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Among the most popular features on CartoonBrew.com is our annual coverage of the Academy Awards. Our 2013 Oscar coverage recorded the highest traffic ever in the site’s history, hitting a single-day record for pageviews on Monday, February 25.

The animation community’s interest in the awards is justified for many reasons. Foremost, the Oscars serve as a barometer of the general public’s attitudes toward animation. The films that are nominated (as well as those that aren’t) tell us a lot about how animation is evolving as an art form and its acceptance into the mainstream.

The Oscar’s animation categories, however, have long been marginalized in the entertainment media, and lacked the informed coverage and analysis that accompanies the live-action categories. Cartoon Brew sets out to change that with its new ANIMATION OSCAR TRACKER, which is the animation industry’s first and only resource devoted to year-round coverage of contending films.

Our broad focus on both mainstream and independent films will help the film community parse through the ever-growing number of feature and short entries. We aim to provide Academy voters with an indispensable tool for making informed decisions when it comes time to nominate films and select winners for these prestigious animation honors.

The new ANIMATION OSCAR TRACKER, which is readily accessible through Cartoon Brew’s top navigation bar, will be updated regularly with lists of films in contention. More features will be added in the weeks and months to come including Oscar predictions, interviews with filmmakers, and coverage of other animation-related Academy Award categories like visual effects.

By Elijah Siegler

Last night at the Oscars, the Academy awarded a golden statuette to a film about a flawed hero who we the audience empathize with, who departs their normal life, enters a strange world, but returns triumphantly. Did I just describe Best Picture Winner Argo?

Yes, but also best animated short winner, Paperman, best animated feature winner, Brave, and best live action short winner, Curfew.

So whether the hero is a CIA operative, an besotted office worker, an Scottish princess or a suicidal man, and whether the journey is to revolutionary Iran, to a world of sentient paper airplanes, to a dark forest, or to a magical bowling alley, these films, and it’s safe to say, most of their fellow nominees, have spiritually uplifting themes, and generally follow a pattern of a mythic journey to redemption. (Indeed as my colleague’s S. Brent Plate pointed out, religion permeates all nine best picture nominees and the ceremonies themselves.)

Academy members, and audiences in general, like and expect movies to be heroic journeys of redemption. One 2012 film, Cosmopolis, is about a journey that’s anything but heroic and redemptive. Indeed, the film, based on a short novel by Don DeLillo, charts a billionaire’s limo ride across Manhattan to get a haircut as ironic, pointless and even destructive. Unsurprisingly, Cosmopolis received precisely zero Oscar nominations. Now, I’m not here to argue that this film was better than any of the nine nominated films.

One reason that the film’s director and screenwriter, David Cronenberg, despite being widely regarded as one of the world’s best living filmmakers, has never been nominated for, let alone won, an Academy Award, is because all his films explicitly reject themes of “redemption” and “spiritual uplift.”

Cronenberg is known not only an originator of the body horror subgenre (Shivers, Rabid, The Brood), and for adapting difficult works of literature (Naked Lunch, Crash, Cosmopolis), but for being one of the few filmmakers who explicitly identifies as atheist, and whose work ignores all religious themes. Cronenberg’s public atheism is all the more notable considering his association with horror, a genre often analyzed as fundamentally religious. Think about all the horror films that include one of more of the following: the dead displaced, satanic cults, covens, possession, exorcism, ghosts, and curses. Or think how often religious symbols a church or a crucifix, become sites of terror. So it is significant that none of Cronenberg’s films have any religious or supernatural elements. And this is not coincidence, but his conscious choice. More succinctly, he told me when I interviewed him at his home in Toronto, he does not “want to promote supernatural thinking.”

More significantly, both his earlier horror films and his later more literary films eschew the thematic underpinning virtually every Hollywood film ever: the battle between good and evil. Cronenberg’s films do not provide the visual and aural clues that conventional Hollywood cinema uses to denote good and evil. His heroes are not particularly altruistic or, indeed, heroic. The protagonists of several of his films [SPOILER ALERT], including Videodrome, The Fly and Dead Ringers die—but their deaths are neither redemptive nor sacrificial, nor do they result in any kind of triumphant return, symbolic or otherwise.

Many of his films do not have traditional villains. Even his seemingly conventional antagonists, from the sex parasites in Shivers to the multinational corporation Spectacular Optical in Videodrome to Naked Lunch’s Dr. Benway, are sinister and scary, but function as necessary agents of change.

