Is it too early to assume that Toy Story 3 will run away with this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar? Well, let's put it this way: If the Pixar blockbuster is somewhere in the middle of the Best Picture pack, and none of the other, just-announced 14 submissions for Animated Feature are even in the Picture conversation, that kind of invalidates the Animation competition as a whole, right?
Who knows -- and really, at this point, Who even cares? Perhaps the bigger story here is that the number of submissions fell just short of the tally required for the category to feature five nominees; as such, handdrawn darlings like My Dog Tulip and The Illusionist will likely find themselves clambering for the same three nominations coveted by the muscular likes of Pixar (Toy Story 3), DreamWorks Animation (How to Train Your Dragon), Universal (Despicable Me), and Warner Bros. (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole) -- to say nothing of Disney's Tangled or Warners' Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. OK, kidding about the last one (though it was submitted, FWIW).
Anyway, here are these, wager accordingly:
Alpha and Omega
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Despicable Me
The Dreams of Jinsha
How to Train Your Dragon
Idiots and Angels
The Illusionist
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Megamind
My Dog Tulip
Shrek Forever After
Summer Wars
Tangled
Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue
Toy Story 3
ยท Oscar: 15 Animated Features For 2010 Race [Deadline]