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And the Oscar goes to...

While I certainly think Up is a very good film and definitely Oscar-worthy, I can't help but feel that it's a bit of a shame in a year with so many great contenders that the most easily predicted choice is the one that won out in the Best Animated Feature category. Not that I would ever wish Pixar ill, but after winning for the third year in a row, one has to wonder what it would take to beat them at this point. That said, there were definitely a number of great animated films on that nominees list and I encourage everyone to check those out as well if you haven't already.

Also congrats to Logorama for winning the Best Animated Short Film category. I've included a trailer for that short below.

The Oscars are coming! The Oscars are coming!

Not to be confused with "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!", the Oscars do in fact arrive this Sunday, March the 7th. The Academy has increased the number of nominations in a few different categories. Best Picture now has 10 nominees and Best Animated Feature Film has grown from three to five. To refresh all our memories, the nominees are...

• Coraline


• The Fantastic Mr. Fox


• The Princess and the Frog


• The Secret of Kells


• Up

Lineboil provides an excellent visual summation of this category which concludes with the prediction that Up is likely to walk away with this category. I tend to agree with that although I think it's great to finally see some variety here with representation for 2D and stop-motion animation in this category. Note that Up has also been nominated in the "Best Picture" category--the first time that has happened since Beauty and the Beast.

Last but certainly not least, here are the nominations for Best Animated Short Film...

• French Roast


• Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty


• The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)


• Logorama


• A Matter of Loaf and Death

Bring on the Dragon-Viking Games!

Promoting its upcoming movie, How to Train Your Dragon, Dreamworks has been airing Olympic themed vignettes on NBC. The movie arrives in theatres on March 26th, but in the meantime you can find all the Dragon-Viking Games videos on YouTube.

Stop-motion ninjas unboxing a Nexus

Evidently the normal, dry and geeky gadget unboxing of the Nexus wasn't good enough for Google and they instead got Canadian stop-motion animator Patrick Bolvin to do the honours. Apparently nothing less than ninjas was going to do the trick.

Up takes home Golden Globe

Perhaps to no one's great surprise, particularly not that unnamed Disney exec who said of late that the Oscars were not even a contest now, Up took the Golden Globe for 'Best Animated Feature Film'. There had been some buzz in the New York Times last week about how awards season was heating up in the animated film category with artsy darling Fantastic Mr. Fox, but evidently no one at Pixar needs to break a sweat just yet.

Herstory tells the tragic tale of Korean 'Comfort Women'

This South Korean film project uses CG animation as an intermediary to tell the story of these women who were taken from their families to become "comfort women" for the Japanese military. It's an very tragic tale, but an interesting use of CG as it provides a kind of safe space for these victims to speak without it being their real face on the screen.The films were created with support from the Chungkang College of Cultural Industries and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. From what I can guess from the Herstory blog, this appears to be a trailer for a longer production.

And in case viewers are wondering, there is nothing graphically explicit in the animation itself although the subject matter is obviously for a mature audience.