When Cronenberg does use religious imagery to suggest evil, it is neither supernatural nor transcendent. Rather, his religious imagery evokes authoritarian institutions. Dead Ringers, based on a true story of twin gynecologists’ descent into madness and addiction, includes examination scenes set in the Mantle Clinic, their medical practice. The clinic functions as a kind of quasi-religious institution and the scenes are terrifying (even though this is not at all a traditional horror film), inasmuch as they show the power that doctors have over patients, and that men have over women (see Image).

In both his personal philosophy and his films, David Cronenberg sees no need for transcendence, or for the fulfillment of the hero’s quest, or for cosmic reward and punishment. And yet his films wrestle with the same questions of meaning that our favorite “religious” films do (questions of sex and death, power and desire, family and society, identity and transformation) but that do so in a uniquely nonreligious way. The Oscars may never give Cronenberg his due, but anyone interested in religion, film and their relationship, needs to.

Elijah Siegler is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston. His article “David Cronenberg: The secular auteur as critic of religion” was recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

The Journal of the American Academy of Religion is generally considered to be the top academic journal in the field of religious studies. This international quarterly journal publishes top scholarly articles that cover the full range of world religious traditions together with provocative studies of the methodologies by which these traditions are explored.

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The post Do the Oscars snub films without redemptive messages? appeared first on OUPblog.

TweetSo, once again, Hollywood confabulates and celebrates the best of motion picture arts and sciences tonight, at the 85th Academy Awards.  Among the many awards will be two showcasing the best in animation: Animated Feature Film and Short Film Animated.  Many people have seen the feature films (or had a chance to…dunno how many actually [...]

Disney swept the Oscars this year with wins for both animated short and feature. Congrats to John Kahrs and Walt Disney Feature Animation for taking home the Animated Short Oscar for Paperman. Congrats to Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and the Pixar crew for winning the Animated Feature Oscar for Brave.

The Oscar for Visual Effects was awarded to Life of Pi. Congrats to Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R. Elliott, and the crews of Rhythm & Hues and Moving Picture Company. Unbelievably, as the Life of Pi winners tried to comment on the recent situation in the VFX community, the Academy cut off their speech mid-sentence. Not classy, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

For the record, Paperman is quite an accomplishment for Disney. The last time the studio won the Oscar for Best Animated Short was 1969 and the winner was this guy:

Love him or hate him, Seth MacFarlane is making history tonight as the first (and probably last) animator to ever host an Academy Awards ceremony. Let’s document this unique moment in cartoon history. Does his performance match up to previous Oscar hosts? Better than Billy Crystal? Steve Martin? Carson? Hope? Which of Seth’s routines killed and which fell flat? Did he make references to his animation career in a positive or negative way? Share your thoughts with the animation community as you’re watching the ceremony tonight.

(Note: Any comments not directly related to Seth’s performance will be deleted. Seriously, don’t even try.)

Last night during the Oscars, the Academy organizers interrupted Life of Pi winner Bill Westenhofer’s speech just as he was about to address the crisis in the visusal effects community. The timing of the cut-off may not have been coincidental, as Variety’s David S. Cohen pointed out on Twitter:

Hollywood’s desire to silence the animation/vfx community is made more poignant by the VFX industry demonstrations that happened earlier on Sunday in Hollywood. Westenhofer supervised the visual effects of Life of Pi at Rhythm & Hues, which has already declared bankruptcy and is among the studios hit hardest by the recent industry turmoil.

Westenhofer spoke backstage at the ceremony with animation journalist Bill Desowitz, where he explained the message he wanted to deliver to Hollywood:

“At a time when visual effects movies are dominating the box office, [the] visual effects companies are struggling. And I wanted to point out that we aren’t technicians. Visual effects is not just a commodity that’s being done by people pushing buttons. We’re artists, and if we don’t find a way to fix the business model, we start to loses the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows that we’re artists and not just technicians.”

BREWMASTERS NOTE: This week Cartoon Brew takes a closer look at each of the five Academy Award nominated animated shorts. Each day at 10am EST/7am PST we will post an exclusive interview with the director(s) of one of the films. Today, we begin with The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore:

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is the first film from William Joyce’s Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana. Co-directors William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg spoke with Cartoon Brew on January 25th.

Jerry: First things first. Your studio is in Shreveport, Louisana. Why there?

