keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Today is traditionally the day when everyone complains how boring the telecast was, how awful the fashions were and how out of touch the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is. I've stopped watching the Oscar telecast, finding it much more efficient to read the list of awards the next day in 5 minutes or less. My take on the Oscars has always been that it's just a fancy marketing tool. A film that wins or loses is the same as film it was before the win or loss. Perception may change, but not the actual film. And as perceptions keep changing over time anyway, an win or a loss is just a blip in the how the world judges a film or the people who made it. While La Luna lost for best animated short, it will have the last laugh. Being paired with Brave this coming summer, it will be seen by more people than the winning film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore . Rango 's win will probably allow ILM to make another feature, but the film's influence w...

Howard Fine of the New York Film Critics Circle writes about why the group declined to give an award this year for the best animated feature. "To me, the key word in that award title is "feature." It's not an award strictly for animation -- it's for the whole movie, which happens to be animated. And I'm hard-pressed to think of an animated film this year that could make that claim, among the 18 recently announced as the animated titles that qualified for this year's Oscar. "Because it's not about the animation -- it's about what's being animated. If the script is dumb or flat or just plain not funny (and, like it or not, the vast majority of animated films are comedies aimed at children), I don't care how spectacular it is visually -- it's not cutting it."

I'm interested in this year's Oscar race for Best Animated Feature because my perception, right or wrong, is that it was a weak year. The various film critic organizations have begun to weigh in on their bests of the year, and Rango seems to be off to an early lead. The Boston , L.A. and S.F . critics have picked it as the best animated feature. The N.Y. film critics chose Tintin , though Richard Corliss of Time also picked Rango for his 10 best list. It's interesting that with critics from three major cities accounted for, there isn't a Pixar or DreamWorks film mentioned.

The following 18 films have been submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the category of Best Animated Feature. With 18 submissions, there can be five nominees. The Adventures of Tintin Alois Nebel Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Arthur Christmas Cars 2 A Cat in Paris Chico & Rita Gnomeo & Juliet Happy Feet Two Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil Kung Fu Panda 2 Mars Needs Moms Puss in Boots Rango Rio The Smurfs Winnie the Pooh Wrinkles I have to admit to not having seen many of these films and some of them have not yet been released. Many of them are sequels or spin-offs. At least three contain motion capture ( Tintin , Happy Feet 2 and Mars Needs Moms ). And none have a strong buzz, at least so far as I've heard. While it is great that this many animated features are being made, both from an employment and audience standpoint, it's disheartening that this year's Oscar winner will likely be something that won't stand...

I don't take any awards seriously in that I don't take anybody's word that something is the "best" in any given category. However, I do take awards seriously as a marketing tool. In the animated feature category, I'm happy to see that The Illusionist received a nomination. Of the three nominees (the other two being Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon ), it is the film most likely to benefit from the nomination in that it is the only one of the three that is still in theatrical release. This should give it a bump at the box office. It will also boost the eventual DVD sales. The other two films have already made most of their money. Their theatrical runs are over and their DVD sales peaked before last Christmas. While the nominations may goose their DVD sales a bit, the overall impact on their profits will be minimal. The nomination of The Illusionist is also good for drawn animation. Anyone trying to finance a drawn feature will use this nominati...

If you heard that a political candidate was supported by 11% of the electorate, would that impress you? If 11% of people chose a particular toothpaste, would you change your buying habits? How about if 11% of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected a film as Best Picture. Should it win? Well now it could. The Academy has decided to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. The Academy has been unenthusiastic about nominating films that do the best box office. The Best Picture nominees are films that only a minority of movie goers have seen. As a result, the Oscar telecast suffers in the ratings as few people watching know the films being considered. By expanding the number of nominations to ten, the studios hope that films that gross more than $100 million have a chance to get a Best Picture nomination. The public doesn't know how many votes a Best Picture winner receives. The numbers are as closely guarded as the votes in ...

( UPDATE : Thanks to Alan Cook , here's a link to four of the five animated shorts that are nominated. The only missing film is La Maison en Petits Cubes . ) The nominees for Best Animated Feature are Disney's Bolt , DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda and Pixar's Wall-E . It's a pretty good bet that Wall-E will take the prize. The only film of the three that could materially benefit from an Oscar would be Bolt , as the DVD is not yet out. Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda are done in theatres (barring a re-issue) and their DVDs were on sale for the Christmas season, so the bulk of their DVD sales are over. Wall-E also got a Best Original Screenplay nomination, though I would say that the odds are against winning in that category. All of the Wall-E writers are animation artists, so it's a good bet that the writers in the Academy won't be voting for it. They would prefer to keep the category in the family, so to speak. Wall-E did not get a nomination for Best Pict...