The Academy Award For Best Animated Feature May Go To…
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Location
209 West Houston Street
New York, NY
United States
One of the following fifteen films, says the Hollywood Reporter, will win the industry’s highest honors:
Alpha and Omega
Despicable Me
My Dog Tulip
The Dreams Of Jinsha
How To Train Your Dragon
Idiots and Angels
The Illusionist
Shrek Forever After
Summer Wars
Tangled
Tinker Bell & The Great Fairy Rescue
(The ones I’ve seen so far are highlighted with links to my reviews; I think you can guess what the color coding is meant to mean.)
These are the fifteen films that have qualified for the Best Animated Feature nominations this year. Under Academy rules, this means that these fifteen will be three spots. (The category broadens to five spots if there are sixteen or more qualifying films, but apparently the amount of animated features in 2010 came in one short.)
This all helps to explain the glaring inclusion of Cats & Dogs, one of the worst movies of the year by any standard. Cats & Dogs is a live-action film that happens to have computer-enhanced animation in it, but it’s strange to classify a movie with supporting performances from Oscar non-hopefuls like Chris O’Donnell and Jack McBrayer, no matter how exaggerated, as “animated.” By the same standard, couldn’t Iron Man 2 have qualified?
Clearly, everyone involved was trying to pad the list of fifteen to get those two extra nominations to kick in. Sadly, due to the regulations on the books, there will only be three spots in an otherwise strong year for animation. If I had to guess what will be competing, I’d say Toy Story 3 (a sure bet), How To Train Your Dragon (though Despicable Me or Megamind could just as easily step in there), and The Illusionist, a French feature which I’ve not yet seen but have already heard tremendous things about. Its US release date isn’t until Christmas.
Cats & Dogs arrives on DVD tomorrow, so you’ve got a chance to watch it then, although I really wish you wouldn’t.
