Hi, everyone!  Well, I am in a much better mood than I was when I wrote my last post and that’s because I just remembered that November is the start of Oscar season!  Yay! 

Now, I know that a lot of people make a big deal about how little they care about the Oscars and they always sit around and bitch about how such-and-such movie didn’t win and how the Academy always honors mediocrity and the Academy is biased towards the mainstream and blah blah blah blah blah.  As I explained many times last year, I am aware of all of this and I don’t care.  On an annual basis, the Oscars prove themselves to be a big, tacky, spectacular train wreck and I love them! 

Anyway, as Oscar season slowly creeps to life (it won’t really be here until the various critic groups start handing out their equally silly awards in December), the Academy has released the list of the 18 films that have qualified to compete for the title of Best Animated Film.  Since there are 18 contenders, that means that we’ll actually have five nominees this year as opposed to just three and I for one say, “Yay!” to that.  Whenever I see only three films listed in a category, I have flashbacks to trying to understand the concept of the Holy Trinity.

Anyway, here are the contenders:

The Adventures of TinTin

“Alois Nebel”

“Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked”
“Arthur Christmas”
“Cars 2”
“A Cat in Paris”
“Chico & Rita”
“Gnomeo & Juliet”
“Happy Feet Two”
“Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Mars Needs Moms”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rio”
“The Smurfs”
“Winnie the Pooh”
“Wrinkles”

I have to admit that this has been kind of a strange year for animated films, largely because, as my fellow contributor Leonard Wilson once pointed out on twitter, this is the first year in which it appears that Pixar might not have a contender.  I recently saw Cars 2 and did not shed a tear and quite frankly, going to a Pixar film and not crying  is a bit like going to New Orleans, flashing your boobs, and not getting any beads.  It just makes you question everything.  Winnie the Pooh made me cry.  So did Rango and Kung Fu Panda 2 for that matter.  I haven’t seen Puss In Boots yet but I expect I’ll love it because it’s about a cat and I love cats.  However, I have a feeling that the award will be given to Adventures of TinTin just to keep Steven Spielberg from throwing a hissy fit after War Horse fails to live up to expectations.