Ranking the Oscar nominated shorts: 2002-2011

Well, lets pause and take a break here. I've reviewed ten years worth of Oscar-nominated animated shorts, and since the history of this category can be broken down into eight ten-year blocks, we should pause and take a look back every ten years. And how would I look back? Well, I like making ranked lists, so I figure why not rank the films by how much I liked them? There have been a total of fifty nominated shorts, meaning that there was five nominees every year. It's the second time in a ten year stretch that has happened, and the first one was 2001-2010. I've seen 49 of the 50 nominees, so it's a good time to reflect on the shorts that I just saw.

And remember, this is solely by how much I liked the short. There are excellent films that rank low because it didn't click with me, and mediocre shorts that rank highly because I have terrible tastes.

NULL: Lorenzo (2004)
It's the film Disney refuses to release, a fact that still drives me absolutely nuts.

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Ticket Tape Parade for Best Animated Short Oscar Win!

So I saw this today on Cartoon Brew (one of the best sources for animation news and info). Apparently the City of Shreveport, LA celebrated the Oscar win by The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore - which was made in Shreveport - in an unprecedented way on Monday March 5. They threw an entire ticker tape parade in honor of directors William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. It's good to see an entire community embrace the Best Animated Short Oscar enough to do such a thing, but then again it is Louisiana, so they're probably just looking for any excuse to celebrate. Still, I'm pretty bummed I missed such a thing.

Here's the original post on Cartoon Brew.

Some pictures courtesy of Shreveport's Flickr.

 More after the cut

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Best Animated Short - 2011

Well, I might as well somewhere, and why not post the review for this year, which I posted two weeks ago on Facebook. It's the only chance I can get a review up before the Oscars until next year. Anyways, this will be the 80th time the Best Animated Short award has been awarded, dating back to the 1932 ceremony, back when Grand Hotel won the Best Picture Oscar (which was its only nomination. Things were different then.) I don't pretend that I know enough about animation history to know if it is truly reflective of animation history the past 80 years. (I do know that it's often been criticized for passing on truly great animation. I know that they did that frequently in the 1940s and 1950s by giving notice to some of the lesser works from Warner Bros. while ignoring their truly great films). What I do know is that there's been a lot of changes in the animated short film category itself. (This next part will be similar to the introduction last night, but I think it's worth repeating.

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