It's Oscar Nominations Day, which means we found out which five animated short films would be joining the illustrious ranks of Oscar nominated shorts. As usual the announcements were made at a super early time of the morning. I was around to watch the announcement of the Best Animated Short category, but I'm making this post several hours later after running some errands. By now there are several other sites with posts featuring more detailed write-ups about the nominees, so I don't see why y'all bother to come check this out, but here we go: the five newest nominees in Best Animated Short history:
Affairs of the Art
Bestia
Boxballet
Robin Robin
The Windshield Wiper
I didn't venture to make a guess as to the nominations, but when looking at the shortlist and the films that did and didn't make it, I suppose I can't say that I'm entirely surprised at this list of nominations. I felt Affairs of the Art and Robin Robin were close to locks. And Bestia and The Windshield Wiper had about as much buzz as you might expect from animated shorts so their entry isn't a surprise. And I read several comments about how hard it was to find Boxballet so it's not a surprise to see that make the cut.
As far as the snubs, the one most people are going to talk about was Disney's Us Again not making it in. It's a cute and lively film, but with Disney/Pixar securing three-fifth of the Best Animated Feature nominees (with Encanto, Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon if you hadn't been paying attention), I'm okay with them being out of the running. The Musician is another film that got a significant amount of buzz that was shut out. Meanwhile, Joanna Quinn is the only nominee this year with a previous nomination to her name (for Famous Fred if you didn't read the fact in the shortlist post), but two others in search for their second nomination were left out: Erick Oh (for Namoo after being nominated last year for Opera) and Bastien Dubois (for Souvenir Souvenir after being nominated in 2010 for Madagascar: A Journey Diary). Meanwhile I'm a little bit disappointed that Step Into the River couldn't join Sister as the only films in Mandarin Chinese to receive nominations, but that seemed to be kind of a longshot.
Meanwhile, I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the film world. There was some attention paid to the fact that the Academy was making the ten-film lineup permanent, but it seems the only film that might have benefited greatly from that rule change was the Japanese epic Drive My Car. I have seen two of the Best Picture nominees in Dune and West Side Story, which is already an improvement over last year. I still have yet to see The Power of the Dog, the supposed front-runner with its 12 nominations, but it's on Netflix. Meanwhile, Belfast, Coda, Don't Look Up, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, and Nightmare Alley round out the rest of the Best Picture lineup.
As mentioned above, Disney/Pixar have three films in the Best Animated Feature category. The Mitchells vs. the Machines picked up a spot as expected, and in a little bit of a surprise the fifth spot with to Flee, which also received nominations for Best International Feature and Best Documentary Feature. Of course, we all know Encanto is the front-runner to pick up the win there, to go with its nominations in Best Original Score and Best Original Song. The bigger surprise to many people that don't follow the Academy closely was that the nominated Encanto song was not the smash hit "We Don't Talk About Bruno" but "Dos Oruguitas." Those in the know predicted that would happen as Disney didn't even submit any other songs from Encanto for consideration. Disney has been submitting just one song per movie since at least 2013. They did that with Frozen back in 2013, which paid off once "Let It Go" came home with the Oscar. "How Far I'll Go" from Moana wasn't quite as lucky as it lost to the (inferior in my opinion) "City of Stars" from La La Land. I suspect seeing the trio of Enchanted songs losing the Oscar to "Falling Slowly" from Once in 2007, then watching the two songs from The Princess and the Frog losing the Oscar to "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Hearts two years later.
Anyways, who do I think would win Best Animated Short? Ask me again once I finally watch Boxballet and The Windshield Wiper.
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