Best Animated Short - 2009

 This was originally written in March 1, 2010, over a month since the Academy Award nominees were announced, and over a month since I saw all of the nominees. This year set a personal record for earliest time to watch all of the nominees in a category. I had seen all of them by the day the nominees were announced. How is that possible? Well that year, the Academy announced the shortlist back in November, so I had an early start in trying to catch the nominees. I finally saw the last nominee the night of the announcement. And then I waited a whole month to write this review. Why? Mainly because the category just isn't too exciting this year.

Best Animated Short - 2010

Well, that I've got the awards from this year done, let's begin our trek backwards through the hallowed history of the animated shorts. Our first stop is the shorts of 2010. I originally wrote this review back in February of 2011, before the Oscars, or even the theatrical showings of the Oscar nominated shorts. Yes, I I did watch all of the nominees before the showings. One good thing about independent filmmakers is that they generally put their films up online, although that didn't really help this particular year. Three of the films were readily available online (although one was dubbed in French), while Pixar was trying out the experiment of entering a short for its qualifying run the same year as its wide release. However, one nominee, The Lost Thing, was nowhere to be found. My sister and I tried to find the final short on video sites and bit torrents, but to no avail. In the end we sucked it up and bought the DVD, under the pretense of being a late birthday present. The DVD arrived two weeks before the Oscars, just days before the showing. And then it took me two weeks to begin writing the review, which explains why it's largely incomprehensible. That and the fact I was writing this four days before a major exam.

Thoughts and Musings about this year's Oscar race

Well, this years Oscar race is over. If you're reading this blog, then you probably already knew that it went to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. It wasn't my favorite from this year (that would have been Wild Life), but it was a fine film and was well deserved for the win. Then again, all of the films are great, even the ones that I didn't like. I hope that someday you'll get a chance to watch them.

Anyways, here's a few things that I thought of while watching the Oscars.

-I was surprised to see that the Best Animated Short Oscar had been pushed to near the end of the ceremony. Normally they'd present the short categories near the beginning or the middle. I remember last year it was only the fourth award to be presented, but that's not the case this year.. In fact there were only four categories after it: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture. (Never mind that it took them an hour to present those four awards.) However, I don't mind this. Normally more important categories show up later, so the Best Animated Short category may be starting to gain prominence.

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.

Introduction

Well, here it is, my first official entry into the world of blogging. I've had a blog before, but I never used it properly as a blog. I just updated it sporadically with random junk like the Heart-Melters Gallery or my series on Randy Johnson's 300th win. But I never wanted to share anything from my daily life, nor did I have anything that I cared enough about to start a blog. I mean, I created a blog to share stuff about a fictional baseball team, but that never really got off the ground. That was four years ago. However, I have recently contributed a lot of writing about a particular interest of mine: the Best Animated Short category at the Academy Awards. I've been trying to review all of the films and putting it all on Facebook, but you know what? This warrants a blog. So I have joined the blogosphere.

So what is this blog for? Well, it's obviously for my reviews, which I've been doing backwards and have reached year 10 out of 80. But it could also be more than that. I could share some of the lists that I've been tossing around in my head, such as "The 10 Weirdest Oscar Nominated Shorts." I could post shorts that I've enjoyed that may not have been nominated for Best Animated Short but should have, like The Cat Piano. I could even venture out and write something Oscar or animation-related. We shall see.