LOGORAMA WINS! LOGORAMA WINS!!!

The animation Oscars went to Up for best feature and Logorama for best short. I am totally stoked!!! Also happy to see Kathryn Bigelow win for best director, the first woman to get that distinction, ever; Christoph Waltz for his incredible performance in Inglourious Basterds.

OMG awesome-sauce...if this doesn't get the Oscar for best animated short there is no justice...

And how the HELL did they get around all the Intellectual Property issues? Canal+ backed this so it's gotta be legit.

Hilarious freaking short.

Oscar Nom Nom time...

Animated Feature Film
• Coraline Henry Selick
• Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson
• The Princess and the Frog John Musker and Ron Clements
• The Secret of Kells Tomm Moore
• Up Pete Docter

Again, Ponyo gets shut out. The Secret of Kells is a surprise, although the small distribution company, Cartoon Saloon, that did a small release of the movie in December pushed it and pushed it hard. Kells is already a winner if it wins or not for the nomination.

My pick is Up, though. I mean Princess and the Frog is a sentimental favorite because it's the return to form of Disney traditional animation and also the first 2D Pixar film. But Up is just masterful, affecting, effective and powerful. Up also was nominated for BEST PICTURE, and it deserves it. This is one freaking POWERFUL movie. The game-changing possibility of Ed Asner being nominated as Best Actor for his voice performance in Up did not materialize, sadly.

Short Film (Animated)
• French Roast Fabrice O. Joubert
• Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell
• The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) Javier Recio Garcia
• Logorama Nicolas Schmerkin
• A Matter of Loaf and Death Nick Park

Another example of the disconnect between Annie Awards and Academy Awards short-subject nominations. If you did a Venn diagram of the nominations for the same category in each horse race, there would be no intersection. It is shocking that Nick Park didn't get nominated by the Annie nominators. Aardman Animation is usually an Annie favorite, and would have easily trounced those in the field for the Short Subject Annie, especially considering the weakness of the field. Pups Of Liberty WTF???

Music (Original Score)
• Avatar James Horner
• Fantastic Mr. Fox Alexandre Desplat
• The Hurt Locker Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
• Sherlock Holmes Hans Zimmer
• Up Michael Giacchino

Randy Newman's song-oriented score for Princess and the Frog was disqualified about a month ago, so the lack of score nom was not a surprise. Joe Hishaishi's brilliant score for Ponyo, however, was shut out. :P

Music (Original Song)
• “Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
• “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
• “Loin de Paname” from Paris 36 Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas
• “Take It All” from Nine Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
• “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from Crazy Heart Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Love that song "Almost There." But "The Weary Kind" is the favorite. Too bad, Randy Newman deserves some love for his authentic take on the musics of New Orleans.

Looks like there will be 5 nominees for the Animated Feature Oscar

Here we go...they're under starter's orders...the 20 qualified films that will be winnowed down into 5 nominees for the Animated Feature Oscar.

* “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”
* “Astro Boy”
* “Battle for Terra”
* “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
* “Coraline”
* “Disney’s A Christmas Carol”
* “The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer”
* “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
* “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”
* “Mary and Max”
* “The Missing Lynx”
* “Monsters vs. Aliens”
* “9”
* “Planet 51”
* “Ponyo”
* “The Princess and the Frog”
* “The Secret of Kells”
* “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”
* “A Town Called Panic”
* “Up”

You haven't heard of many of these? You will. The Oscar rush will probably bring all the movies that haven't been in theatres locally here in LA to theatres between now and December 31st. I'm sure many of these aren't worthy. However, with Up and Ponyo likely nominees, it's likely that something good will wind up winning.

Annie Awards tonight...

...I'll have the results tomorrow.

BTW I forgot to mention that the Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees are Wall-E, Bolt and Kung Fu Panda; "Down To Earth," the end-credits song from Wall-E, is one of three nominees for best song, sharing the nomination with two songs from Slumdog Millionaire; and that the Best Animated Short Oscar category again has almost nothing in common with the same category in the Annies.

Annie Awards Best Animated Short nominees 2009
Glago's Guest - Walt Disney Animation Studios
Hot Dog - Bill Plympton Studio
Presto - Pixar Animation Studios
Sebastian's Voodoo - Joaquin Baldwin
Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death - Aardman Animations Ltd.

Academy Awards Best Animated Short nominees 2009
La Maison en Petits Cubes A Robot Communications Production, Kunio Kato
Lavatory - Lovestory A Melnitsa Animation Studio and CTB Film Company Production, Konstantin Bronzit
Oktapodi (Talantis Films), A Gobelins, L’école de l’image Production, Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand
Presto (Walt Disney), A Pixar Animation Studios Production, Doug Sweetland
This Way Up A Nexus Production, Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes

OK, Presto's there on both lists. But that's it. As it turned out last year, if Peter & The Wolf was up for the Annies I might have voted for it...it was pretty damn cool and deserved to win the Oscar it did. People are raving about Oktapodi but I haven't seen it yet. Why is there this disconnect between what the Academy votes on and what the Annies vote on with regard to animated shorts? It seems like there is more of a focus on the work of established studios on the Annies list, and more indies, oddly enough, on the Academy's shortlist. If that's the case, the Annies nomination process needs to change.

