Bob Godfrey (1921-2013)

So I've been sick and have been spending most of the past two days just trying to sleep it off. And when I woke up today I found out that some time during my slumber the animation world had lost one of their greatest contributors, and one we've seen several times in the past on this blog. Sadly, the Australian-born British animator Bob Godfrey had passed away at the age of 91. He is greatly remembered in England for his work in children's entertainment, such as the television series Roobarb, Henry's Cat, and Do-It Yourself Film Animation Show, which inspired a whole generation of animators, including 3-time Oscar winner Nick Park. Yet Godfrey's success with the Academy came with completely different types of films, ones that satirizes the British way of life, often with explicit sexual innuendo. His greatest triumph came with his 1975 masterpiece Great, the irreverent musical tribute to the life and career of Victorian-era British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Great captured the Best Animated Short Oscar in 1975, and was my second favorite nominated film between the years 1972-1981. He received three other nominations, including Kama Sutra Rides Again (1973), Dream Doll (1979, with Zlatko Grgic), and Small Talk (1993). Although those  nominations ended up losing, they helped him leave behind a style and legacy that will remain memorable to fans of animation for a long, long time.

Text of the article after the break.

Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts 1972-1981

When I started this blog back in February, I was posting reviews at a rate of two a week, but I later had to pare it down to one a week as I couldn't keep up with the pace. With the new rate it felt as though it would take us forever to get through, but now we've hit the halfway point in our reviews in what feels like a blink of an eye. True, it has been eight months and a whole lot of things have happened in my life in that time, but it still feels like nothing more like a hop, skip, and a jump since my first review on this blog. And the halfway point of 80 years is 40 years, and you know what happens every 10 years? I rank the nominees by preference. I've been maintaining these rankings in each individual years by quality and preference, but when combining them all into one big list I focus solely on preference because that is much more subjective. Of course, that would lead to some incidents where some films that are not quite so good gets ranked high and masterpieces that are ranked low. But hey, at least there are no absolutely mediocre films that have been nominated...right? Well, except for A Greek Tragedy, and that film actually won. *grumble grumble*

So...1972-1981. For the most part there were three nominees a year, like the decade that came...after. However, there were two years with four nominees, and one busy year with five nominees, so that comes out to 34 films, just a wee bit above the 1982-1991 list. Is that going to change the complexion of things? We shall see. But for now...let the countdown begin!

NULL: Dedalo (1976)
Impossible to find, especially since my online course is turning out to be a dead end. However from what I've seen of it I'm not quite as excited about this as Lorenzo, but dammit! It still needs to be seen somehow!

Best Animated Short - 1975

So in my last review I tried getting rid of the excess topics in my introductions, and I was able to streamline it quite well! Sure, I didn't talk about baseball as much as I would have liked, but at the same time I wasn't spending two to three hours on just the introduction alone. It's worked so well I'll keep limiting my discussions on the Oscar awards of a particular year. Yeah, I won't be getting to talk about the Big Red Machine and the legendary World Series they had with the underdog Boston Red Sox (which included the memorable Game 6 that ended with Carlton Fisk's home run, a moment that was referenced in the Best Picture nominated Good Will Hunting). Nor would I have the chance to talk about my classmate Brian Barkley, who actually pitched for the Red Sox in 1998. But you know what? I'm okay with that.