Annies and Oscars, 2022 edition

It was a good day for animation.

This weekend was the 49th annual Annie Awards, a celebration of animation's highest honors presented by ASIFA Hollywood. And it was also the day that animation luminary Ron Diamond hosted a private screening of the Oscar nominated animated short films -- and members of ASIFA were invited!

Given the restrictions that the DIA's Detroit Film Theater were still imposing on those of us who couldn't safely get the jab or had natural immunity, making my yearly trip to the DFT to spend a day appreciating some art before watching the Academy Award nominated short animated film program, well, it wasn't going to happen.

Fortunately, it was Ron Diamond to the rescue! Ron runs the Animation Show of Shows, a yearly curated program of animated short films that gets shown at arthouse theaters and colleges all across the country. So, this year he had a program dedicated entirely to the Oscar animated shorts. And as a member of ASIFA Central, I was sent a code to their website where Ron opened with a discussion about the awards and the films we'd be watching, followed by the program, and bookended with live interviews with some of the filmmakers. It was a good start to the day!

Later that evening, the Annies were streamed on their website. Everything was pretty much pre-recorded since they wouldn't be live streaming from the Royce Theater again this year. But, it is what it is. At least we were able to enjoy the show online rather than not at all. If you didn't get the chance to watch the show during the first broadcast(?), it can be viewed on the online in its entirety at: Annie Awards - Watch It Live and you can also download this year's program book on the same page.

And, thus, my yearly 'random thoughts I had while watching the show':

• Still loving that zoetrope animation that opens the ceremony!
• Best Short Subject: Night Bus had my vote to win. Saw it at the Ottawa fest... really quirky film that I found myself getting into for both the technical production and the story.
  
• "2021 was a continuation of the ongoing pandemic stress, yet animation continued striving and successfully leading the entertainment industry. More animation is being produced today than ever before and that bodes well for all of us." Very encouraging words from ASIFA Hollywood President Sue Shakespeare.
  
• June Foray Award: Was very pleased to see Renzo and Sayoko Kinoshita get some recognition for all their work in the field of animation.
  
• Best Production Design in an Animated TV/Media Production:  Arcane!!!!! A good start for one of the best animated series I've ever seen.
• Best production Design in an Animated Feature Production: Y'know, I was really hoping for Belle.
• I like how the awards are moving at more of a steady clip since we don't have to watch people walk down to the front of the Royce theater and accept their award--and give an extended speech before being played off by music--but the virtual format does seem to lack a little luster and the pomp & circumstance of the live awards ceremony.
• Character Design in an Animated TV/Media Production: Arcane again! So happy to see them pull this award. So rarely do the films I love get recognition, I'm gonna start crying any minute now. :)
• Glenn Vlippu received the Special Achievement award--and is very well deserved.
• Really liked how Dina Sherman was in a different location every time when she announced the next award and its presenters. Seemed a little odd at first, but it really grows on you.
• Character Animation in an Animated Television/Media Production: goes to Arcane!!!!! Wow. Just... wow! Wouldn't it be awesome if Arcane took home every award in all nine categories it was nominated in?
• Hrm. Didn't realize that the Annies started back in '72. Knew June Foray was the driving force behind the awards, but 1972? Hrm. I'm sure I'd heard that before, it just never registered with me.
  
• Animated Effects in an Animated Television/Media Production... Arcane wins again. My jaw is on the floor!
  
• Yeah, I really need to watch the Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf animated feature and the Castlevania series this year... :o
• Animated Effects in an Animated Feature Production... Please oh please let it be Belle... aaaand... nope. :(
• Editing in an Animated TV/Media Production: What If...Ultron Won... My favorite episode from my favorite show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- So freaking awesome!!!
• One of the Winsor McKay Awards goes to Lillian Schwartz -- Wow. So many years later, so many advances in computer imagery, and her work still holds up. The mark of a master filmmaker.
  
• Another to Toshio Suzuki. Ah, the Annie Awards, one of the few awards shows where Anime actually gets some of the respect they deserve for their contributions to the art form. Toshio Suzuki. A titan in the industry but, like Isao Takahata before him, spends more time recognizing the people who work for and with him at Studio Ghibli. Man, such a class act.
• And the third to Ruben Akino whose body of work embodies so many of the pivotal films from those years when I was studying to become an animator. Watching those clips, it was like I was sitting in the theater just off campus during college and grad school all over again.
  
• Voice Acting in an Animated Television/Media Production: goes to Ella Purnell - HELL YES!!!!! Let's hear it for Jinx! Arcane is set to sweep the awards after all! Gonna have to watch the whole series again while I still have a little time before the Spring season of Anime is here.
• Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production: was really hoping for a win for John Leguizamo, easily one of the best character actors of our generation. I can't think of a single film of his that I've seen, live action or animated, where he didn't bring his 'A' game and produced a stellar performance.
  
