Whether that curious outcome was the result of peer envy or simple fluke voting, however, the Annies appear to be back on board with Pixar, as “Up” took Best Feature and Best Director honors at last night’s ceremony. (Ironic, given that in this banner year for animation, a deviation from the expected would have been arguably better-received than last year’s shocker.
Still, the Annie voters spread the wealth, with “Coraline” and “The Princess and the Frog” dominating the technical categories. Interestingly, “Coraline” composer Bruno Coulais beat out Oscar frontrunner Michael Giacchino — nice to see that undervalued score getting a moment in the sun.
Finally, the many devotees of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” will be comforted that it took writing honors for Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Full list of feature winners after the cut.
Best Animated Feature: “Up”
Best Director: Pete Docter, “Up”
Best Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
Best Voice Acting: Jen Cody as Charlotte, “The Princess and the Frog”
Best Production Design: Tadahiro Uesugi, “Coraline”
Best Music: Bruno Coulais, “Coraline”
Best Character Design: Shane Prigmore, “Coraline”
Best Character Animation: Eric Goldberg, “The Princess and the Frog”
Best Animated Effects: James Mansfield, “The Princess and the Frog”
Best Storyboarding: Tom Owens, “Monsters vs. Aliens”
LOS ANGELES — Figuring out which film will win the Academy Award for best animated feature is usually the easiest part of filling out a ballot for your Oscar pool. Go down the list of nominees — often only three, because so few make the cut — and find the one produced by Pixar. Circle it.
But this year, unexpectedly, animation is becoming a hotly contested race.
The biggest reason is “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Wes Anderson’s quirky adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel. The film, from 20th Century Fox and the producer Scott Rudin, is soaking up a surprising amount of awards attention.
“Up,” Pixar’s 3-D flying-house adventure, dominated the multiplexes last May and seemed to have the animation Oscar sewn up as recently as a few weeks ago. And it’s still the front-runner. The movie industry cooed that “Up,” Pixar’s sophisticated 10th feature, was another artistic triumph. Critics agreed, with review-aggregation Web sites suggesting that the studio’s campaign slogan for the film — “The Best Reviewed Film of the Year” — was only a (very) slight exaggeration.
Then a fox snuck into Pixar’s henhouse.
“Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which features the vocal talents of George Clooney and Meryl Streep in a story about a dapper family man who can’t resist stealing chickens and cider, arrived in wide release on Nov. 25. Despite stratospheric reviews, the holiday rush and a soft box office performance — it cost just under $40 million to produce and sold $20 million in tickets —made an Oscar run seem like a long shot.
But “Up,” which has been estimated to cost $175 million and cruised to a $293 million gross in North America, lost two influential awards to “Fox.”
In a mid-December surprise, both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named “Fantastic Mr. Fox” the best animated movie of 2009. Similar awards from five other critics’ groups followed. The film is up for a Golden Globe on Sunday, as is “Up.”
“Nobody saw this coming,” said Jerry Beck, the author of 12 books on animation and an operator of the news blog CartoonBrew.com. “The animation in ‘Mr. Fox’ strikes some people as a bit funky, but the film is indisputably a piece of art — something that exhibits a really strong point of view from beginning to end.”
Many critics have been impressed that Mr. Anderson, whose other movies include “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001) and “Rushmore” (1998) is thriving in a genre entirely new to him. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was made using stop-motion animation, a painstaking process involving handmade models.
“It’s as if Wes finally found the perfect style through which to channel all of his obsessions,” said Scott Foundas, a former film critic for LA Weekly and now an associate programmer at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. “You can really see the fingerprints.”
The producers of “Fantastic Mr. Fox” say they are just happy that there appears to be room at the awards podium for different styles of animation. “Up” was computer generated, or CG, in industry shorthand. Yet another contender, “The Princess and the Frog,” from Walt Disney Pictures, is a hand-drawn throwback to the heyday of the genre.
“ ‘Up’ is a brilliant movie, but the great thing that this year has shown us is that animation is more than just CG and 3-D,” Mr. Rudin said. With Mr. Anderson’s film, he added, “You feel like you’re being dropped into this perfect, handcrafted dollhouse, except that the dolls are George Clooney and Meryl Streep.”
The Oscar race is just hitting its stride, of course. Nominations will be announced on Feb. 2 and the awards given on March 7. In only the second time since the animated feature category was created in 2001, there will be five nominees. In recent years there have been only three. Rules state that a minimum of 16 films must be submitted to warrant five slots.
And “Up,” directed by Pete Docter, remains very much the lead contender for the best animated feature Oscar, a prize Pixar has won four times. “Up” has so far taken top animated honors from 14 awards groups, including the National Board of Review. It is expected to do well at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards on Friday.
Many awards strategists consider “Up” a strong candidate for a best picture nomination, especially with that field expanded to 10 nominees this year. No animated movie has ever won in that category, and only one, “Beauty and the Beast,” has been nominated.
A spokesman for “Up” had no comment. An executive at Disney, which owns Pixar, said there were no concerns about competition from “Fantastic Mr. Fox” in the animation category, partly because the Los Angeles and New York critics’ groups have weakened as indicators. “It’s not even a contest,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have clearance to speak publicly.
