The LAMB Devours the Oscars - Best Animated Feature

Editor's note: Welcome to the tenth of a 33-part series dissecting the 83rd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

by Stevee from Cinematic Paradox

You know how at the Golden Globes this year, when it came time to announce the winner of the ‘Best Animated Feature’ category, they called upon Hailee Steinfeld and Justin Bieber to do that? You see, I have something in common with them. No, it’s not the fact that I am girl (seriously...I need to stop with the Bieber jokes). I’m young like them, so it’s a no-brainer having me take on the Best Animated Feature category for LAMB Devours the Oscars this year, right? Well, there’s that, and animated films aren’t usually R-rated, so I am legally allowed to watch these.

The prime reason I chose this category is actually because I thought there’d be five films in here, and I thought I was cool because I would have seen four out of five films I predicted would be in this category. But nooooooooo. The Academy just had to rain on my parade (don’t even get me started on the Nolan snub...) and only nominate three: Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist. Meaning I have only seen Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon, because The Illusionist is still floating somewhere out in space and no-one from this country wants to grab it for me (this country being New Zealand).

So, basically, we all know who is going to win this category. It’s exactly like last year with Up. Toy Story 3 has the unfair advantage over everyone because it’s nominated in this category and Best Picture. If it doesn’t win Best Picture, it’s okay, because it can win this one. Geez, if Inception doesn’t win Best Picture, it doesn’t have the ‘Best Mindf*ck Movie of the Year’ award to fall back on. I guess this is why PIXAR makes such fantastic movies. They practically have two huge categories made for them. It’s like their ‘screw you’ to Hollywood.

Anyway, I digress. Let me explain to you the nominees as if they were a person. Just like how they do the ‘stories’ in Date Night of the people they see in the restaurant.

First up is The Illusionist. I’d say this film would be the foreign exchange student with a vintage sort of style, that possibly comes from a well bred family. Why? Well, the obvious, this film comes from France. Out of the three nominees, The Illusionist is the only one who chooses to be 3D-free, which I suppose is very fitting to its 1959 setting. The press-kit for this movie that Sony sent to the US says that the "script for THE ILLUSIONIST was originally written by French comedy genius and cinema legend Jacques Tati as a love letter from a father to his daughter, but never produced". Jacques Tati, back in his heyday, directed such comedy fares as Mr. Hulot’s Holiday. So The Illusionist must have had high expectations from the get go, and it seems to have succeeded.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 91% - critics; 79% - audience. IMDb rating: 7.8/10. Metascore rating: 84/100 (23 reviews).

You know how back in 2001 DreamWorks released a medieval tale of sorts named Shrek. Well, I can’t help but think that How to Train Your Dragon is like its little brother. Kinda like the very diligent but funny little brother of the most popular guy in school. How to Train Your Dragon didn’t quite live up to the magic of Shrek nor the hype that had been set up for it since it’s theatrical release, but nevertheless, this is a very memorable animated flick. Who didn’t think Toothless was cute? You’ve gotta love those animal sidekicks. Plus, it was effortlessly well written and often very funny. Of course, like most animated movies, it has the famous moral. I really liked the set up of this movie: it devoted lots of time to breathtaking dragon flights and fights, but it also had a good amount of meaningful drama and comedy going on at the same time. Usually, a live action film may forget that. This is perhaps one of the better animated flicks not made by PIXAR. Not to mention the fact that this is probably the only non-crappy film Gerard Butler has been a part of in a while.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 98% - critics; 90% - audience. IMDb rating: 8.2/10 (#179 on Top 250). Metascore rating: 74/10

Oh dear. It must suck to be PIXAR. To have all those expectations. And to top them, Every. Single. Time. Toy Story 3 is like the kid who always wins the speech competition. The team who always wins the championship. The smart one who always gets the top mark for everything. Basically, it is possible to beat it, but you’d need all the luck in the world. Making a sequel to a movie which had been in the ground for around 11 years is a bit of a risky decision and it shouldn’t have worked. But PIXAR, being the amazing animated-films-on-steroids factory that it is, not only made the sequel work, but it topped the other two by far, and soon became the #1 animated film of all-time. This probably has something to do with the fact that this movie has everything: lots of laughs, dramatic depth, action sequences, frightening villains (you know who you are, Losto) and the end which will make you cry. A lot. That bittersweet farewell is the thing that has seemed to work into Toy Story 3’s favour, as the voters will probably be too emotionally rattled by this film that they have no choice but to vote for it. You can really believe the hype with this film, because it’s one of those rare films which are impossible not to love.