This should have been on the Oscar shortlist...

Instead, Nina Paley is still struggling to rescue Sita Sings The Blues from being held hostage by music publishers. This 11 minute clip should tell you how strong this is.

Watch this and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.

Wall-E, Bashir strike Globes Gold...

Wall-E has rolled out in front of the competition for the Best Animated Picture Oscar by winning the Golden Globe for the same category. Waltz With Bashir also waltzed home to Israel with the Golden Globe for best foreign language film...sort of an ironic gift considering current events. [sigh]

Voting for the Annies starts tomorrow, and I have a general idea where my vote is going. I'll let y'all know how that goes. It will prolly be a multi-day affair for me if they allow me to put a bookmark in my ballot like they did last time.

OK, this was definitely Oscar-worthy...

One of my favorite animators of all time was Fred Stuhr. Fred was this jumpy adrenaline junkie of a guy, a former competitive skateboarder, who liked fast cars and fast drugs and fast life. Yet somehow or another his attention was held by the infinitely slow process of doing dimensional animation: manipulating puppets in infinitely small increments, frame by frame by frame. His favorite part of the whole process was building things: the puppets, the sets, the vehicles, the props. He literally lived in his studio, surrounded by a miniature back lot of sets for projects he had finished, and projects yet to be finished.

Somehow or another he would blow through these projects fast. He primarily did music videos...Adam from Tool still claims that he directed those two breakthrough videos, Sober and Prison Sex, but a few of us knew better. Alas, this genius wasn't here to last. Fred died way too young in a car crash, before he got a chance to do anything long-form. I showed him a video of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the mid-'90s being a time when animated features had to be musicals, and that was a musical that might be in sync with his dark visions. He never made it to that or any other feature. I can't complain about Tim Burton's take on the musical, with Johnny Depp as the perfect live-action choice for the haunted, revenge-obsessed barber. But I wonder what Fred would have done with it had he got the backing and the go-ahead.

But this is not an article about my friend Fred, who met his demise a little more than 10 years ago. It's about another masterful group of dimensional animators, and their creation: Peter and the Wolf, which won for Best Animated Short at the Academy Awards this year. The fact that this was passed up for the Annies is beyond me. As much as I enjoyed Your Friend, The Rat and How To Hook Up Your Home Theatre, I think that this is indeed the finest short I have seen of all screened in 2007.

Unlike Fred's gonzo approach to dimensional animation, the artisans at Se-Ma-For Pictures in Poland and British dimensional animator Suzie Templeton took 5 years to complete the short. Most of the film was done the old fashioned way: hands manipulating handmade puppets. However, CGI was used to create effects that were hard to create by hand in stop-motion time, like fog and floating balloons.

I suspect that this will be re-run on PBS Great Performances. Perhaps, maybe, it could be run as a yearly tradition? It's certainly gorgeous enough and strong enough to stand up to re-running.

One other thing before I wrap this post up: Cartoon Geeks favorite Persepolis will be coming back into theatres in April. This time you will have a choice of languages: the original French and a new English dub where original French voice actors Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni will be joined by Iggy Pop, Gena Rowlands, and Sean Penn. It will be initially going into 100 theatres...not a huge release, but 50 times bigger than its initial release in Los Angeles and New York City. Hopefully it will go wider as people get drawn into the little animated movie that could. The DVD will have both versions on it when it is released. When it comes out, people: GO SEE IT. You won't be disappointed.

Oscar winners and a CG note...

Much as I was rooting for Persepolis, and also as much as I liked Surf's Up, was there ever any doubt that Ratatouille, that wonderful story about a rodent gourmet chef, was going to win the best animated feature award? Year of the Rat indeed. Gong hay fa choy.

The animated short statuette went to Peter And The Wolf. Again, tremendous disconnect between Annies and Oscars on this one. Both How To Hook Up Your Home Theatre System and Your Friend, The Rat got robbed of the honor of being nominated, which bit the big one. Maybe I would have liked this crop if I would have gotten a chance to see 'em.

Also, the three songs in the running from Enchanted got cancelled out by a song from the live action movie Once.

So thus ends the frantic award season.

The next Cartoon Geeks podcast should be up in a few days, and we'll be recording another one fairly soon after. Meanwhile, try the fruit and cheese plate, it's excellent.

Animation Oscar Noms...

Best Animated Feature
(I called it!)
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf's Up

Best Animated Short Subject
(WTF???)
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf
(Note: all of the Annie-nominated shorts were DINKED by the Academy!)

Best Original Song
"Falling Slowly" from Once
"Happy Working Song" from Enchanted
"Raise It Up" from August Rush
"So Close" from Enchanted
"That's How You Know" from Enchanted