LOS ANGELES —

A record 20 films have been submitted for best animated feature at the Academy Awards.
 
As long as at least 16 films qualify, there will be five nominees in the feature-length animation category.
 
The category has had only three nominees most years, but 2009 has been a prolific year for animation. The only previous year when there were five nominees came in 2002, when 17 animated films were submitted.
 
Submissions include a wide variety of styles, including the computer animation of such hits as “Up,” “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Monsters vs. Aliens”; the stop-motion animation of “Coraline,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Mary and Max”; and the hand-drawn animation of “The Princess and the Frog” and “Ponyo.”
 
Other films submitted are “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” “Astro Boy,” “Battle for Terra,” “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” “The Dolphin—Story of a Dreamer,” “The Missing Lynx,” “9,” “Planet 51,” “The Secret of Kells,” “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” and “A Town Called Panic.”
 
Some films have yet to complete a weeklong theatrical run in Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscars. Academy rules for the category also state that a “significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.”

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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6 Comments

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  Osakadaz at 08:47 AM JST - 12th November

  Mary and Max is brilliant.If you live in Tokyo you can check it out at the film festival (is that still on?).I enjoyed Up and Ice Age too and Coraline was also very well done.Ponyo was disappointing and everyone is panning Astro Boy.Of those films I think Mary and Max is the only one that is really aimed at older audiences,however.Philip Hoffman Seymour was an inspired choice as Horowitz.

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  5SpeedRacer5 at 02:22 PM JST - 12th November

  Have a look at TinkerBell and despair. The genre has been Disneyfied. My prediction is this: as Animation goes mainstream, it will become animation. The stories will be increasingly dull. Eye candy will proliferate. Low production costs will attract idiotic screenplays. The signal to noise ratio of quality will fall drastically and people will rush to the exits. Lasseter is dead. Walt Disney is dead. Brad Bird is gone. Disney bought Marvel. Disney bought Miyazaki. And now, Disney is set to pump the dreck and still guarantee itself an Oscar every year.

  Allow me to point out two extreme cases of PAP. Ice Age puts woolly mammoths alongside dinosaurs and presents that to children. A Christmas Carol. How is another remake going to edify Dickens? Dolphins, fairies, chipmunks, and not an original story among them worth telling.

  When sad recycled pablum like Tinker Bell, Ice Age, and Alvin and the Chipmunks are nominated for Oscars, can the decline of civilization be far behind? Ask Disney. They have it all mapped out.

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  Yelnats at 03:53 PM JST - 12th November

  Ridiculous category.

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  Osakadaz at 04:06 PM JST - 12th November

  yeah there definitely is a 'social message' going out in animation now.All animals are good,aliens are our friends,humans are bad etc etc..I agree. Although..some bits might actually be right.LOL

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  POTUS at 08:18 PM JST - 12th November

  Real entertaining...if you happen to be 11 years old.

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  Hephatsheput at 05:03 AM JST - 14th November

  Best cartoon?

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