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 99% - critics; 91% - audience. IMDb rating: 8.7/10 (#27 in Top 250). Metascore rating: 92/100

So, is it possible for either The Illusionist or How to Train Your Dragon to become like The King’s Speech and upset Toy Story 3’s winning streak? Probably not, no. It’s nominated in five categories, and it has the best chance right here. It’s nominated for Best Picture. It won’t win that one, so it will have to settle here. If it doesn’t, there shall be cries from every toy in the land.

You don’t get $1,063,161,943 without getting an Oscar.

The LAMB Devours the Oscars - Best Animated Feature

Editor's note: Welcome to the twenty-second of a 33-part series dissecting the 82st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!










By Tom Clift of Plus Trailers - Tom Clift's Movie Blog.

When this year’s Devours the Oscars event was announced, I immediately emailed head LAMB Dylan Fields and asked for the opportunity to write about the Best Animated Feature category. Those who know me or have read my blog would probably know that my favourite film of 2009 was Disney Pixar’s Up, a visually stunning and emotionally powerful film that affected me on a level deeper than any live action film all year. As has been the case with every Pixar film since the categories creation in 2001, Up has been nominated for Best Animated Feature; it’s competition this year includes three other critically acclaimed films and one total unknown, each of which features a different and distinctive style of animation, highlighting what has a truly been a diverse and fantastic year for animated film.

But before I get into this year’s nominee, I want to take a brief moment to discuss this category in general; specifically I want to say that despite my adoration for animated films, I am actually against the existence of the Best Animated Feature category, or at least the way that it has utilized by the academy. In one of the most recent LAMBcasts, Dylan of Blog Cabins expressed some concern about Up receiving a Best Picture nomination, arguing that it shouldn’t be eligible given that it was nominated for Best Animated Feature. Mad Hatter of The Dark of the Matinee countered with the point that just because a movie was animated (or foreign, or a documentary for that matter) doesn’t mean it couldn’t also be the best film of the year. Personally, I could not agree more.

For decades, the academy has snubbed animated films. In the eighty two year history of the Oscars, prior to this year only one animated film had ever been nominated for Best Picture; that film was Beauty and the Beast in 1991. Whilst mediocre (at best) movies like Crash and Shakespeare in Love are inducted into the halls of Hollywoods highest honour, countless fantastic and seminal films such as Snow White, The Lion King and Grave of the Fireflies to name just a few have been overlooked, dismissed it seems as simply cartoons. And rather than the Best Animated Feature category giving the academy a place to finally give the medium its dues all it has done is provide voters with an easy excuse to continue to overlook some of the best films to be released each year.

Take a recent and very obvious example: Disney Pixar’s WALL-E. An ingenious, entertaining, beautiful and brave exercise in film-making, this movie was a quantum leap forward for what was already considered one of the most reliable studios in Hollywood. It appeared on more critics top ten lists than any other film of 2008; it was named as the top film of the year by critics from The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal (and many others), and just this year, Time Magazine named the number one film of the decade. Hell, even a tiny little organization called the Large Association of Movie Blogs voted WALL-E their favourite film of the year, ahead of both the almost universally beloved The Dark Knight and that year’s best picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire.

To quote Peter Travers, the film critic for Rolling Stone magazine, “If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it’s WALL-E”. Surely, with all this critical acclaim, the academy must have at least honoured the movie with a nomination. And yet, on nomination day, WALL-E name was conspicuously, outrageously absent. Just as The Dark Knight was just a comic book movie, WALL-E was a just a cartoon. Of course it was nominated for and justly won the Best Animated trophy, beating out the not so heavy competition in the form of DreamWorks’ Kung-Fu Panda and Disney’s Bolt. But true gold eluded it, as it will all animated films until this category disappears, or at least until the academy is willing to embrace the art form as a legitimate manner of storytelling.

