There's good news and... well, more good news about this year's race for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. First, the number of submissions -- 18 -- exceeds the minimum of 16 required for a year of five nominees. (Last year only netted 15 submissions, and thus three nominees, as if anybody was going to knock off Toy Story 3 anyway.) And with a soft year for the likes of both Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, that means the field is pretty wide open for the first time in a while. What can win?
· The Adventures of Tintin
· Alois Nebel
· Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
· Arthur Christmas
· Cars 2
· A Cat in Paris
· Chico & Rita
· Gnomeo & Juliet
· Happy Feet Too
· Hoodwinked Two! Hood Vs. Evil
· Kung Fu Panda 2
· Mars Needs Moms
· Puss in Boots
· Rango
· Rio
· The Smurfs
· Winnie the Pooh
· Wrinkles
One word: Rango. It's the best-reviewed film on the list, it's an international hit (with less than half of Cars 2 or Kung Fu Panda 2's global gross, but exponentially more cultural goodwill), and it's a rare chance for George Lucas -- whose Industrial Light and Magic produced the revelatory animation -- to throw his weight around in the awards ring. Tintin's motion-capture stylings remain fraught with technical ambiguities about which the Academy is notoriously prickly, The Smurfs is half-live-action, and Disney's otherwise weak crop of competition includes a 63-minute bonbon and one of the biggest flops ever.
Rio, Puss in Boots and Happy Feet Too are probably locks for nominations as well. Chico and Rita has a solid shot to sneak in as well -- not as a huge influencer by any means, but rather as the token foreign-language offering with a '50s-era romance spanning Havana, New York, Las Vegas and beyond. Thoughts?
· 18 Animated Features Submitted for 2011 Oscar Race [AMPAS]
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