The Windshield Wiper wins Best Animated Short - 2021

Well, the Academy has gone ahead with their plan to remove several of their categories from the main broadcast, which includes Best Animated Short. As a result I will not be watching the ceremony. The good news is that the excited categories would be announced early on. The bad news is we find out early on that the Academy has voted The Windshield Wiper as the Best Animated Short of 2021, and the 90th winner of the category since its inception in 1932.

Yeah...the film that I ranked 50th out of 50 films nominated between 2012 and 2021.

It's not that I think it's a bad film. I did rank it fourth in quality in my actual review over the seasonal front-runner Robin Robin. I just felt that it tried to be too cute in the way the vignettes were presented, and as a result left me feeling empty. But obviously it was enough to impress the Academy at large. So with that out of the way I can move on to something else and ignore the rest of whatever the Academy has to say.

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