Alright, rant over (at least for now). It is time to stop dwelling on the past and instead look to the present and the future. Despite the rather bitter nature of this post so far, I am actually thrilled by this year’s nominations for Best Animated Feature and am eager to share my thoughts on each one. For only the second time in the categories history, there are five nominees as opposed to just three; add to this that there are at least three other animated films that could have very well made this list and the fact that each one of this year’s nominees features a unique and beautiful style of animation unlike any of its competitors, and we can see what a strong and varied year it was for animated cinema. So now let us take a look at each of the nominees and discuss who will be joining the likes of Spirited Away, Finding Nemo and of course WALL-E as the winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.


CORALINE dir. Henry Selick

“A visual stunner that takes animated films to new heights.” – Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com

Out of all of this year’s nominees, I thought that Henry Selick’s Coraline was the most technically impressive. The meticulous stop motion animation, the incredible use of miniatures, the fantastic 3D modeling all combined with Selicks quirky gothic style gave birth to a visual feast of bright colours and marvelous creations. I thought that the story of the film was actually somewhat lacking – and to be clear, I believe the Best Animated Feature trophy should not be bestowed based solely on technical merit but on script and story as well. Never the less, the beauty of this film and the magical world that large sections of the narrative inhabit never fails to impress or entertain.


FANTASTIC MR. FOX dir. Wes Anderson

“Mr. Fox's old-fashioned, hand-crafted animation is one of its main attractions” – Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

Based on the beloved children’s novel by Roald Dahl, whose stories were a staple of countless childhoods including my own, indie darling Wes Anderson took all of his directorial sensibilities from his live action work; the symmetrical framing, infantile characters and a wonderfully dry sense of humour, and applied it to his first animated feature. The film has a rustic charm courtesy of the jerky stop motion animation, and the entire movie has a wonderfully tactile quality that computer animation simply cannot equal. Fantastic Mr. Fox is Anderson’s best film in years, Pixar’s biggest rival for this year’s award, and most importantly, a delightful and clever movie that can be enjoyed be audiences of all ages.


THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG dir. Ron Clements & John Musker

“The animation, sparkling and graceful, also ranks as the studio's best traditional work in ages” – Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle

Walt Disney Animation’s first traditionally animated film since Home on the Range in 2004, The Princess and the Frog is old school Disney at its finest; toe-tapping musical numbers, beautiful animation, entertaining characters and a touching romance sure to set many a little girls hearts a flutter. For generations Walt Disney has transported children and adults alike to wondrous worlds, with perhaps more classics to their name than any other studio in Hollywood history. Neither the story nor the animation in The Princess and the Frog is particularly groundbreaking, but in terms of sheer good old fashioned fun and whimsy, the people over at the House of the Mouse has proven that they have no lost their touch.


THE SECRET OF KELLS dir. Tomm Moore

“This movie is an absolute triumph of design” – Jeremy W. Kaufman, Aintitcool.com

Yes, believe it or not, I have actually seen The Secret of Kells, the animated film that raised many an eyebrow when it was announced as a nominee, beating out several more prominent titles including Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo. I found the story to be rather uninspiring (and essentially missing an entire third act), but the films animation is absolutely fascinating. Based in shapes and spirals, the bright colour palette and ingenious use of layering is not dissimilar to cartoons like The Powerful Girls or Clone Wars, but the Celtic-inspired design gives The Secret of Kells the appearance of a moving tapestry, an intriguing and mystical hand drawn film that highlights the enormous variety that can still be found in 2D animation.


UP dir. Pete Docter

“Another masterwork from Pixar, which is leading the charge in modern animation” – Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times

In a world where most computer animated children’s film focus on slapstick humour and inane pop-culture references, Pixar Animation Studios demonstrate yet again that a kid’s film can be so much more. The animation is, as you would expect, gorgeous, but more than any other film nominated, it is the story and the characters that stuck with me from Up. People will rave about the opening ten minutes of this film for decades as one of the most heartfelt, touching and brave sequences in any movie, let alone one aimed at children. From there, Up transforms into a fun filled adventure story with exciting, colourful visuals to match. It is a movie that anyone can enjoy, and it belongs right at the top of the list of Pixar’s greatest achievements.

