Well, last night was the Academy Awards ceremony honoring the films from the 2024 film year (even though every other resource will call it the 2025 Oscars because of when the ceremony happened). Unfortunately I was unable to watch any second of it, as I was making a long distance drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Glendale, Arizona where I'll be staying in watching baseball spring training. But believe me I was keeping abreast of the winners whenever I can. And for the most part, it seems that most of the winners were what pundits were expecting. The categories that were the biggest surprise, it seems, were the animation categories.
Early on in the season it seemed that Flow was an early favorite for Best Animated Feature, winning a few critics prizes. But then The Wild Robot came steamrolling onto the scene, winning award after award and sweeping the Annies. It got to the point where most people thought that The Wild Robot was a lock, since it was after all a brilliant film despite being a big budget studio film. And yet when the dust settled on Oscars night, the winner turned out to be: Flow!
And then there was Best Animated Short...
