Best Animated Short 2018 - The Shortlist

Back in September, Cartoon Brew posted a list of films that had qualified for the Best Animated Short Oscar, either through winning festivals or Student Academy Awards or through public exhibition. Rather than post the entire list which is what Cartoon Brew already did, I eulogized Will Vinton instead. I decided to wait until the shortlist was announced before writing about them. Traditionally the shortlist had been announced at the end of November, but that day came and went with no announcement. Last year the announcement was announced on December 4, but that day came and went. I waited and waited and kept trying to find as many of the qualifying films as possible. At last, the Academy dropped the shortlist for nine different categories, including Best Animated Short. We finally have a list of the films that would be competing for the Best Animated Short Oscar!

RIP Will Vinton (1947-2018)

It has been a few months since I last posted, when Dear Basketball won the Oscar. It's now been a week since Cartoon Brew posted a list of the animated short films that have qualified via either public exhibition, festival awards, or Student Academy Awards, but it was not a definitive list, and much of the films that were featured are still only trailers. So I decided not to make a separate post when it wouldn't be much different than what Amid Amidi had already done. Instead, I will take this time to report on another major news event: the death of a previous winner of this category, the legendary stop motion animator Will Vinton, who died earlier today of complications from multiple myeloma.

DEAR BASKETBALL wins Best Animated Short!

Well, tonight was the big night, the 90th Academy Awards. As you can probably tell, I didn't have a Live Blog, because I was watching it at a friend's house and didn't have my computer with me, but it was just as well. I found it somewhat hard to get excited about this one. I've seen maybe only half of the Best Picture nominees, and only one of the Best Animated Feature nominees. But I still care about the Best Animated Short category, so I was pretty excited when Mark Hamill, Kelly Marie Tran, and Oscar Isaac came out to announce that it went to:

Dear Basketball

Best Animated Short - 2017

Well, it's time for my annual review of the Best Animated Short nominees, pretty much the only post I care to write every year. This year I'm writing it much later than I'd like. I've been following the Best Animated Short category since starting to watch all of the nominated films shortly after the 2006 Oscars (or the Oscar ceremony dedicated to honoring the films from 2006, which is my preferred way of classifying ceremonies.) It was before the 2009 Oscars that I found out about the Shortlist, and since then I've been trying to watch as many as I can before the nominations are out. On only two occasions I've seen all five on the day of the nomination. For all the rest I've had to rely on the screenings around the country of the Oscar nominated short films, which have become quite popular. Alas, most of the times there are usually only one or two films that I'm missing, and I have to go to the showing, which I've gone to anyways even on the two occasions where I have seen all the nominees by the day of the nomination. Anyways, this year I saw three of the nominees before the nominations were announced, and was able to find another one online after that. Sadly, I had no luck with the last film, and had to go to the showing, which seemed to happen later this year than in previous years. Nevertheless, I was going to Houston for a card show on February 11 and was able to find a theater showing the films on February 10, so I was able to get the films seen. So here's my review on each of the five films.

Best Animated Short 2017 - The Nominees

Well, today's the big day: the Oscar Nominations! Five new films are going to join the illustrious list that includes legendary films such as The Jaywalker, Small Talk, and A Greek Tragedy. Well, since the announcement happened three hours earlier, I'm sure you know what they are, but here it is again:

Dear Basketball

Garden Party

Lou

Negative Space

Revolting Rhymes

Best Animated Short 2017 - The Shortlist

Yes, I am still alive. I will admit I've kind of fallen behind on the animation scene. When Cartoon Brew reported on the qualifying films this year I didn't feel like writing a post about all 63 of them. And Jerry Beck has been writing excellent articles about the films that qualified for the Academy Awards but were not nominated from 1947-1975, but I haven't written about them. Part of it may be related to the fact my computer has gotten agonizingly slow, but part of it may be because I've had my attention elsewhere, such as baseball. Still, I figured I'll write about the shortlist once it's been revealed. However, Thanksgiving came and went and there was still no sign of a shortlist. I was beginning to think that they wouldn't even announce a shortlist this year and I'll be REALLY out of the loop, but loyal reader Sean Ramsdell reported to me that the shortlist is FINALLY out. So I'll take this opportunity to give my quick thoughts about each of them, just like I have in the past few years.

PIPER wins Best Animated Short

 
Well, I didn't have my computer when watching the Oscars so I didn't have any way to make this post, so it's probably a few hours delayed, but being that this is a blog about the Best Animated Short category, I might as well report it. Most of the news tomorrow (or rather later today) will probably be about the fiasco with the Best Picture category, but there's no doubt about what went down in the Best Animated Short film category (which is clearly the most important category anyways). After 13 years of heartbreak and eight previous losses, Pixar finally went back to the winner's circle (at least in this Best Animated Feature category) with their first win since For the Birds in 2001.

That's right, Piper takes home the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

This is only their fourth win in this category, with Tin Toy (1988) and Geri's Game (1997)

Other thoughts after the break