As you all know, I feel that the award should go to Up; whilst I thought that Coraline was probably the most impressive film from an animation standpoint, once you take into account story, character and all the other aspects of a film (animated or not), Up seems to me to be the clear winner. I should also point out that logically it must win, given that it was the only Best Animated Feature nominee to also be nominated for Best Picture (it’s something of a token nomination, a way to fill up the five additional slots, but it still stands to reason that they think it’s the best animated film of the year). Then again, I don’t necessarily expect the academy to be bound by the laws of making sense. If Up doesn’t win, I would imagine the award will go to Fantastic Mr. Fox and its name director Wes Anderson.

Finally I’d just like to talk briefly about a couple of films that I feel were overlooked. I haven’t seen Ponyo, but anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s two previous films - Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away - were both nominated (with Spirited Away winning the award in 2002), so I’m a little surprised it didn’t get a nod. I also thought that Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a fantastically entertaining movie, and while it didn’t have the same emotional depth as Up or most of the other nominees, I would highly recommend checking it out. And last but certainly not least, the patriot in me is a little disappointed that Australia’s Mary and Max didn’t get a nomination as it was another one of my favourite movies of 2009.

But I certainly don’t want to downplay the worthiness of any of the actual nominees, as all five are brilliantly crafted films that show just how diverse and impressive a storytelling tool that animation can be. As 3D and computer technologies improve, I believe we are going to see more and more incredible stories realized on screen, led of course by the folks at Pixar. Meanwhile, in the wake of the financial success of The Princess and the Frog, Disney have ordered two more 2D animated films to be completed in the next few years, whilst the financial performance of Coraline and the critical acclaim of Fantastic Mr. Fox seems to ensure that stop motion animated will also remain a presence on our screens. I believe that we will continue to see fantastic animated films year after year after year, perhaps better than many live actions films. Whether one ever wins Best Picture is up to the Academy.

The LAMB Devours the Oscars - Best Animated Feature

Editor's note: Welcome to the second of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!










By Thomas from Pluck You, Too!

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is only as old as 2001. Ten years prior, Disney's Beauty and the Beast broke out of the animation ghetto and was nominated for Best Picture. In the next decade, Pixar would explode onto the scene with Toy Story, a technical breakthrough that ironically brought us back to animation's sentimental, universal roots. The sequel Toy Story 2 came in 1999, and surpassed the original in both visual and emotional achievements, and in my mind, should have been nominated for Best Picture. It won the Golden Globe that year for Best Comedy/Musical, and I have a niggling feeling that the Academy recognized that animation just ain't for kids anymore, and that influenced their decision to give them a separate but equal category.



And yes, I chose words with bad connotations for a reason. For while it is nice for animated film to be recognized at the Oscars, it is unfortunate, especially now that CG has become so prevalent, to be shuffled off into their own little category. Is 300 an animated film? Is Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Should Persepolis be forced to compete with Ratatouille? Both are excellent films, but one chose a simple visual style over Pixar's insanely detailed character designs, where you can count rodent hairs if you want a future job as an FDA food inspector. By pigeon-holing them in the same category, Persepolis is at a distinct disadvantage. Perhaps it's no different than comparing Frost/Nixon's simplicity with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's visual excess, and giving Animated Features their own category helps raise awareness for them.

However, the rules for the category seem to favor the big 3. The rules state:

In any year in which 8 to 15 animated features are released in Los Angeles County, a maximum of 3 motion pictures may be nominated. In any year in which 16 or more animated features are submitted and accepted in the category, a maximum of 5 motion pictures may be nominated.

So if fewer than 16 animated films are released in L.A. County, the Academy only nominates 3 films. And if fewer than 8 are released, there's no category that year. There have not been 5 nominees since 2002, when Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away won.

This year it's just the big three: WALL*E (Pixar), Bolt (Disney) and Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks). The rules are why the excellent Horton Hears a Who! was overlooked, and I found it to be one of the most beautiful films of the year, and certainly better than Bolt and Kung Fu Panda for storyline. And I really liked Panda! Blue Sky Studios, who made the Ice Age movies, did a great job adapting Horton to the big screen and expanding it to feature length. It's a shame it couldn't be nominated. Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli soldier's nightmares after the first Lebanon war, sidesteps the animation cubbyhole by being in a foreign language; Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea didn't get a U.S. release, so it's out.