Bill Joyce: That’s where I grew up, it’s a great little Southern Shangri-la. Not that far from Dallas, about 2-3 hrs away. Brandon was working at Reel EFX and started contacting me about working together, and then Lampton (Enochs, co-partner in Moonbot) moved out here after Hurricane Katrina. The movie industry is actually pretty big in Louisiana. In this weird way, Shreveport has become this film making mecca. (laughter) That sounds too kind of ludicrous to say, but it’s sort of true.

Jerry: It IS true, you can make movies anywhere, everywhere today. Now, I’m a little fuzzy on the whole origin of this project. I’m under the impression that it started as an app, or designed to be something else other than a film?

Bill: It started out as a book that I wrote a few years ago in response to my mentor at Harper Collins. His name was Bill Morris and he had been there since they were called Harper Brothers, since 1949. He was just a great old publishing titan, and a real gentleman… but he was dying and I was really bummed out about it. One of the ways I deal with the good things and the crummy things in my life is I write a story. I was flying up to see him and on the way this title just kind of tumbled into my head, called “The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore.” It was a play on both Bill’s name and his actual physical stature… he was a diminutive guy, though a giant in the industry. And he loved books and everything about publishing. So I got to read him the story which was really sweet. He was a kind of crusty old guy but he would respond to outreaches of emotion in his crusty old way. I was going to make it into a book but then Brandon and I started working together in animation, and we wanted to create a short film around same time I was working on the book. It was then Lamptin suggested we form a company.

Jerry: I love how the film combines CG with hand drawn and miniatures…

Bill: Well, we kind of decided early on we wanted to play with all different kinds of animation, and it seemed that just to think of it in terms of computer animation seemed too limiting. Brandon and I were just so stoked about building miniatures and having CG characters, and doing 2D for some of it, and just doing everything we loved. It just seemed to apply to the story.

Brandon Oldenburg: And we love those old Popeyes, man. You know, we just wanted to just see if it would work. We had gotten a taste of building sets back in 1998 on a test film that we did called The Man In The Moon, where we built miniatures and took them down to New Orleans to an old vaudevillian theater that had been converted into a sound stage. And you know, that short test piece actually evolved into the upcoming Dreamworks project, The Rise of the Guardians.

Jerry: It seems you really put what you wanted into this film and you weren’t aiming for it being a 6 minute short, a 12 minute film, or a 22 minute TV special.

Bill: Going in, we were all “OK. We can’t afford anything over 7 minutes. We have to make this work for 7 minutes.” (laughter) And then we made an animatic completely disregarding time frame. “OK, how long does it time out? Oh! Oh crap! It’s 16 minutes!�

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Animated Feature category in the Oscars, but I play along because that’s what all the cool kids do. This piece by Mark Harris on Grantland is a compelling argument though for why the animated feature category is, statistically speaking, silly and unnecessary. It’s such a thoughtful piece that I’m even willing to overlook Harris’s identification of animation as a genre, which we all know is incorrect..

At the very least, the Academy should consider Harris’s suggestion to cap the number of animated feature nominees at three. To date, there has not been a single year where more than three films have been worthy of the award. And it makes little sense to select five nominees out of a field of eighteen, when the Foreign Language category selects five from over sixty films. And those 60 films are already whittled down from a long list of contenders in each country. The dozen-and-a-half contenders in the feature animation category aren’t even preselected from a larger pool; films that nobody would ever think of rewarding like Mars Needs Moms and Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil are what make the category possible. Are animated films really that much better than live-action that every third film made is Oscar-worthy? As much as I like animation, even I’m not that deluded.

(Thanks, Chris)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: Academy Awards, Grantland, Oscars

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: February 18, 2012

Many children’s books that have been adapted for film have been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hugo based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and War Horse adapted from the children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo have both been nominated for Best Picture this year. Take a look back at some of the books that have inspired memorable films and been honored as nominees for Best Picture by the academy over the years.

All Quiet on the Western Front* | Universal | (1929/30) | (3rd ceremony)

Little Women | RKO Radio 3rd place | (1932/33) | (6th ceremony)

David Copperfield | MGM | (1935) | (8th ceremony) as introduced by Lionel Barrymore

A Tale of Two Cities | MGM | 1936 | (9th ceremony)

Captains Courageous | MGM | 1937 | (10th ceremony)

The Adventures of Robin Hood | Warner Brothers | 1938 | (11th ceremony)

Gone with the Wind* | Selznick International Pictures | 1939 | (12th ceremony)

The Wizard of Oz | MGM | 1939

Wuthering Heights | Samuel Goldwyn | 1939

The Grapes of Wrath | Twentieth Century Fox | 1940 | (13th ceremony)

The Yearling | MGM | 1946 | (19th ceremony)

