas Carol by Troy Quane (Sony Pictures Animation)
• The Tannery by Iain Gardner (Axis Animation)

VICENTA (Spain)

• The Smurf’s A Christmas Carol by Troy Quane (Sony Pictures Animation)
• The Tannery by Iain Gardner (Axis Animation)
• The Vermeers by Tal S. Shamir
• Vicenta by Samuel Orti Marti
• Wild Life by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby (NFB)

18 Animated Features for Oscar. Will 5 Nominees Bring Diversity?

It will undoubtedly seem strange to chase Michael's Pixar interview with another reminder that I have no patience for Cars 2, but I must. With the reveal of the Best Animated Feature submission list, we know that Pixar has a much better shot than ever at yet another Oscar nomination in this category. Pixar has deserved all of its Best Animated Feature Oscar wins and more still (Shrek over Monsters Inc.??? Yep, still embarrassing!) But Oscar nominations mean a lot more when you don't get them out of habit or loyalty to the brand. Will the nominating voters dare step out of Pixar's anthropomorphic vehicles this year to look at, say, an acclaimed racy animated romance among Cuban immigrants?

If at least 16 of these 18 pass the Academy's eligibility requirements, the nominating committee can choose 5 of them as nominees.

The 18 Submitted Toons Are...

• The Adventures of Tintin (opens Dec 21st)
• Alois Nebel (The Czech Republic's Best Foreign Film Submission so it could be nominated in two categories - see our TIFF review)
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (opens Dec 16th)
• Arthur Christmas (opens Nov 23rd)
• Cars 2 
• A Cat in Paris (this one is a feline noir homage from Belgium) 
• Chico & Rita (a music-heavy romance between a pianist and a singer)
• Gnomeo & Juliet 
• Happy Feet Two (opens Nov 18th)
• Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil 
• Kung Fu Panda 2 
• Mars Needs Moms 
• Puss in Boots 
• Rango 
• Rio 
• The Smurfs 
• Winnie the Pooh 
• Wrinkles (a Spanish drama about two old men, one with alzheimers)

It's strange that nearly 33% of eligible films can be nominated. Can you imagine if Best Picture worked like this. Would the Oscars mean anything at all if 91 films were nominated for Best Picture each year?!? That's how many there would be (approximately) each year if 33% of eligible films were nominated. The ceremony would never end just from reading all the names!

"Wrinkles" is about a friendship between two old men.

Seeing all the titles together you can't help but notice how much more flexible the animated film is in other countries: American cinema is still locked into the notion that the animated film is a genre (boisterous colorful family comedies) rather than an artistic medium capable of housing all genres; Across oceans and borders we get a drama about old men with alzheimers, a musical romance with nudity, a witty noir about a cat leading a double life, and a historically haunted black and white drama about a man in a sanotorium. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the Best Animated Feature Oscar race.
It's not my strong suit as predictions or knowledge goes... though I'll start seeing more of these very soon.

Interview: Pixar's Enrico Casarosa and "La Luna"

Michael C here to give you a sneak peak of a Pixar pleasure headed your way soon.

High on the long list of reasons to love Pixar is their devotion to bringing top quality animated shorts to the movie-going masses, a tradition they are keeping alive pretty much single-handedly. And they are on a roll too. With such titles as Presto, Cloudy Day and the great Day and Night, my love of which I’ve already documented here, they are developing a body a body of work to stand beside the great catalogues of classic Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons. 

Now having attended a sneak of La Luna, the new short most of America will see attached to Brave, I am pleased to report they have another winner on their hands. La Luna is a fable about young boy caught in an inter-generational conflict as he joins his Papa and Grandpa for the first time in their nightly work. The slow reveal of the exact nature of that work is one of the film's delights which also include its elegant dialogue-free storytelling, glowing moonlit atmosphere and an especially lovely Michael Giacchino score.

La Luna is the baby of Enrico Casarosa, who is making his directing debut with this love letter to his Italian roots. He began with Pixar as a story artist on Cars and Ratatouille, and he is currently working as Head of Story for an upcoming feature. I sat down with Casarosa to discuss his new film, his influences, and to see how much I could peek behind the Pixar curtain.

Michael Cusumano: I got the impression that La Luna is a very personal film for you. Am I right in saying that? 

Enrico Casarosa, Head of Story for Pixar

Enrico Casarosa: Yeah. I really felt I wanted to find an emotional core to it and I think Pixar is pretty adamant about trying to find connections. The directors need to find that personal story to tell. So I really looked at my childhood. I grew up in Genoa, in Italy, and I grew up with our grandfather in our house, and my dad and my grandfather never got along. So I would have very long dinners where I was definitely in the middle of these two guys, talking to me but never talking to each other. So that feeling of being a little bit stuck in the middle was something I was after. And I would be really fun to try to give a positive message of a kid choosing his own - you know - it’s not Papa’s way, it’s not Grandpa’s way, but it’s his own way. So he finds his own road. I thought that was worth sharing, it could be the core of it. 

