The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially revealed the nominees for the 84th Academy Awards which will be presented Februari 24th. It was a big surprise to see that Steven Spielberg's 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn' wasn't even nominated in the category 'Animated Feature Film' while it had just won the Golden Globe on January 15th ('Best Animated Feature Film') and is nominated for a BAFTA award in the category 'Animated Film' along with 'Arthur Christmas' and 'Rango'. The Golden Globes are awarded each year by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and are usually on par with the outcome of the Oscars.
So, no 'Tintin' but five other animated features will be eligible to receive the Academy award, two of which were also nominated for the Globes:
'A Cat in Paris' directed by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli.
'Chico & Rita' by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal.
'Kung Fu Panda 2' directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson.
'Puss in Boots' directed by Chris Miller.
'Rango' directed by Gore Verbinski.
It is the first time that Pixar isn't part of the nominated since the category was adopted in 2001. apparently the voters decided 'Cars 2' wasn't really what they expected from Pixar but instead favored the 2D 'tradigitally' animated 'Chico & Rita' and the French 'A Cat in Paris'. 'Tintin', created with motion capture of the actors (just like in 'Avatar') had a tough time. In 2010 the Academy changed the game by stipulating that "motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75% of the picture's running time." Check out the BAFFA rules here.
However, Tintin isn't completely out of the picture, as Spielbergs favorite composer John Williams was nominated for 'Orginal Score' (he is actually nominated twice, also for Spielberg's live action film 'War Horse'). The category Animated shorts also holds five nominations:
'Dimanche/Sunday' directed by Patrick Doyon.
'The Fantastic Flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' by William Joyce and B. Oldenburg.
'La Luna' directed by Enrico Casarosa.
'A Morning Stroll' directed by Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe.
'Wild Life' directed by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.
'The Fantastic Flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' is based on William Joyce's digital childrens book for the I-pad. In 2007 Disney released the computer animated 'Meet the Robinsons' which was also based on one of Joyce's childrens books ('A day with Wilbur Robinson'). Joyce also worked as character designer and concept artist on 'Toy Story' (1995), 'A Bug's Life' (1998) and 'Robots' (2005).
'A Morning stroll' (left) was created by London based animation Studio AKA. Grant Orchard's short is also nominated for a BAFTA award in the category 'Short Animation'. The BAFTA's will be presented on Sunday February 12th.'La Luna' is created by Enrico Casarosa, who is head story at Pixar and also worked on 'Cars', 'Cars 2', 'Ratatouille' and Up'. The theatrical short has been in production for two years and will be released on June 22nd along with Pixar's 'Brave'. La Luna is based on Italo Calvino's story 'The distance to the moon' and features a young boy, his father and his grand father on a fishing trip, unaware they are to embark on an exciting lunar adventure.
Like Patrick Doyon's ' Dimanche', 'Wild Life' is also a Canadian animated short. It is created by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, who already received an Oscar in this category in 1999 for their work on the short 'When the Day Breaks'. Watch 'Wildlife' and Dimanche/Sunday at Cartoonbrew.
Althought I think it's a real honor for 'Chico & Rita' to receive an Academy Award nomination, I still think a CGI feature will hawk the prize. I'm putting my money on Paramount's first CGI animated feature 'Rango' (all animation is done without motion capture by George Lucas' ILM). Rango was completely awesome. I mean come on, check out this guy, isn't he great ?
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