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Animation is doing well everywhere this year, including the foreign-language category of the Oscars.

The post ‘My Life as a Zucchini’ Among Nine Films That Advances in Foreign Oscar Shortlist appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The vfx shortlist includes the expected ("Doctor Strange," "The Jungle Book") and the unexpected ("Kubo and the Two Strings," "Arrival")

The post VFX Oscar Race is Narrowed Down To 10 Films appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The 20 films in contention for the vfx Oscar have been announced.

The post Academy Reveals Contenders in VFX Category, Including ‘Rogue: One,’ ‘Jungle Book,’ and ‘Kubo’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

We look at the top contenders in this year's Oscar race for best animated short.

The post 2017 Animated Short Oscar Contenders: A Record Number of Films Are Competing appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Who are the likely contenders for a visual effects Oscar? And which films might surprise this year?

The post 2017 VFX Oscar Contenders: From Most-Likely To The Outliers appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Who made the Academy's cut this year?

Low-budget features and South American contenders are competing alongside Pixar this year.

The post 2016 Oscar Nominations: Animation Analysis appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The Academy expanded the field of visual effects contenders to 20 films this year.

The post 20 Films Shortlisted for Visual Effects Oscar appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Here's the list of 10 short films that have been shortlisted for an Oscar.

We've been keeping track of the category all year long and now we have the Academy's complete list.

Premiering September 18 in West L.A., 'Taking Flight' is a whimsical tribute to the life of Radio Flyer wagon inventor, Antonio Pasin.

'The Wanted 18' mashes animation, interviews, reenactments, and archival footage into a 75-minute absurdity chronicling the true story of 18 cows-at-large.

Animated films from CalArts, SVA, Academy of Art and Chapman have earned 2015 Student Academy Awards.

Eleven technological advances, including work by Weta Digital and DreamWorks Animation, have been selected for further review.

Seven student shorts made the cut in the animation category.

A cheese-loving man and his genius dog get the Hollywood love they deserve.

Cartoon Brew has put together a list of all the known members of the Academy's animation branch.

The Disney Corporation has won the Oscar seven of the last eight years, and that's not healthy for the art form.

Disney's 'Big Hero 6' and 'Feast' both won Oscars tonight.

What if the animation Oscars were chosen by people who knew nothing about animation?

After what feels like a year's worth of buzz, publicity, predictions, and celebrity gossip, the 87th Academy Award ceremony is upon us. I dug into the entries available in the alphabetized categories of The Dictionary of Film Studies-- and added some of my own trivia -- to highlight 26 key concepts in the elements of cinema and the history surrounding the Oscars.

The post An A-Z of the Academy Awards appeared first on OUPblog.

A number of films that are up for Academy Awards this weekend are based on books.

If you haven’t seen the movies, you can at least read a little bit from these books to have something to talk about at Oscar parties. To help out, we’ve put together a literary mix tape with links to read excerpts of books up for awards. Check out our list after the jump.

Free Samples of Oscar Nominated Films Based on Books

1. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

2. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

3. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

4. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

5. American Sniper by Chris Kyle

6. Foxcatcher by Mark Shultz

7. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Among this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture were two films with drum scores: Whiplash, in which a highly regarded but abusive conductor molds an aspiring young jazz musician into the genius he was meant to be, and Birdman, in which an aging film actor who was never a genius at all stars in a play and possibly flies. In spite of their innovative soundtracks, neither film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.

The post Great man drumming: Birdman, Whiplash, and myth of the male artist appeared first on OUPblog.

Picture this. A legendary hotel concierge and serial womaniser seduces a rich, elderly widow who regularly stays in the hotel where he works. Just before her death, she has a new will prepared and leaves her vast fortune to him rather than her family.

For a regular member of the public, these events could send alarm bells ringing. “She can’t have known what she was doing!” or “What a low life for preying on the old and vulnerable!” These are some of the more printable common reactions. However, for cinema audiences watching last year’s box office smash, The Grand Budapest Hotel directed by Wes Anderson, they may have laughed, even cheered, when it was Tilda Swinton (as Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis) leaving her estate to Ralph Fiennes (as Monsieur Gustave H) rather than her miffed relatives. Thus the rich, old lady disinherits her bizarre clan in what recently became 2015’s most BAFTA-awarded film, and is still up for nine Academy Awards in next week’s Oscars ceremony.

Wills have always provided the public with endless fascination, and are often the subject of great books and dramas. From Bleak House and The Quincunx to Melvin and Howard and The Grand Budapest Hotel, wills are often seen as fantastic plot devices that create difficulties for the protagonists. For a large part of the twentieth century, wills and the lives of dissolute heirs have been regular topics for Sunday journalism. The controversy around the estate of American actress and model, Anna Nicole Smith, is one such case that has since been turned into an opera, and there is little sign that interest in wills and testaments will diminish in the entertainment world in the coming years.

Aside from the drama depicted around wills in films, books, and stage shows, there is also the drama of wills in real life. There are two sides to every story with disputed wills and the bitter, protracted, and expensive arguments that are generated often tear families apart. While in The Grand Budapest Hotel the family attempted to solve the battle by setting out to kill Gustave H, this is not an option families usually turn to (although undoubtedly many families have thought about it!).

Usually, the disappointed family members will claim that either the ‘seducer’ forced the relative into making the will, or the elderly relative lacked the mental capacity to make a will; this is known as ‘testamentary capacity’. Both these issues are highly technical legal areas, which are resolved dispassionately by judges trying to escape the vehemence and passion of the protagonists. Regrettably, these arguments are becoming far more common as the population ages and the incidence of dementia increases.

The diagnosis of mental illness is now far more advanced and nuanced than it was when courts were grappling with such issues in the nineteenth century. While the leading authority on testamentary capacity still dates from a three-part test laid out in the 1870 Banks v Goodfellow case, it is still a common law decision, and modern judges can (and do) adapt it to meet advancing medical views.

This can be seen in one particular case, The Vegetarian Society v Scott, in which modern diagnosis provided assistance when a question arose in relation to a chronic schizophrenic with logical thought disorder. He left his estate to The Vegetarian Society as opposed to his sister or nephews, for whom he had a known dislike. There was evidence provided by the solicitor who wrote the will that the deceased was capable of logical thought for some goal-directed activities, since the latter was able to instruct the former on his wishes. It was curious however that the individual should have left his estate to The Vegetarian Society, as he was in fact a meat eater. However unusual his choice of heir, the deceased’s carnivorous tendencies were not viewed as relevant to the issues raised in the court case.

As the judge put it, “The sanity or otherwise of the bequest turns not on [the testator’s] for food such as sausages, a full English breakfast or a traditional roast turkey at Christmas; nor does it turn on the fact that he was schizophrenic with severe thought disorder. It really turns on the rationality or otherwise of his instructions for his wills set in the context of his family relations and other relations at various times.”

This is probably the only case around testamentary capacity where the testator’s liking for a cooked breakfast has been offered as evidence against the validity of his will.

For lawyers, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis is potentially a great client. Wealth, prestige, and large fees for the will are then followed by even bigger fees in the litigation. If we are to follow the advice of the judge overseeing The Vegetarian Society v Scott, Gustave H would have inherited all of Madame Céline’s money if she was seen to be wholly rational when making her will.

Will disputes will always remain unappealing and traumatic to the family members involved. However, as The Grand Budapest Hotel has shown us, they still hold a strong appeal for cinema audiences and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Feature image: Reflexiones by Serge Saint. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

The post The Grand Budapest Hotel and the mental capacity to make a will appeared first on OUPblog.

       

These rare videos document the presentation of the animated short Oscar from 1949 through 2013.