Saturday, February 27, 2016

Animated Events: 2016 Academy Awards Nominees, Update

oscars.org
Geek Flag achieved!

On Friday afternoon, I made the trek down to the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Kalamazoo and watched the stop-motion film 'Anomalisa'. I have now seen all the Academy Award nominated Animated Features and Animated Short-Films and can give my predictions.

This year, I'm predicting that Pixar's "Inside Out" will win in the Animated Feature category and either "Bear Story" or "Sanjay's Super Team" will win the Animated Short Film category.

However, having now seen all the nominees, the films that I think are most deserving to win the Oscar are Aardman Animations' "Shaun the Sheep" or Studio Ghibli's  "When Marnie Was There" in the Animated Feature category. And either Don Hertzfeld's "World of Tomorrow" or Konstantin Bronzit's "We Can't Live Without Cosmos" in the Animated Short Film category. Out of all the nominees, these four are the most deserving of your time. They had it all: a solid story, engaging characters, superb animation and visual artistry--and two of them even had no dialog causing the visuals and animation to carry the entire film. Whether or not any of these four films win, I hope that you'll take the time to track them down and watch them. They are well worth the experience.

The 88th Academy Awards ceremony will be broadcast live tomorrow night: Sunday, February 28th.