Oscar Volley: Sobbing and Fuming at the "Best Animated Feature" nominees

Team Experience will be covering the various Oscar categories in the lead up to Oscar night. Here's Tim Brayton, Cláudio Alves, and Nathaniel R...

TIM BRAYTON: Hello Nathaniel and Cláudio! I'm thrilled to have the chance to discuss this year's slate of nominees for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars with you - animation is, I think it's fair to say, the most important form of filmmaking to me, and it's always fun to share it. Whether these exact five films represent animation at its peak, well, we'll just have to get into that as we go.

A quick recap for all of us and those of you reading, here are the five nominees: Encanto, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Raya and the Last Dragon, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Luca, a CGI feature produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by their corporate owners, the Walt Disney Company; The Mitchells vs the Machines, a CGI feature produced by Sony Animation, who sold it off to Netflix. And then literally on the other side of the world, Flee, a Danish documentary about politics and identity, largely consisting of interviews that were animated in a cartoony 2D style by Sun Creature Studio. So my point, obviously, is that this isn't exactly the most stylistically or industrially diverse set of nominees this category has ever produced...

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Oscar Volley: Is Best Animated Feature already wrapped up?

Continuing our Oscar Volley series at The Film Experience. Abe Friedtanzer and Timothy Lyons on Best Animated Feature

My Sunny Maad, Belle, and Poupelle are all hoping to interrupt the Disney party in Best Animated Feature

ABE FRIEDTANZER: Most years after the Oscar nominations come out I have to play catch up on everything I've missed. That's not the case in a second consecutive season where the Oscars are later in the calendar. I have caught most of the contenders here. The mainstream American studio options are actually all great but of course I'd love to see some international choices make the cut. Belle seems like a decent bet to crack the list, and while it's a terrific film, I want to champion another Japanese movie, Poupelle of Chimney Town. I do worry that it's too under-the-radar to get enough votes, but it was the most visually striking animation I saw all year. I was also impressed by My Sunny Maad, which, like the much buzzier Flee, is about Afghanistan but is a very different experience. Maad has only been noticed by the Golden Globes, so I'm not sure what kind of buzz it has. What have you seen that you'd love to see nominated...

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2nd Annual "Gold List" Honoring Asian Achievements in Film

by Nathaniel R

Shang-Chi

Hello, awards fans. While we have often bemoaned the ever-increasing amounts of groups giving out "best" honors here at TFE, we do love to share and champion groups that have very specific focuses since the conversation could always do with broadening rather than the narrowing that more traditional awards do. So we're pleased to share the second annual "Gold List" a joint venture between Gold House and CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) recognizing outstanding work by Asian filmmakers and actors. Shang-Chi and Drive My Car both took multiple prizes this year while The Green Knight played bridesmaid with multiple honorable mentions. The full list of winners and honorable mentions is after the jump... 

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Year in Review: Best Screen Animals from Shark to "Pig"

by Team Experience

Animals didn't always have an easy go of it in 2021 movies. Consider Jonathan Larson's elusive super-neglected cat in tick, tick... BOOM!, wondering if its box would ever again be cleaned. Or, worse, those dalmations in Cruella demoted from loving titular characters to growling weapons. And it's best not to think too long on the fate of either bunny we meet in The Power of the Dog. 

But the following animals were luckier (for the most part) winning enough screen time and giving off enough personality to become an essential part of their movies, so let's talk about them...

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Annie Nominations

by Nathaniel R

The 49th annual Annie Award nominations are basically the Disney show this year. The Mouse House squashed its competition at the annual event with Raya and the Last Dragon leading the nominations, Encanto in second place, and Disney/Pixar's Luca in third place (albeit tied with Netflix's Mitchells vs the Machines there). The most popular international titles were Denmark's Flee and Japan's Belle, both of which showed up in Best Direction, which adds confidence to our bet that they're likeliest to spoil Disney's all American party on the Oscar shortlist. Still we might have to rethink that bet that Raya and the Last Dragon is the vulnerable film. We thought it would have been forgotten by now as it wasn't greeted as enthusiastically as a few of its competitors at the time of its release.

As is our usual reaction, we don't really understand what's going on in the selections for voice acting, which aside from two great choices from Encanto (John Leguizamo and Stephanie Beatriz), usually defaults to lead work in productions where the supporting characters feature the best vocal acting. For example Kelly Marie Tran over Awkwafina in Raya ... really? Abbi Jacobson over Olivia Colman in Mitchells vs the Machines? Does not compute.

Full list of nominations is after the jump...

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