Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 2012 - 2021

Welcome to a very special edition of the Best Animated Short blog. We are still a few weeks away from the Academy Award ceremony, where the Best Animated Short category has been relegated to second class status. Yet it is also the 90th year where the Academy has a category for Best Animated Short. Which means it's time for me to pull out an old favorite from when I was going back in time reviewing the nominated shorts: I'm going to rank the Oscar nominated films from the past 10 years by how much I enjoyed them.

If you've been reading my reviews over the past ten years you'll know that at the end of each review I rank the shorts by quality and by preference. However, both of these metrics are incredibly subjective, and quite frequently how much I enjoy a film goes a long way by how good I think it is. There are certainly times where I can recognize the artistry into a film I didn't really like, but they almost never claim the top spot in rankings by quality. Anyways, when I have to go back over the 50 short films that were nominated in the past ten years, I think it's easier to solely rank them by preference. That is what I did with my eight previous entries, and that is what I'm going to do here.

This edition is going to be different in certain ways from the eight previous rankings that predated this one. For those I had almost all of the films available to me in some fashion, and I was able to make those rankings every ten reviews, which usually took a few weeks. For these 50 films I had to wait for the Academy to announce their new sets of nominees, and to do that for ten years. That means a lot more time for my tastes to change and evolve than with my previous reviews, especially since there are several of these films that I haven't seen since I wrote the review in their respective years. I have watched all of the films again to make these rankings, so yes, there will be some discrepancies between my rankings in the individual reviews and this one. 

And also, just because a film is ranked low doesn't necessary mean I hated it. There are just that many more of the nominees I liked more than it. I think it is a testament to how well the Academy had been doing in formulating these nominees. It's just a shame that they would relegate this category to secondary status. Anyways, as in previous entries, I will be writing small blurbs about each film that will get longer and longer until they become mini-reviews. I hope you're getting all settled because here we go.

Best Animated Short - 2021

Well, in case you haven't noticed, the Oscar nominations were announced back on Tuesday, February 8, and that started a countdown as to when I can watch all of the nominees to be able to write this review. Ideally I'd be able to watch them all before I have to resort to going to the showings, but it's never a guarantee. I went into nomination day having seen two of the eventual nominees, with Robin Robin being on Netflix and Affairs of the Art being on YouTube courtesy of the New Yorker. It didn't take me long to watch Bestia, because I knew it was on Vimeo on Demand, but I wanted to make sure it was nominated before I paid money to watch it. But then I did a more expansive search, and found that The Windshield Wiper has been online through Short of the Week since around the middle of January. And then I later found out that Boxballet had been uploaded online through Vimeo as part of an animation series by the Thomas Edison Film Festival. 

So that means that I have all five of this year's Best Animated Short nominees at my disposal. Of course, trying to find time to write the review is something else entirely. I don't know how many people actually take the time to read through my reviews, but it's not something I take lightly. I watch each film numerous times whenever possible, and then I also do some research about topics that come up as I'm writing the film. It's a very time-consuming process, which becomes increasingly more difficult when I have a day job to work with. Nevertheless sacrifices must be made, and so I'll have to put my progress in Pokémon Legends Arceus on pause until I get this done.

Best Animated Short - 2021: The Nominees

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