Great Expectations | J. Arthur Rank-Cineguild | 1947 | (20th ceremony)

Ivanhoe | Pandro S. Berman | 1952 | (25th ceremony)

Around the World in 80 Days* | Michael Todd | 1956 | (29th ceremony)

The King and I | Charles Brackett | 1956

The Diary of Anne Frank | Henry Blanke | 1959 | (32nd ceremony)

To Kill a Mockingbird | Alan J. Pakula | 1962 | (35th ceremony)

Mary Poppins | Walt Disney and Bill Walsh | 1964 | (37th ceremony)

Doctor Dolittle | Arthur P. Jacobs | 1967 | (40th ceremony)

Beauty and the Beast | Don Hahn | 1991 | (64th ceremony)

Babe | George Miller, Doug Mitchell and Bill Miller | 1995 | (68th ceremony)

Sense and Sensibility | Lindsay Doran | 1995

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Barrie M. Osborne | 2001 | (74th ceremony)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Barrie M. Osborne | 2002 | (75th ceremony)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King* | Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Barrie M. Osborne | 2003 | (76th ceremony)

Finding Neverland | Richard N. Gladstein and Nellie Bellflower | 2004 | (77th ceremony)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button | Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Cean Chaffin | 2008 | (81st ceremony)

What are some of your favorite books that have been adapted for the big screen?

We’re going to be open all night long to discuss the Oscars. We’re still waiting to hear the winners, but here are the results of Cartoon Brew’s Oscar Survey. Will ILM’s Rango and Pixar’s La Luna win the Feature and Short categories as our readers predicted, or will there be upsets in those categories.

While we’re waiting to hear the results, take some time to read our interviews with the five nominees of the Best Animated Short category:

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis (Wild Life)

Enrico Casarosa (La Luna)

Grant Orchard (A Morning Stroll)

Patrick Doyon (Sunday)

Bill Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: A Cat In Paris, A Morning Stroll, Academy Awards, Chico and Rita, Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Kung Fu Panda 2, La Luna, Oscars, Puss in Boots, Rango, Sunday, Wild Life

Thirty-five students from 20 U.S. colleges and universities have been selected as finalists in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 39th Annual Student Academy Awards competition. The complete list of nominees is posted here. Below are links or embeded trailers for the nine Animation category nominees and two from the Alternative category. The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, June 9th, at 6 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Chocolate Milk by Eliza Kinkz, University of California, Los Angeles

The rest of the nominees are:

Cowboy, Clone, Dust by Matthew Christensen, New York University

Lizard and the Ladder by Aaron Bristow, Utah Valley University

My Little Friend by Eric Prah, Ringling College of Art and Design

Reviving Redwood by Matt Sullivan, Ringling College of Art and Design

Shinobi Blues by Yue Liu, School of Visual Arts

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Academy Awards

Seth MacFarlane is hosting the Oscars next year. I watched his performance on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago, and thought he was fantastically entertaining. His recent turn as a performer is enough to almost make me forgive him for his lack of vision as an animation creator.

Who? Who will win the Oscar this year, at the 85th Academy Awards? Hey Krishna? The Mystical Laws? Walter & Tandoori’s Christmas?

Maybe – or maybe Pixar’s Brave, Sony’s Hotel Transylvania, or Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph will be among the five nominees. Today, the Academy announced the twenty-one features which have been have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category.

Listed in alphabetical order by title (click on highlighted title to see trailer), they are:

“Adventures in Zambezia”
“Brave”
“Delhi Safari”
“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax”
“Frankenweenie”
“From Up on Poppy Hill”
“Hey Krishna”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Ice Age Continental Drift”
“A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman”
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”
“The Mystical Laws”
“The Painting”
“ParaNorman”
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
“The Rabbi’s Cat”
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Secret of the Wings”
“Walter & Tandoori’s Christmas”
“Wreck-It Ralph”
“Zarafa“

Several of the films listed have not yet had their required Los Angeles qualifying runs. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules before they can advance in the voting process. The nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 10th, 2013, at 8:30am EST/5:30am PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The winners will be announced on Sunday, February 24th, 2013.

Which ones do you think will be nominated?

(Thanks, Janet Hoffman)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has shortlisted ten films for the Best Animated Short category. From these ten selections, five nominees will be selected:

Adam and Dog, Minkyu Lee, director (Lodge Films)

Combustible, Katsuhiro Otomo, director (Sunrise Inc.)

