Frontrunners: Best Animated Feature Nominees Announced

It has begun...

Five films have been nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar...

The choices are no surprise, really. Zootopia, Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, My Life as a Zucchini, and The Red Turtle. Two are universally-acclaimed Disney animated features, one is a stop-motion adventure from a beloved house, another is a stop-motion film from a mainstay distributor, and the last one is a French production with help from none other than Studio Ghibli. In a year of strong mainstreamers and very strong indies, this batch isn't too bad.

We could perhaps argue that something like Your Name. or April, and the Extraordinary World deserved the last indie slot over The Red Turtle, or we could argue that Finding Dory was better than Moana, but overall I'm pretty content. Dory not making it is a bit bittersweet for me. I can acknowledge the movie's issues, at the same time it would've nice to see a film about disabilities at least be in the running. But a spade is a spade, I felt Moana had a tighter story structure and a little more verve. On the bright side, Life, Animated is up for Best Documentary, a film about how the Disney animated classics greatly helped an autistic boy through his life. Kind of evens things out, for me.

I'll be very happy if either Zootopia or Kubo take it home. One is Disney Animation at their greatest (I have it close to the Walt films I hold so near-and-dear), the other is a LAIKA masterpiece. Both near-perfect films, and of course the Academy Awards lived up to their predictability by not giving one of these two marvels a Best Picture nomination. I guess Toy Story 3's nomination will be the last time the Academy puts an inferior cartoon movie on the level of a "real", "legitimate" live-action movie... Despite having one more slot, but no. Nine it is. What else is new?

On the bright side, Kubo and the Two Strings broke some ground! It is the first caricature animation film to get a nod for Best Visual FX since The Nightmare Before Christmas... Way back in 1993, when there was no "Best Animated Feature" category. The Jungle Book is also up for that, though the movie is technically a 99% fully animated movie with one live-action element. Given the acclaim, it could've been up for Best Picture or Best Animated Feature, but the latter category is obviously for animated movies that aren't trying to be exact recreations of real life.

Best Animated Short... One mainstreamer (Pixar's Piper), a VR short by Feast director Patrick Osborne (Pearl), a film made possible by Pixar's Co-op program (Borrowed Time), and two indie entries (Blind Vaysha and Pearl Cider and Cigarettes). I'm rooting for Borrowed Time, not only because it was a great Western piece for adults that was smart (American adult animation not relying on gratuitous violence and sex?!), but because I heard from a reputable source that The Walt Disney Company gave Pixar guff over this project. I want it to win, even if it doesn't teach a lesson or two.

Anyways, it seems obvious that Zootopia takes home the feature statue. What takes home the other statue?

To recap, I'm rooting for:
Feature: Zootopia and/or Kubo and the Two Strings 
Short: Borrowed Time
Docu: Life, Animated

What say you?

The Banjo of Pixar: 'Borrowed Time' on Vimeo For Limited Time

For a while, we've heard about a little project called Borrowed Time...

It's a short film from two Pixarians, Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj. They were working on it for five years while working on the studio's feature-length pictures. Shown at various film festivals since last year, it is not a family film by any means, and is something that Pixar - and before anyone assumes, I do love Pixar and I think they excel at making family films - would probably not think of making.

Before I go on, here's where you can watch it. It's on Vimeo for a limited time, as it is now a Staff Pick. What follows are spoilers...

It's a Western, albeit a very grizzled and moody one. Poignant and very direct, it's about a sheriff who visits the very cliff where his father died. Through brief flashbacks to a wild wagon chase, we see that the sheriff - in attempting to save his father - was responsible. It comes as a shock, but yet none of it ever feels so forced. The short's aesthetic rings similar to Pixar's house style, but very detailed yet very abstract. The humans feel like they're from a Pixar film, but an unmade, PG-13 Pixar film.

Coats himself emphasized the significance of the darker tone, saying "In America, animation has largely become synonymous with kids’ films, whereas elsewhere around the world it’s celebrated as a medium that can be used to tell any story. We feel this cultural difference limits the potential audience and range of themes in American animation, and is a large part of why we chose to make Borrowed Time."

Beautifully said. When I clamor for more adult-oriented animated features here in America, this is the kind of thing I'm asking for. Not lowbrow, middle school-level raunchfests like Sausage Party, or a good chunk of what passes as "adult animation" on television.

Hamou-Lhadj adds, "Having worked on family films with a lot of heart and comedy, we wanted to do something outside of our comfort zone: a serious, action drama. We knew this would be a huge challenge for us."

In a way, this short kind of reminds me of Don Bluth's Banjo the Woodpile Cat. He pitched it during his time at Disney, it got turned down, so he and a couple of the young animators worked on it outside of the studio for roughly four years. It attempted to explore what early-to-mid 70s Disney was staying away from (more classical animation, legitimately perilous situations, less comedic tone), things Bluth pushed for before his exit. Eventually, Disney revisited the bite and the gusto that made the Walt films work, Pixar however has yet to go for the subject matter of something like Borrowed Time. Will they ever? Probably not, but perhaps - hopefully - another American animation studio can do the same. Someone smaller maybe, like Reel FX.

It'll be offline in roughly two weeks...