In Contention

Tag: The Gruffalo

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Short Film (Animated)

    Once again this year, Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International are teaming up to bring the Best Short Film nominees to a theater near you on February 11.  It’s the third straight year of this partnership and it remains a stellar way of getting these otherwise fringe categories out to the masses.

    This year’s animated short field features a typically varied mixture of styles and approaches.  But it is, I feel, a less impressive line-up than we’ve seen in recent years.  Nothing really stands out as profound or instantly worthy of awards consideration, but there are certainly particulars of each that warrant praise.  What’s more, it could be perceived as a relatively open race.

    The nominees are:

    “Day & Night” (Teddy Newton)
    “The Gruffalo” (Jakob Schuh and Max Lang)
    “Let’s Pollute” (Geefwee Boedoe)
    “The Lost Thing” (Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann)
    “Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)” (Bastien Dubois)

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  • Post-nod winner predictions (and a new poll)

    Did you hear?  The Oscar nominations were announced this morning.  And there was a lot to chew on.  (And boy can we be grateful for that.)

    With a full slate of contenders in front of us, it seemed only right to go ahead and offer up the latest set of winner predictions.  They are indicated by asterisk in the sidebar and are listed out in full after the jump.

    After roughly a week of falling into the logic (and blaring rhetoric) suggesting “The Social Network” would turn its critics run into Oscar gold, I’m back to my instincts (and, judging by its nomination haul, the will of the Academy) with a bet on “The King’s Speech.” Not only that, but I think we could see a mini-sweep for the film, as a couple of potentially formidable competitors were ousted from the nominations in a few craft fields.

    Of course, things could change.  But I’m sensing a momentum shift, and it’s frankly one we could have expected was around the corner.

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