86th Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Feature and Short Animation

ZF Team 16 January 2014

A rather expected list of nominees for Best Animated Feature at the 86th Academy Awards. Disney's Frozen, Dreamworks' The Croods, Despicable Me 2 were the three US studio offerings that got nominated.

Pixar's Monsters University and Blue Sky's Epic were left out of competition (Pixar won the 2013 Academy Award for Brave) .

A welcome surprise: the French childrens' feature Ernest & Celestine, which narrates the unusual friendship of a bear and a mouse in 2D animation, was nominated for an Academy Award. The animated pic (distributed by GKids) is the only European entry in the category.

Hayao Miyazaki's latest feature The Wind Rises secured a place in the animation nominees. This is the third Academy Award nomination for the veteran animator (who won in 2001 for his Spirited Away).

The nominees:

The Croods, Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco and Kristine Belson
"Despicable Me 2, Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin and Chris Meledandri
Ernest and Celestine, Benjamin Renner and Didier Brunner
Frozen, Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and Peter Del Vecho
"The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki

In the Best Short Animation category, Disney's retro-style Get a Horse! with Mickey Mouse in new adventures was an expected entry.

A second entry is the UK short Room On the Broom ,based on the children's picture book (Julia Donaldson-Axel Scheffler), which also won best animation at the BAFTA Children's Awards 2013.

Mr. Hublot (Laurent Witz, Alexandre Espigares) tells the story of the eccentric, isolated Mr. Hublot finds his carefully ordered world disrupted by the arrival of Robot Pet.

Feral by Daniel Sousa is an experimental (and too beautiful and inspiring) short on a boy who is saved from the woods only to find himself unable to function in civilisation.

Shuhei Morita's Possessions narrates the story of a man seeking shelter from a storm in a dilapidated shrine encounters a series of household objects inhabited by goblin spirits.

The nominees:

"Feral," Daniel Sousa, director, and Dan Golden, music and sound design (Daniel Sousa)
"Get a Horse!" Lauren MacMullan, director, and Dorothy McKim, producer (Walt Disney Feature Animation)
"Mr. Hublot," Laurent Witz, director, and Alexandre Espigares, co-director (Zeilt Productions)
"Possessions," Shuhei Morita, director (Sunrise Inc.)
"Room on the Broom," Max Lang and Jan Lachauer, directors (Magic Light Pictures)

Some edgier (and equally interesting) choices in the short category, such as the Annecy-awarded Subconscious Password, Theodore Ushev's Gloria Victoria, and Michelle & Uri Kranot's Hollow Land, were left out from the initial list of 10 short animated films.

The final list of nominees in the short animation category seems to confine itself to a familiar, kids-friendly territory (regardless of individual film merits).

Pharrell Williams' Happy from Despicable Me 2 and Let It Go from Frozen (Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) were nominated in the Best Song Category.

The Academy Award nominations were streamed live at 5:38:30 a.m. PST (Thursday, 16 January)

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2013 will be presented on Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, will also be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

ernest-celestine-2-500