But let's get on to the Big Three.

1. Bolt
Bolt is the story of the star of a TV show I can summarize as "24 meets Inspector Gadget" -- he's a super-powered cyborg canine protecting Penny, a kidnapped scientist's daughter from the maniacal clutches of Doctor Calico and his Cackling Kitty Accomplice. The show depends on him thinking everything is real, so one day after a cliffhanger episode, he thinks he really needs to rescue Penny- and gets shipped in a packing crate to New York. Having lost his powers, he takes a street cat hostage, thinking she's the cat from the show, hooks up with a fanboy fuzzball in a hamsterball, has harrowing adventures, and learns the power of love, friendship and perseverance.

I enjoyed Bolt, but don't think it deserves nomination over Horton Hears a Who!- it's good fun, and has an emotional ending, but you can still see the Disney formula from stinkers like Home on the Range affecting it. For example, superstar Miley Cyrus voices Penny, but her character is given no real depth. She's there to get Hannah Montana fans into seats. In fact, according to IMDb, Chloe Moretz (Dirty Sexy Money) had already voiced the role of Penny before Cyrus was brought in to overdub it. They should have stuck with a real actress. John Travolta voices Bolt and does a fine job disappearing into the part. Susie Essman- the foul-mouthed wife of Jeff Garlin from "Curb Your Enthusiasm," steals the show as Mittens the New Yawk street cat who shakes down pigeons and teaches Bolt how easily humans throw away their pets like so much garbage. She's nearly upstaged by the crazy TV fanboy hamster Rhino (Mark Walton), who was just a little too crazy for me. I'm sure the kids loved him.

The humans are all Hollywood caricatures, meant to make us feel like little Hollywood insiders. Part of me wanted the whole "He's a TV star who thinks it's real!" gimmick to go away, and actually watch Penny and Bolt escape from endless attack helicopters, but kids have to get their dose of vitamins and irony these days. I can see Disney not wanting to tread on Pixar's toes when Lasseter & co. have had a lock on the classic sentimental cartoon for decades, but this story feels a little too much like a Hollywood pitch. There's a hilarious and exciting sequence where Bolt & co. escape from a shelter, and I found the ending genuinely touching, but there was just a little too much cliche here and there for me to consider this great instead of good, even in the small pond of Best Animated Features of 2008. Horton got robbed. TraBolta!!!!

Disney has gotten a lot better. Despite dropping their classic animation department for 3-D after the spectacular micro-managerial bungling of the otherwise good Treasure Planet, they've finally managed to claw a toe-hold and stand with the big boys in CG. Bolt may not be great, but it's a big move in the right direction. Maybe one day they will continue where Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove left off.

2. Kung Fu Panda
I reviewed this in great detail here. I loved Kung Fu Panda, despite it being another Dreamworks film chock full of celebrity voices, because it has heart. It takes a standard kung fu story that could be a Sammo Hung movie, with a fat panda who works in his father's noodle shop, but wants to be a Shaolin warrior. When he tries to spy on the choosing of the legendary Dragon Warrior at the Temple, he gets inadvertently chosen by the Master for training, and hilarity ensues. Can a clumsy, goofy fat glutton save the village from Tai Lung, the sinister snow leopard?

Dreamworks learned that you don't need to recognize the voice actors to get asses in seats. Jack Black does his Jack Black thing, but everyone else blends into their character and doesn't go all Robin Williams wacky on us. Seth Rogen and David Cross are delightfully amusing as Mantis and Crane; Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, and Lucy Liu have understated spots as Tigress, Monkey and Viper. As you can see from the animal choices, they did some kung fu movie research before they made this, as the "Furious Five" are modeled after the 5 Animal Styles of Shaolin Kung Fu. And while much of the gags are on panda's big belly and goofy nature, when Master Shifu- played perfectly by Dustin Hoffman- decides to train the big galoot, the fantastic "chase the dumpling" sequence is as exciting as any such "battle" from a real kung fu film.