Dripped, Léo Verrier, director (ChezEddy)

The Eagleman Stag, Mikey Please, director, and Benedict Please, music scores and sound design (Royal College of Art)

The Fall of the House of Usher, Raul Garcia, director, and Stephan Roelants, producer (Melusine Productions, R&R Communications Inc., Les Armateurs, The Big Farm)

Fresh Guacamole, PES, director (PES)

Head over Heels, Timothy Reckart, director, and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, producer (National Film and Television School)

Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, David Silverman, director (Gracie Films)

Paperman, John Kahrs, director (Disney Animation Studios)

Tram, Michaela Pavlátová, director, and Ron Dyens, producer (Sacrebleu Productions)

For the record, I tweeted a few days ago about the four films from this year’s qualifying animated shorts that I felt were truly Oscar-worthy. Not a single one was selected for the shortlist, but don’t let that stop you from seeking them out. They are all fantastic shorts that engage and challenge the viewer in a meaningful way:

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With the Academy Awards right around the corner, we thought it might be fun to look at the lexical impact of films and some words that were actually coined by movies. Joining us for this Quickcast are two “excellent” members of the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary team.

Want more of The Oxford Comment? Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!
You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.

Featured in this Episode:

Katherine Connor Martin, Senior Editor – OED

Matt Kohl, Senior Editorial Researcher – OED

And should you be interested in getting a hippopotamus for Christmas…

*          *          *

Lights, camera, lexicon: the language of films in the OED

By Katherine Connor Martin

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By: Lauren, on 2/25/2011
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By: Jerry Beck, on 11/10/2011
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By: Jerry Beck, on 11/15/2011
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Here’s the list of qualified shorts, screened this past weekend for members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with links to all the films were you can find additional info, see the trailer or watch the whole film itself.

Members of the Short Film and Feature Animation branch will soon vote, creating a shortlist of ten films from this 45. A second round of voting, also restricted to members of the Short Films and Feature Animation branches, will narrow it down to the five nominees for Best Animated Short Film Oscar. The final vote, which determines the winner, is open to all Academy members provided that they have watched every nominated short. It’s a wide open field this year with a variety of techniques and themes; four major studio shorts (from Pixar, Warners, Sony, Disney) up against some of the best talents from around the world, along with student films and independent fare. Can’t wait to see who makes it to the shortlist. Good luck to all!

A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard (Studio AKA)
Read Cartoon Brew’s post about A Morning Stroll.

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A Shadow of Blue by Carlos Lascano

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Birdboy by Alberto Vasquez (Abrikim Studio)

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Chopin’s Drawings by Dorota Kobiela (BreakThru Films) Poland

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Correspondence by Zach Hyer (Pratt)

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Daisy Cutter by Enrique Garcia and Rubin Salazar (Silverspace)

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Dimanche / Sunday by Patrick Doyon (NFB)

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El Salon Mexico by Paul Glickman and Tamarind King

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Enrique Wrecks the World by David Chai

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Ente Tod Und T

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20. The Oscars: Animated Short Nominees

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By: Jerry Beck, on 1/24/2012
Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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The nominees for BEST ANIMATED SHORT, announced today by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scienes, are:

A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard (Studio AKA)
Read Cartoon Brew’s post about A Morning Stroll.

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Dimanche / Sunday by Patrick Doyon (NFB)

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La Luna by Enrico Casarosa (Pixar)
Read Cartoon Brew’s coverage of La Luna.

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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (Moonbot Studios)
Read Cartoon Brew’s post about The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

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Wild Life by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby (NFB)
Read Cartoon Brew’s post about Wild Life.

Congratulations to all the nominees. The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday February 26th at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: Academy Awards, Oscars

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21. The Oscars: Animated Feature Nominees

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By: Jerry Beck, on 1/24/2012
Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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The Oscar nominations were announced this morning.

Nominated for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE were:

A CAT IN PARIS – Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol
CHICO AND RITA – Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal.
KUNG FU PANDA 2 – Jennifer Yuh Nelson
PUSS IN BOOTS – Chris Miller
RANGO – Gore Verbinski

THE SCORE: It’s “2″ for Dreamworks and “0″ for Disney/Pixar. “2″ for International independent films, and “1″ for a live-action director making his animated feature debut (and that director isn’t Spielberg). And a big “zero” for Mo-Cap.