• Writing in an Animated Television/Media Production: Another well deserved award for Arcane!!!
• Writing in an Animated Feature Production: Nope. Still hoping that Belle would get 'some' love during the ceremony. But, there's still the best Indie Feature.
• In Memoriam... always a tough segment to watch. Brenda Banks, Giannalberto Bendazzi, Jacques Drouin, we lost some real heavy hitters this past year and the community is diminished because of it.
  
• Wow!! They got Momoro Hosoda (the director of Belle) to present an awards category. Very cool. Not "Belle wins some awards" cool, but still, a nice consolation.
  
• Best General Audience Animated Television/Media Production: Hell yes!!! Another richly deserved award for Arcane!!!
• Tomm Moore is presenting for the Annies. Very cool. I still have my drawing/watercolor of Pangur Bán that he sent me back when I purchased the PAL version of Brendan and the Secret of Kells and had it shipped in from Ireland (this was before GKIDS picked it up for North American distribution). Think I'll get it framed this year.
  
• Storyboarding in an Animated Television/Media Production: Goes to Arcane! One more award and Arcane sweeps the Annies!!!!
• Directing in an Animated Television/Media Production: AND ARCANE SWEEPS EVERY CATEGORY THAT THEY'RE IN!!! Would've also been cool to see Love Death + Robots or Invincible get some love, but I'm so blown away about all the accolades for Arcane. It's so well deserved. And so refreshing to see it happen.
• So great to see John Leguizamo back at the Annies.
• Best Indie Feature: And no love for Belle. What a disappointment. A somber reminder that my tastes are usually way different than most of the viewing public and that we've got a long way to go before Japanese animation fully receives the recognition that it rightfully deserves. At least the DVD comes out in May. I'll get to watch it again and again in the privacy of my home theater.
  

My 'Pangur Bán' watercolor by
Tomm More of Cartoon Saloon

* * *

Animated Reviews: Mamoru Hosoda's "Belle"

I need to qualify some things up front before I get into the review. 

For starters, music in film can be a difficult thing to get right, be it background music, a musical number inserted to denote the passage of time, or a full-blown musical. 

Personally, I don't like musicals. Never have. Not saying there aren't good musicals out there, like the Broadway performances of Cats or Chess. But in animated films, after thirty-plus years since Disney adopted the 'Rogers and Hammerstein' song-and-dance formula for the Little Mermaid (and every studio out there tried to attain success by copying Disney's model), it just feels so played out. More often than not, when I'm watching a movie and they break into song, my heart just sinks in my chest and I start counting the minutes until the sequence is over.

My opinions are based partially on the belief that I think music can often be used as a cheap tool to engender an emotional connection within your audience when you should've done it through careful character development within the script. Not saying that music cannot be skillfully used to enhance the experience (see Disney's Bolt or Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues), but would a film like Guardians of the Galaxy be as popular as it was without using music from the 1960's and 70's that was already heavily ingrained in the collective consciousness of an American audience? Not knocking the film, I loved it and its sequel, but the music had to have been carefully selected and weaved into the film causing it to become a character in and of itself. I suspect it was done so because the 'Guardians' weren't as well-known as characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Spider-Man, so they needed that extra 'oomph' to build a connection with the audience and make people care about the characters.

In many cases though, especially in musicals, the music just falls flat and seems out of place. It reminds me of that comedy routine you see at Renaissance Festivals where the singers keep purposefully stepping in front of each other as they try to upstage each other's performances. It's a comedic bit and it's funny at Ren Fests. But in so many musicals, it's like the acting is competing with the story which is competing with the song-and-dance numbers and so on. It abruptly pulls you out of the experience. And consider cringeworthy sequences like the "No Fear" song in the Swan Princess--"No Fear" being a popular modern marketing catchphrase at the time which in the film was placed smack-dab in the middle of a medieval fairy-tale world. The sequence ended up marring an otherwise decent and enjoyable movie that had a great message for kids.

To be fair, there are some musicals where the song-and-dance number (or the musical sequence in films) doesn't seem out of place and is completely in tune with the emotional tone of the story and the characters. I offer as evidence: the 'Son of Man' sequence in Disney's Tarzan, 'Once Upon a December' from Anastasia, the 'Hellfire' sequence from Hunchback of Notre Dame, 'Deliver Us' from Prince of Egypt, or the entire film: Mary Poppins. 

Another example is Disney's Enchanted. It's a musical that parodies Disney musicals (both animated and live action), expertly directed by Kevin Lima. There are so many ways that movie could've gone wrong. Disney definitely chose the right director, the right songwriters & composers, and the right actors & actresses to bring the right script to life. The song-and-dance numbers make perfect sense both in the context of the film's internal world AND in the context of filmmaking overall. Honestly, it's a movie that I'm happy to see sitting on the shelf in my DVD collection.