They even inject some emotion into the tale with Mr. Ping (the always-excellent James Hong), Panda's unlikely father, who is a duck. I expected this to be forgettable but fun, and it ended up surprising me. I would not mind being forced to watch this a dozen times with kids, and while Jack Black may grate on my nerves on the sixth viewing, Dustin Hoffman's wizened red panda and James Hong's hilarious duck characters will keep endearing the story to me. And the tragic character of Tai Lung, voiced by Ian McShane, is not your typical villain. It also helps that the animation is gorgeous; if this is the first kung fu film you've seen since critics told you to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon you'll be pleasantly surprised.

3. WALL*E
My full review has plenty of gushing, so I'll try to hold back. Imagine a simple story about a trash-compacting robot in the far future, the last of his kind still dutifully cleaning up our mess on Earth. His only friend is a cockroach, until one day he gets a visitor from above. And for the entire first act of the movie there is no real dialogue. Now imagine being in a theater full of kids watching this first act, with few if any big splashes or booms to keep them occupied. I thought it would be a nightmare of squalling and kicking and whining. But when I saw WALL*E at an early show, the kids were silent. It was as gripping for them as it was for me, watching this comical little robot go through his daily routine of crushing junk, saving little doodads that caught one of his mechanical eyes, finding Twinkies for his cockroach pal to sleep in, and watching a battered VHS tape of Hello Dolly. When Eva, a flying robot seemingly designed by Apple's SETI division arrives, we get a touching cybernetic love story that brought tears to my cynical old peepers.

It's so damn effective that you almost don't want WALL*E to have his adventure, where he meets the apex of human consumerism on a space ark where they await Earth's renewal. This was a terrific gamble, sticking such an obvious jab of social commentary in such a sentimental film. Chaplin did it, but he was Chaplin. Well, Pixar got away with it because they're Pixar- I think they only people who complained were Fox News and the Fat Acceptance wackos who envied the Buy-n-Large hoverchairs. The movie doesn't give us easy solutions or perfect endings, which is even braver. It says that fixing things will be hard work, but we can do it. It speaks volumes more than the insipid Oscar-bait of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and if I had my druthers it would be competing there instead of this category.

So, my conclusion?

This year Pixar has it cinched- WALL*E is not only a new masterpiece on a visual and technical level, but simply one of the best stories this year, animated or not. If people think The Dark Knight got screwed out of a Best Picture nomination, WALL*E fans should be even angrier at the Animated Feature category. At least the Globes separate Comedy/Musical from Drama, which seems a bit more fair. I think as more movies like Beowulf, 300, and Sin City blur the lines between animated and traditional film, this category may disappear, or perhaps used for only traditional hand-drawn animation. Time and technology will tell. Disney is returning to traditional feature animation with The Princess and the Frog this year, and both Kung Fu Panda and Ratatouille have credit sequences that seem to yearn for the old days of hand-drawn. Let's hope we see more of it, and this category can get more than 3 nominees in the years to come.

The LAMB Devours the Oscars - Best Animated Feature

Editor's note: Welcome to the fourth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!









By Jess from Insight Into Entertainment

The Oscar nominations came out last week, and I for one was pleasantly surprised about most of the actor nominations and movies. I'll probably be disappointed by the actual winners because they won't be the ones I want, but I doubt I'd be surprised. Anyway, one category I was particularly surprised to see such a small selection and relatively odd choices was best animated feature, which I was assigned to discuss for the LAMB Oscar Event. As expected Ratatouille was there. However, I was not expecting the other two, because other awards events hadn't included either of them. First, Persepolis was probably just not quite on the radar of the other awards, but the buzz and importance of it obviously penetrated the Oscar voters. The second one was Surf's Up, which I thought was just another penguin movie that had missed the year of the penguins (I loved March of the Penguins and thought Happy Feet was good, but I think penguins have been done now). The movies I expected to be there beyond Ratatouille were not, including The Simpsons Movie, Bee Movie, and Shrek the Third, which had all been nominated for other awards.

