Almost every year at the Academy Awards, the Best Animated Feature category throws a curveball come nomination time. Here in the States, we are so consumed by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks that a film from outside our borders sneaks in constantly, and is pretty terrific. Last year, there was Ernest & Celestine. 2011 had Chico & Rita and A Cat in Paris. The list goes on. Well, one such film that could make that same splash (pun intended) this year is Song of the Sea, which comes from previously nominated director Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells).
I am pretty unfamiliar with the Irish and Scottish legend of the “selkie”. Through my extensive research on Wikipedia’s first paragraph on the selkie page, I learned that they are people who live as seals underwater and on land shed their skin to become human. That is a pretty awesome sounding myth, if you ask me. Selkies, not so coincidentally, are the subject of Song of the Sea. It would be odd if I just had an unrelated paragraph in an article about selkies.
You see, Saoirse is the last of the selkies. When her and her brother Ben are sent to live with their grandmother, the two must escape and find a way home, while also keeping alive the story and myths their dead mother told them about by freeing fairy creatures trapped in the modern world. I am certainly hooked by that premise. Couple that with The Secret of Kells, which I was a big fan of, and I know I will be seeing this film, which has a new trailer.
The trailer does not give so much away in terms of story, which is nice, but it does show of the gorgeous animation, which is even nicer. I would not mind this trailer just being my screensaver. You can watch the trailer below. Does this look as appealing to you as it does to me?
