Module 11: Western Europe

Less than 24 hours until the Oscar nominations are announced, which means that a new set of nominees for the Best Animated Short category will be unveiled. That's actually far more interesting to me than the question of Best Picture nominees, although I've been much more active in watching the hopefuls this year than in years past. As far as Best Picture contenders go, I've already seen Argo, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, and Les Miserables. If all of them make it then that's seven I've seen already. Nobody knows how many Best Picture nominees there will be, but there's an outside shot that I'll have seen all of the Best Picture nominees before the nominees are even announced, a first for me.*

*Unless of course they choose to include Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour, and Skyfall. I have yet to see those. 

Best Animated Short is where it's at anyways. Unfortunately I had seen five of the shortlisted films back in November when the shortlist was announced, and I am still at five. I originally predicted Adam and Dog, Combustible, The Eagleman Stag, Paperman, and Tram, but I'm kind of doubting my pick of Combustible. I had picked it because Katsuhiro Otomo is quite a big name in animation after making Akira, and Combustible was one film where there is not even a trailer, and the Academy seems to like to nominate those films that are virtually impossible to watch. However, it is Japanese and with the exception of Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, Mt. Head, Howl's Moving Castle, and La Maison en Petits Cubes, the Academy hasn't embraced much in Japanese animation. Plus somebody I talked to that has a vote said he was less than impressed. I know that's only one voter, but Dripped might be a safer vote. It is well designed and pays tribute to a great artist in Jackson Pollack. And that would help because I had seen Dripped, meaning there would be only two of my predictions I'm missing.

Of course the Academy could screw with us and nominate Combustible, The Fall of the House of Usher, Fresh Guacamole, Head Over Heels (I still really want to see that even without a nomination),  and The Longest Daycare. We won't know until tomorrow.
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Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 1982-1991

Well, we have gotten through the third decade of reviewing Oscar nominated shorts. And you know what that means, don't you? It means G-men! To be shot down like a...okay, I guess we're getting ahead of ourselves. Actually, it's time for yet another super special awesome post where I rank the nominated films in the ten year period we just finished, just like what I did for 1992-2001 and 2002-2011. Anyways, I just think it's fun, even if you'll probably disagree with almost all of the list.

So the era we just finished established a record for fewest nominations in a ten year period, one that may never be broken. After all, the rules state that the minimum number of nominees in a year is three. Even if less than three meet the scoring minimum, they just take the three films with the best average score and name them the nominees. So I don't believe it's possible that there would be a year with only two nominees, like Best Makeup did in 2002 or Best Original Song did this past year. (Embarrassing.) Every single year in this ten year period had exactly three nominees, so there were exactly 30 nominees to rank. And I'm able to rank them all, because this was the first ten-year period where I was able to watch all of the nominees. And how do they rank? Let's get started and find out.

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Best Animated Short - 1985

And we have now arrived at 1985, the year of my birth. Now I'm sure anybody would be biased towards their year of birth, but I do think 1985 was something special. For example, it was the year of "We are the World" and the Live Aid concerts, which raised millions of aid for the famine in Ethiopia. The NES launched in October, lifting console gaming from the Atari Crash and making it the profitable industry it is today. Calvin and Hobbes debuts in newspapers, beginning a 10-year run where they become an integral part of pop culture. And that was the year the Kansas City Royals, the team I grew up watching, ended years of playoff futility by winning the World Series.

Yeah, there were a few dark sides of 1985. There was the New Coke fiasco. There was the hijacking of TWA flight 847, which resulted in only one death, and the crash of Japan Airlines flight 123, which resulted in 520. And the Royals have gone on an even longer 27-year streak where they never even made the post-season. Nevertheless, 1985 was a pretty good year.

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