Since I do not live in a major metropolitan area, Persepolis will not be coming to my theater before the Oscars. However, a fellow movie blogger (Ferdy on Films) has written an extremely thorough review of the movie, which I draw on for my description. Persepolis follows the story of a woman reminiscing about her childhood in Iran and then in Europe. She wants to be modern and likes many things from outside Iran - Bruce Lee, punk music, ABBA, etc., all of which are forbidden after the rise of Islamic law. She is sent to live with family in Vienna, which doesn't work out. She grows up and still feels like an outsider, so she returns to Iran, but still doesn't find what she's looking for. It's described as a coming of age tale of an outsider who can't find a home to belong. It's based on graphic novels and the animation is obviously derived from the feel of graphic novels, being mostly black and white with a comic-feel of the animation. I think it's a remarkable story, and a new kind of animated movie to be made, but I'm not sure it's worthy of the Oscar. The animation is not spectacular or particularly nuanced, and holds on to the graphic novel and never really leaves the 2-dimensional space.

I was very pleasantly surprised watching Surf's Up. First, it's not a traditional cartoon story about penguins. It's an animated, (obviously) fictional, documentary about surfing penguins. There are interviews about the main character, a surfer named Z who died in a tournament a while ago. The main interviewee, Cody (voiced by Shia LeBoeuf), idolized the lost Z and is coming to compete in the tournament. He comes from Antarctica and has never been able to prove how good a surfer he is. The documentary people follow his journey to get to the Z memorial tournament. Cody arrives, gets hurt on the big waves on Pen Gu Island. Luckily there is a life guard, Lani (Zooey Deschanel) around to save him and then take care of him with the help of a washed up surfer (Jeff Bridges - perfectly channeling "The Dude" from time to time). The washed up surfer shows him how to make a new surf board that will help win the whole thing. Of course the washed up surfer turns out to be Z, who faked his death so as not to lose to the younger Tank. Cody and Tank compete, along with Chicken Joe (perfectly voiced by Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder), and of course I won't tell you who wins. Cody and Lani fall for each other and Z re-emerges to save the day. The reason this movie really struck me is both the style and the animation. The mockumentary could easily have been done by Christopher Guest and his recurring cast of kooky characters, but it happened to be animated penguins. So the script is really sharp with lots of funny bits, though most of it being as predictable as a Christopher Guest mockumentary. They did a good job creating a diverse cast of characters using many different species of penguins. It was the animation that really awed me - it was animated such that it was a camera capturing the images - with only one thing being in focus at a time. The person talking would be in focus, but the background would be blurry. It really came into a 3-D perspective and kept the idea that it was a documentary going throughout. Excellent choice by the Oscar committee, and probably overlooked by many in the theaters. However, I don't think it will win either.

I do think the Oscar will go to Ratatouille, and for a change, I think it also deserves it. The animated offering from Pixar, Ratatouille, was notoriously hard to sell - it's about a rat and the title is a stew that most people have never heard of. There are a hundred titles that would have made the movie easier to sell - "Underground in Paris", or "The Little Chef" (a phrase even used in the film). However, people flocked to this movie and loved it. Basically, it's a terrific story about being true to yourself, but trying to realistically find yourself at the intersection of different worlds. It's everything the Disney/Pixar movies have always been about - with the addition of pretty exceptional animation. This is the first CGI-animated movie I've ever seen that creates people with realistic facial expressions and twitches. Unfortunately, that skill extends to creating too-realistic shots of a very nice family of rats swarming out of a man-hole, or across a floor. That's where the heebie jeebies came in - I actually had to look away twice. It's the story of a young rat, Remy, who knows he could make better food than the garbage his kind are stuck with. He seeks out the restaurant of his favorite chef in Paris, the deceased Gusteau (who comes to him in hallucinations to tell him what to do). Of course a rat is not allowed in a restaruant kitchen, so he teams up with a lowly garbage boy and they start creating magnificent dishes that raise the declining status of the restaurant, making everyone happy. Ultimately, Remy's family accepts him for his "foodie nature" and Remy and the garbage boy create wonderful food in a kitchen no one is allowed to see. It doesn't cater too much to any one demographic, and is easy to enjoy by all - particually if rats don't give you the heebie jeebies. I think it has spectacular animation, a fun storyline, and will win the Oscar.