Speaking of Enchanted, I have very fond memories of being in Toronto, sitting in a Schoolism.com presentation and watching Kevin Lima state that he loves musicals. Seated right next to him was his wife, director/scriptwriter Brenda Chapman who immediately rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated "Oi!". I knew right then and there that I had found a kindred spirit as it turned out that Brenda was very much not a fan of musicals. The irony of her working years later on the film Strange Magic is delightful. I know there's got to be a story behind it and I'd love to hear her tell it.

So. I'm not opposed to musicals, per se, or the skillful use of music in films, it's just that when they get it wrong, they pull me out of that delightful headspace, that flow state where nothing exists but the film you're watching. You're sitting there slowly getting drawn into a movie with beautiful cinematography, engaging characters, and an interesting story... then they break into a song-and-dance number for no apparent reason other than to have a song-and-dance number. It's honestly why I haven't had any desire to watch any of the recent Disney films. And there "is" obviously a market for such films, as evidenced by the varying degrees of success that Disney musicals continue to have in the box office, especially compared to far superior films like Atlantis: the Lost Empire. 

I guess I'm probably at that stage of life where I'm looking for something with more substance--like the Summit of the Gods or Arcane, both of which premiered on Netflix.

To summarize my rant and get to the review: when music is done poorly, or treated as an afterthought, it sticks out like a sore thumb. But when done skillfully, purposefully, it can elevate a film to an almost spiritual experience.

Belle was so much more the latter than the former. During the opening sequence where we see Belle singing the song 'U' while riding atop a skywhale loaded down with speakers, it gave me chills! And the 'Gales of Song' sequence was achingly beautiful as you realize what she's singing about. You can see parts of this in the Belle medley video that was released on the Official Belle Channel on YouTube. Go ahead and watch it now, I'll wait.

Mamoru Hosoda and Studio Chizu did a wonderful job filling this film with interesting characters that were easy to care about. And the backgrounds were as picture perfect as I've ever seen in an animated feature. The virtual world of U was a visual feast of characters and settings without ever making you feel overwhelmed or confused about what was happening on the screen. And Cartoon Saloon's background work is sublime (executed by Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart). In the end, my only real regrets were that a. I didn't have time that weekend to go back and watch the English dub version, and b. that I didn't watch the film in the large-scale IMAX format.

Now the movie isn't without its flaws. I wouldn't say it's Mamoru Hosoda's best. I reserve that title for his film Wolf Children, but it was easily the second best Hosoda film I've seen--though tied for second place with Summer Wars. Full disclosure: I haven't seen The Girl Who Leapt Through Time or Boy and the Beast... yet. So, I reserve the right to adjust my numbers. No, I had two problems with Belle. One was that they reused a number of character designs from earlier Hosoda films which pulled me out of the experience. The Dragon/Beast avatar? He looked like Ōkami Otoko's werewolf form from Wolf Children. The Dragon/Beast's human character? Ame from Wolf Children. Suzu Naitou (Bell's human character)? Hana from Wolf Children. This was a similar complaint that I had with Studio Trigger's film Promare--and what ruined that movie for me. I'm not opposed to reusing designs to a point--I assume it develops from a common visual style that identifies a particular studio or director's work (compare Mei Kusakabe from My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo from... well, Ponyo. Unquestionably Studio Ghibli). But it can still be jarring when you see characters from a previous film in a current film acting and speaking outside of the context that has already been set for them in the film where they first appeared.

 

 

And while they packed a lot of story into Belle's two hours, I felt that the whole Dragon/Beast subplot ended up being kind of unnecessary. Though it did introduce an interesting conflict and an element of mystery into the story. And the subject matter behind it was a difficult and challenging topic that was competently executed by Hosoda and Studio Chizu, however the time it took to play out the events related to the Dragon/Beast subplot took time away from the Bell main plot: namely that of a girl who loses her singing voice due to a childhood tragedy and finding it by experiencing the virtual world that her avatar (Bell) exists in. You could have made the entire film just about Suzu/Bell finding her voice and dealing with her emotional scars as she explores the world of U, completely without the Dragon/Beast subplot, and it would've worked perfectly. The main themes brought forth by Suzu/Bell in the virtual world of U were so interesting, so engaging in and of themselves that when the Dragon/Beast shows up, it's like... "Huh? Oh yeah, he's in this film too."

But in the end, I'd definitely put this film on the "must watch" list, especially in a large format theater if possible. I'm looking forward to watching this movie again and adding Belle to the Mamoru Hosoda section of my film collection once GKIDS releases it on DVD. And if you're on the fence, watch the first three minutes of Belle on YouTube that GKIDS released to promote the film. Or listen to the full soundtrack on Spotify (available in both Japanese and English). I'm pretty sure you'll come away with the same opinion that I did: Belle is two hours well spent.

* * *

 

* All video/images used are © 2021 STUDIO CHIZU.