Best Animated Short - 1991

So one thing about writing these reviews is that they take a lot of time to write. Before starting this project I wrote a couple of reviews for the nominees for the current year, but it never really registered how long they take, as I wrote them only once a year. When I started this project it became clear that I underestimated how long it would take to write these reviews. In the beginning a review of five nominees was taking me a good three hours. This includes the time it takes to watch a short to jog my memory of it and writing the review. Now it's taking me five to six hours. I'm spending a lot more time per short, and I don't even think the quality is getting any better. (Of course if I had any regular readers, which I don't, I might be able to get some feedback, *hint hint*)

However, hopefully things will be getting better. After all, we have left the era of five nominees and entering into the Golden Age of Three Nominees. In the 20 years between 1992-2011, five nominees were the norm. There were only two years where there were fewer than five nominees: 1996 and 2000. Conversely, in the 27 years between 1965-1991, three nominees were the norm. There were only four years with more than three nominees: 1968, 1974, 1975, and 1977. I went over the rules for this category as it currently stands in an earlier post. It states that any three to five films that fulfill a certain score criteria gets a nomination. I have no idea why there is this disparity in the number of nominees. Was there a rule change sometime between the 1991 Oscars and the 1992 Oscars, one that changed the number of nominees (with exceptions) or one that changed the score limit? Did people just grade harder? Unfortunately I hadn't been able to find the answer, as I can't find the Academy Award rules from back then.

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