It’s not a complete loss for TINTIN – the film was nominated for Best Music (Original Score). A complete list of nominees in all categories will be posted here. The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday February 26th at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 9 comments | Post tags: Academy Awards

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22. Cartoon Brew’s 2012 Oscar Survey

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By: Jerry Beck, on 1/26/2012
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With no clear frontrunners in either the Best Animated Feature or Short categories, it’s time to call upon the wisdom of the animation masses. Tell us what films you think SHOULD win the animation Oscars this year. We’ll keep the survey open for a week until everyone has had a chance to make their voice heard.

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23. Harry Potter Fan Calls For Academy Award Boycott

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By: Maryann Yin, on 1/30/2012
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After the Harry Potter franchise was not nominated for Best Picture this year, Huffington Post writer Linda Kenney Baden suggested that fans of the boy wizard consider boycotting the Academy Awards.

Here’s an excerpt: “Enough already Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences– start nominating movies that are terrific — no matter the genre. Some of the nominated movies are boring, unwatchable, obtuse or totally uninteresting to moviegoers and not just the youth audience that makes up 80 percent of the cinema going public … Is it time for the movie public — the viewers — to engage in a national TV boycott?”

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2 received three nominations for this year’s Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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24. Academy Symposia: Animated Features and Shorts

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By: Jerry Beck, on 2/1/2012
Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Brad Bird will host a special screening and on-stage discussion with the filmmakers of the 2011 animated and live-action shorts on Tuesday night February 21st at the Academy’s Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills. The program, called Shorts!, will include all five animated short nominees and their respective directors: Patrick Doyon (Dimanche/Sunday), William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore), Enrico Casarosa (La Luna), Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe (A Morning Stroll) and Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby (Wild Life). The program will begin at 7:30pm. For ticket information click here.

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The now traditional Academy Animated Feature Symposium will be held on Thursday February 23rd at 7:30pm. Actor/comedian Patton Oswalt will host a panel featuring the 2011 Oscar nominees in the Animated Feature Film category. The nominees (schedules permitting) include Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli (A Cat in Paris), Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal (Chico & Rita), Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2), Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) and Gore Verbinski (Rango). The panelists will discuss their films’ development and their creative processes as well as present clips illustrating their techniques.

Both events will take place at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Boulevard, in Beverly Hills, CA, and will begin at 7:30pm. $5 general admission/$3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID (limit 2 at the discounted price). Tickets will be available online and by mail on a first-come, first-served basis beginning Friday, February 3 at 9:01 a.m. To order tickets click here.

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25. App of the Week: Oscars

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By: Beth, on 2/1/2012
Blog: YALSA - Young Adult Library Services Association (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  Apps, Academy Awards, apps for teens, iPad, Iphone, iTouch, Movies, Oscars, Teen Apps, Add a tag

Title: Oscars
Cost: Free
Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. iPad version requires iOS 4.2 or higher

Teens interested in movies and the Oscars can gear up for the annual event (this year on February 26) with the Oscars app. The key to the app is the Backstage Pass feature that will be available the night of the Oscars. But, before that content is available there are still aspects of the app that are worthwhile as movie lovers of all ages prepare for the red carpet evening. These include:

• A Twitter feed that includes posts with the #oscars hashtag. While the Oscars are still three weeks away, that doesn’t mean people aren’t tweeting about them. The feed is a good one stop shop for keeping up on Tweets about hosts, Oscar related events, and more.
• My Picks, a section of the app where users can make their predictions of winners. Use of My Picks requires logging in with a Facebook username and password. However, the picks are not available to others unless the user turns on the Play with Friends component which makes picks visible to Facebook friends. There is also a countdown clock in the My Picks section which tells users how long until the ballot choices are locked in. A good idea in case a teen wants to change a choice along the way.
• A video series called Oscar Dailies made up of short clips showing nominees in specific categories and providing analysis of the chances for each contender. Users of the app can watch all of the supporting actress or actor nominees at once and compare the performances. I can definitely see teens sitting around, watching the videos together, and debating who gave the best performance in their favorite movie.
• Video of the announcement of the nominees for the 2012 Oscars.

The Backstage Pass is likely to be the big draw for teens interested in the Oscars. As reported in the Huffington Post, “On the big night, February 26, the app will host a dozen live feeds from the event captured by strategically placed cameras — including the thank you cam that gives winners an extended period of time to thank their supporters, or any of the other backstage cameras capturing behind-the-scenes action.” This section of the app will go beyond what teens can see in the network airing of the Oscars and is also likely to provide Facebook and Twitter worthy postings.

Any teen, or librarian, interested in movies will want to take a look at the Oscars app as they get ready for the big day on February 26.

For more YALSA App of the Week posts, visit the archive.

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