Oscar 'toon race heats 'Up'

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has just announced that no fewer than 20 features have been submitted for consideration in the animated feature film category for the 82nd Academy Awards. This is at least three more than most pundits have been forecasting and, as this blog predicted first on Oct. 7, it almost certainly assures that the category will have five nominees instead of three for the first -- and only -- time since 2002. The list includes:

"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" and, of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the race: Disney/Pixar's "Up."

Is "Up," which is also mentioned on many pundits' lists of potential best picture nominees, a slam dunk to actually win in this category or could an "Up"-set be in the making? 

One place an "Up" beater could come from is Disney itself. After seeing "The Princess and the Frog" yesterday on the lot, I would say it could give some of the presumed front-runners (which also include Disney's "Ponyo" and Focus' "Coraline") a real run for the gold. It's a rousing New Orleans-set 'toon in the big splashy musical tradition of "The Little Mermaid."

With a raft of  toe-tapping songs by Randy Newman and beautiful traditional animation, this Dec. 11 release should be a huge crowd-pleaser and a future live Broadway adaptation for the studio. With a voice cast that includes "Dreamgirl" Anika Noni Rose and Oprah Winfrey, among others, it also happens to be the only real multiethnic entry on the list. In the year of Barack Obama and "Precious," that could be an added plus. Consider it a real contender in animated feature and other categories, particularly best song, where Disney plans to enter four tunes.

Disney, knowing it had an abundance of possibilities this year, opened its straight-to-DVD title "Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure" for a week in October at the El Capitan to help boost the number of animation entries this year, making it more likely that the category would have five nominees this year instead of the usual three and that their A-list titles like "Up," "Ponyo" and "Princess and the Frog" will all be among them. Robert Zemeckis' motion capture "A Christmas Carol" is also eligible but not considered to be a serious contender because the process is not pure animation even by the director's own admission.

Intriguingly, one of the more obscure titles on the list of entries, "The Secret of Kells," also has a minor Disney connection: Buena Vista International released the movie in Ireland. Variety reports that GKIDS, an offshoot of the New York International Children's Film Festival, will open the film for a one-week qualifying run on Dec. 4 in Burbank.

Another studio also seems to be aggressively working the animation race and that's 20th Century Fox  which has a real shot with Wes Anderson's terrific stop motion "Fantastic Mr. Fox." The studio also has its cash cow -- "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" -- on the list but unexpectedly came up with two more entries, including "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel", a Christmas release that is the sequel to the 2007 smash live action/animation hybrid "Alvin and the Chipmunks." The latter was also entered in 2007 but was later nixed for having too much live action. My guess is we'll see the same thing happen this year when the animation committee starts vetting the entries (each movie has to earn at least a 7.5 rating from committee members in order to qualify for the race, which should be an easy mark to reach for most).

Another mysterious title with Fox's fingerprints all over it is the Italian "El Delfin: La Historia de un Soñador" or "The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer" which Fox's international division opened in select Latin American countries in October and which is also listed on IMDB as a 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment release in America in 2010. This film also has yet to complete a qualifying run but obviously will be doing one.

The well-reviewed "Fantastic Mr. Fox," with heavyweight names like producer Scott Rudin, director Wes Anderson and stars George Clooney and Meryl Streep, is obviously a title Fox wants in the race and is helping its chances to be nominated by trying to qualify as many films as possible.

Looking at the ballooning list in this exemplary year for animation, I wish the Academy could nominate 10 'toons, just like best picture, but obviously that's not going to happen.

The final five nominees will likely be: "Coraline,"  "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Ponyo," "Princess and the Frog" and "Up."

Spoilers for a fifth slot could be "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" and a real dark horse, the Australian "Mary and Max" from Oscar winner Adam Elliott ("Harvey Krumpet," 2003 animated short winner) and which opened this year's Sundance Film Festival and is said to be a favorite among many animation insiders.

Photo: "The Princess and the Frog." Credit: Disney Enterprises

Comments

[RBBrittain]

Question: If "Up" is a potential nominee for Best Picture as well as Animated Feature Film, AND if, as you suggest, "The Princess and the Frog" (and possibly others) might be good enough to, as Tom put it, "down 'Up' ", does that mean we might see MORE than one animated film vying for Best Picture?

That's a good thing for this "Dreamgirls" fan who's cheering for Anika Noni Rose in "Frog". Why, if Disney used her along with Ed Asner in "Up" to push the little-known fact that animation voiceovers apparently qualify for acting Oscars (they're listed as actors in the Academy's "reminder list"), let's just say who knows what might happen?

[Ladyli1]

Hey- What happen with "9"? That was a really good film.

[Paul]

Don't care about Fantastic Mr. Fox or Cloudy With..., I hope Astro Boy makes the final cut. It was a terrific movie and deserved a better fate than the probable less than $25 million it will make at the boxoffice. Unless an animated movie is in 3d, it seems, audiences tend to reject it.

[Lionel]

Disney's 'A Christmas Carol' is not true frame by frame animation. They used Motion Capture technology that records and copies the movements of human actors in 'Real Time'.

The Academy's feature Animation eligibility requirements are:

“An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which movement and characters performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.”

Unfortunately, the Academy did not follow their own rules in the past with 'Happy Feet' (2006) which also used Motion Capture but it was awarded an Oscar in the Animation category. Contests and competitions are suppose to be based on RULES to supposedly make it a more even playing field. Academy appears to be very slow to change (new categories for Oscar awards).