I normally couldn’t care less about the Animated Oscar. It is hard to care about a category that only gets three nominees, one of which is an obvious front runner. However, this year it is a little more interesting considering the number of potential candidates and the new AMPAS rules that may keep the noms only at three.
The Best Animated Feature Oscar was first won in 2002 when Shrek took home the gold, since then the cineplexes seemed to have been swarmed with endless animated feature, one after another. The kicker was that there were rarely a long list of good films out of all those animated features. This year proves a bit different.
We have already had a critics and audience favorite in Pixar’s Ratatouille, I personally thought Surf’s Up was quite good, tracking on Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie this weekend is out of this world, The Simpsons Movie ate up $182 million domestically, Shrek the Third wasn’t all that great, but it still brought home over $320 million domestically which is over $100 million more than Ratatouille.
Questions still lay around a couple of films – Fox’s live-action/animated mix Alvin and the Chipmunks and Paramount’s performance capture feature Beowulf.
I think many will say Alvin being a mix between live-action and animation shouldn’t qualify as an animated feature, but what about Beowulf. It is animation if you look at it, but THR even quotes director Robert Zemeckis, who saw both Polar Express and Monster House pull down eligibility, as saying, “To call performance capture animation is a disservice to the great animators,” he said at the International Broadcasting Convention in September.
If you are wondering why I am even talking about this, it is because there are rules at play here. Why are there only three animated nominees all the time? Well because unless the Academy recognizes 16 films for the award there can only be three noms, and that is as long as there are 13 or more candidates. By my count there only 12 films that make the cut right now, and THR says there are 13, but I don’t know what the other one is. Here is my count:
- Happily N’Ever After
- TMNT
- Meet the Robinsons
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
- Shrek the Third
- Surf’s Up
- Ratatouille
- The Simpsons Movie
- The Ten Commandments
- Bee Movie
- Beowulf
- Persepolis
Now, if Alvin and the Chipmunks is accepeted as eligible doesn’t this open the door open to a whole lot more? I mean, why wouldn’t Transformers then be considered animated? It’s the same deal… animated characters in a live-action world.
What will be the determining factor is a new rule thrown in the mix in which a movie is required to be made using a “a frame-by-frame technique” to one in which “movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique.” It is thought that this rule is supposed to be what boots performance capture films from eligibility.
It isn’t stopping Paramount though as THR quotes a Par spokesman saying they are “definitely submitting” the movie. I think they should primarily because Crispin Glover doesn’t look that messed up and Ray Winstone isn’t sporting abs… beyond that Angelina Jolie doesn’t have a tail to my knowledge and even if she did I would still knock it out. Suffice to say, as much as a despise looking at performance capture animation I don’t think it should be eliminated from qualifying as an animated film, primarily because… wait for it… It’s animated!
Finally, the article said that Ratatouille‘s prospects at being nominated as a Best Picture (never gonna happen) may hurt its animated chances (whatever). As stupid as that sounds I felt I should at least include it.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expected to announce its eligibility list for the animated category next week so stay tuned.