Then I mixed that with a completely fantastical kind of setting to juxtapose the very personal with something more fantastic. The inspiration to that is a lot of literature. I’m a big Italo Calvino fan. He’s a wonderful writer that we read in high school in Italy. He has, all through his novels and short stories, making the very fantastic juxtaposed with very simple characters, peasants, so that’s the kind of a feel I wanted to capture. I wanted them to be very poor, you know, working the land, fishermen. Then I thought it would really be a great juxtaposition when you find out their job is actually pretty mythical.

How is it possible to get such a personal story through such a collaborative process? [MORE AFTER THE JUMP]

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Distant Relatives: Modern Times and WALL•E

Robert here with my series Distant Relatives, which explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film. This week we jump into the admittedly pointless but always fun Chaplin vs. Keaton debate and contrast it with the Pixar vs Dreamworks animation debate. The important thing is to remember that you can love all of these films and it's not a competition.

But if it were a competition (and it's not), we start with Chaplin and Pixar because they're the obvious frontrunners. By that I don't mean that they're better, but they have the name recognition, the marketing, the cultural branding. Chaplin built for himself an image that now almost a century after his first shorts, is still recognizable. Pixar meanwhile, in just over fifteen years in the feature business has introduced a slew of films and characters that have become iconic. While quality is mostly the cause, it doesn't hurt to have most of your films named after their title characters (why Nemo will always be more recognizable than Carl Fredricksberg). So, Chaplin and Pixar are both heavyweights. They share that. They also share a sense of style and innovation, a desire to elevate their genre beyond it's conventional expectations, a love of traditional arcs, and a soft spot for over-sentimentalization.

Lovelorn tramps in the future

Among the Pixar canon, the best film for our Chaplin comparison is WALL•E because, well a fair portion of its marketing to the online film geek world involved the constant reminder that animators took much inspiration from Charlie Chaplin, although the connections were already pretty evident. To put it another way: you didn't have to read an article on the Chaplin/WALL•E inspiration to see it, but you probably did. WALL•E follows a hapless, lonely, poor protagonist who falls in love and must suddenly achieve something great to get the girl while simultaneously getting the girl to achieve something great. It's one of the few Pixar films that places a strong emphasis on its romantic plot, and WALL•E himself, the nearly silent, occationally prat-falling protagonist is the perfect Chaplin descendent. So WALL•E is an easy choice, but why Modern Times?

Modern Times is unique among Chaplin's films in that a unusually strong focus is placed on the source of The Tramp's discontent. In most other films, The Tramp is a generic vagrant, downtrodden for many unnamed reasons. In Modern Times, he's not a vagabond, he's a worker. His oppressor isn't whatever bully or police brute or aristocrat might be antagonizing him that scene, it's the whole out-of-control industrial complex. It's the giant face of the uncaring corporate class. Yes, it's undeniably political. And so is WALL•E. As much as Pixar attempted to quell controversy, insisting that any politics present were simply there to serve the story, there's no escaping the fact that WALL•E's oppressor is also a giant corporation that cares far less for its workers (in WALL•E's case robots) than for its image and its profits.

Romance and politics and a happy ending.

For both films controversy was unavoidable, and in both cases the filmmaker's weren't shy about subtley commenting on what they were stirring up. A scene in Modern Times where The Tramp inadvertantly leads a communist parade and ends up cast out from society was prescient in regard to Chaplin's eventual career. As for WALL•E, it's hard not to see a sly wink to that year's upcoming US presidential election in a scene where the whole of humanity decides that "blue is the new red." Yet, overtly political as they are, both films do a good job of avoiding platitudes and focusing their attention on their little man main characters whose humanities are being crushed under the threat of their brave new world. Of course, throughout it all, love prevails. Love, that great cinematic motivator, proves that our heroes are more than just cogs in a machine, and capable of doing great things; little great things in the case of The Tramp or big great things in the case of WALL•E.

This is probably the most significant thematic difference between the two films. Chaplin's Tramp wants to get the girl, but WALL•E is tasked with getting the girl and saving the world. Of course, WALL•E's plot gives the film no other choice. Perhaps it the modern mindset that demands a whole world-saving happy ending, or perhaps it was impossible to place that old trash compator WALL•E in a trash-ridden world and not expect him to exceed in the biggest scale imaginable. Either way, Chaplin's film can leave the world a mess while Pixar's cannot. Still, both films serve up a decent serving of uncertainty for their finales, emphasizing that the real important goal, the pursuit of love, has been met and the rest will somehow be okay. Sentimental yet socially conscious, Modern Times and WALL•E are brethren that aim to entertain and enlighten and propell their lovable protagonists into a satisfying future.

Other Cinematic Relatives: Meet John Doe (1941), The Apartment (1960), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Avatar (2009)