Ranking the Oscar nominated shorts: 2002-2011

Well, lets pause and take a break here. I've reviewed ten years worth of Oscar-nominated animated shorts, and since the history of this category can be broken down into eight ten-year blocks, we should pause and take a look back every ten years. And how would I look back? Well, I like making ranked lists, so I figure why not rank the films by how much I liked them? There have been a total of fifty nominated shorts, meaning that there was five nominees every year. It's the second time in a ten year stretch that has happened, and the first one was 2001-2010. I've seen 49 of the 50 nominees, so it's a good time to reflect on the shorts that I just saw.

And remember, this is solely by how much I liked the short. There are excellent films that rank low because it didn't click with me, and mediocre shorts that rank highly because I have terrible tastes.

NULL: Lorenzo (2004)
It's the film Disney refuses to release, a fact that still drives me absolutely nuts.

Best Animated Short - 2004

We've come to it at last: the most recent year with a Best Animated Short that I haven't seen. You'd think the older shorts would be harder to find, but all of them are studio films, like Disney or MGM or Warner Bros., so almost all of them are readily available. (Although the archiving of Columbia films before 1945 is a complete disaster. There is even one that is considered lost, so my goal of watching all of the Oscar nominated shorts will most likely end in complete failure.) Things are different when the missing short is under the firm control of one of the most suppressive corporations out there: Disney. While older Disney shorts leak out constantly, some of their newer shorts are under more security than some of our national secrets. It's probably easier to find out the truth of Area 51 than it is to watch the two missing shorts that Disney has condemned to eternal purgatory. And it is fans of great animation that suffer as a result.