Re-ranking my top 10 favorite nominees 1932-2011

A week ago I had completed my ranking of the 50 nominees from the past ten years (2012-2021) by how much I liked them. During the introduction I noted that my tastes change with time, so the overall rankings could feature some differences from the individual rankings. That led me to thinking about the rankings I did for the previous decades that I did as I was writing those reviews. I created the rankings after every ten years I reviewed, but since I finished my last review in 2013 that would meant those rankings were made between 8-10 years ago. Surely there would be some changes during that time.

I didn't revisit every single ranking, but instead I focused on the top ten favorites from every decade. I re-watched those in the top ten, as well as some of the films that were near misses just to see if some might sneak into the top ten. Well, as it turns out every single decade had some changes in the individual rankings. What are those changes? Well, let's visit each of them and find out.

Borge Ring (1921-2018)

So I had just found out about the passing of Borge Ring, the legendary Danish animator who was nominated for an Oscar for his 1978 film Oh My Darling..., and who won the coveted trophy seven years later for his masterful film Anna & Bella (although the Oscar itself was claimed by producer Cilia van Dijk. He was 97 years old. I suppose it's not entirely sad when a man lives to be 97. He's lived a full life and had numerous accomplishments that are completely separate from winning an Academy Award. It is still a time for mourning, especially for a man who made two of my favorite films that had ever been nominated in this category.

Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 1982-1991

Well, we have gotten through the third decade of reviewing Oscar nominated shorts. And you know what that means, don't you? It means G-men! To be shot down like a...okay, I guess we're getting ahead of ourselves. Actually, it's time for yet another super special awesome post where I rank the nominated films in the ten year period we just finished, just like what I did for 1992-2001 and 2002-2011. Anyways, I just think it's fun, even if you'll probably disagree with almost all of the list.

So the era we just finished established a record for fewest nominations in a ten year period, one that may never be broken. After all, the rules state that the minimum number of nominees in a year is three. Even if less than three meet the scoring minimum, they just take the three films with the best average score and name them the nominees. So I don't believe it's possible that there would be a year with only two nominees, like Best Makeup did in 2002 or Best Original Song did this past year. (Embarrassing.) Every single year in this ten year period had exactly three nominees, so there were exactly 30 nominees to rank. And I'm able to rank them all, because this was the first ten-year period where I was able to watch all of the nominees. And how do they rank? Let's get started and find out.

Best Animated Short - 1985

And we have now arrived at 1985, the year of my birth. Now I'm sure anybody would be biased towards their year of birth, but I do think 1985 was something special. For example, it was the year of "We are the World" and the Live Aid concerts, which raised millions of aid for the famine in Ethiopia. The NES launched in October, lifting console gaming from the Atari Crash and making it the profitable industry it is today. Calvin and Hobbes debuts in newspapers, beginning a 10-year run where they become an integral part of pop culture. And that was the year the Kansas City Royals, the team I grew up watching, ended years of playoff futility by winning the World Series.

Yeah, there were a few dark sides of 1985. There was the New Coke fiasco. There was the hijacking of TWA flight 847, which resulted in only one death, and the crash of Japan Airlines flight 123, which resulted in 520. And the Royals have gone on an even longer 27-year streak where they never even made the post-season. Nevertheless, 1985 was a pretty good year.