Even so, Disney and Pixar may have their hands full. Aside from the unexpected competition from “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” there is “Ponyo,” an odd but haunting film from Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese anime master whose “Spirited Away” won in 2002. Other prominent contenders are Universal’s “Coraline” and Sony’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”
There is a history of the academy recognizing the small and arty, awarding the top animation prize in 2005 to the stop-motion “Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” And the little-engine-that-could factor is against Pixar. “To an extent ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ is benefitting from being the underdog,” Mr. Foundas said. Liccy Dahl, Roald Dahl’s widow, said she was tickled that “Fantastic Mr. Fox” was succeeding on the awards trail. Mr. Anderson spent three weeks at her home in Buckinghamshire, England, working on the script, incorporating details like the kitchen floor and lamp shades into the production design.
“What I love about the film is the sense of humor — it’s so Wes Anderson,” she said.
A demure Mr. Anderson credited his creative team in a telephone interview, saying he was thrilled about the attention but that he never gave much thought to how the animation could serve his style.
“I was always just thinking about Roald Dahl,” he said. “How do we make this movie seem like it’s happening inside his imagination?”
“Tin Gods,” a co-production between Antin’s Ayllu Animaciones and France’s O2B Films, has a budget of Euros 4 million ($6 million), far lower than the $10.5 million average for European animated pics, kept down by lower labor and production costs in Argentina.
“Tin Gods” is about a native American boy taken to the old world by Spanish conquerors. The boy thinks he is going to where the gods live.
“It is a universal story about one of the biggest moments in history, the story of the Americas,” Antin told Variety. “It changed the history of mankind,” he said, adding that the message is of respect for earth and people.
Production will start in March 2010 for a release at the end of that year or in 2011, Antin said.
Folimage will work as a partner studio and tap into European funds.
“Having them makes it sure that the money will come in for the film,” Antin said.
“Tin Gods” will be produced in English-, French- and Spanish- language versions, helping expand sales opportunities, Antin said.
Anima will take minority equity in “Gaturro,” about a cat TV star, and carry out post-production.
Anima’s boarding of “Gaturro” advances a three CGI pic co-production alliance between Illusion and Anima, Latin America’s foremost film/TV toon producers.
In production, “Gaturro” will bow theatrically in Argentina and India second half 2010. Pic will also have a digital 3-D version.
Anima and Illusion are now studying a second toon feature.
“’Gaturro’ is the first step in a high-potential alliance,” Gaston Cami, Illusion VP international sales and co-productions, said Wednesday during the first day of Buenos Aires’ Expotoons animation fest. Another Illusion toon movie, “Boogie el aceitoso,” a crime drama satire, screens in Competition at Expotoons.
“The Latin American market is highly appealing for potential European partners,” Cami said.
“Our co-production agreement with Illusion Studios reinforces our strategy of an ever-growing production slate based on international world-class quality co-productions as well as the maturity and expansion of the Latin American animation industry,” Anima prexy Fernando De Fuentes said.
At Expotoons, Illusion also announced that it is has inked with BKN Kids to co-produce the 40-seg animated series “Joshua Blake” for the U.K. and Spain.
Illusion will carry out animation on the skein.
Expotoons runs Nov. 25-28.En el año del Bicentenario, la Argentina será la Invitada de Honor en el Festival de Annecy 2010. CT Producciones y el INCAA, con el apoyo de la Embajada de Francia en Argentina, preparan un importante Homenaje a la Animación Argentina. Bajo la dirección general de María Verónica Ramírez, el Homenaje contará con una destacada presencia argentina que exhibirá lo más importante de la producción nacional de animación, retrospectivas, programas especiales, exposiciones y la participación de una representativa delegación. Annecy 2010 ofrecerá, además, un marco celebratorio especialmente importante ya que estará festejando el 50 aniversario de su creación.
En la conferencia de Prensa María Victoria Ramírez, resaltó que "es fundamental el apoyo que nos brinda el INCAA desde el desarrollo y desde lo económico".
Caloi exhortó a dibujantes y animadores : " anímense a dibujar que se acaba el mundo ! ".
Liliana Mazure resaltó que "el rol de estos festivales es poner en valor la cinematografía argentina en todo el mundo y además que podamos valorarnos entre nosotros". E invitó a los realizadores de animación a acercar material a Ventana Sur, el nuevo mercado que tendrá lugar en Buenos Aires entre el 27 y el 30 de noviembre próximos, donde participarán compradores de todo el mundo.
El Concurso Caloi en su Tinta invita a participar a artistas de todo el país y premiará a los ganadores con la inclusión de sus películas en el Festival y la asistencia de sus realizadores al mismo. El Festival de Animación de Annecy es el más importante del mundo en la materia y concentra anualmente una inmensa cantidad de realizadores, productores, distribuidores, estudiantes, periodistas y público en general.
La convocatoria al concurso es para cortos de animación producidos entre 2007 y 2009. Los ganadores serán elegidos por un jurado integrado por Juan Pablo Buscarini, Juan Pablo Zaramella y Daniel Santoro.
Se entregarán 3 premios:
1º premio: Participación del filme en el Programa Argentino de Annecy 2010. Un Pasaje, estadía y una acreditación en el Festival de Annecy 2010.
2º premio Participación del filme en el Programa Argentino de Annecy 2010. Un Pasaje y una acreditación en el Festival de Annecy 2010.
3º premio: Participación del filme en el Programa Argentino de Annecy 2010. Una acreditación en el Festival de Annecy 2010.
