21 animated films in different categories have been submitted for Oscar consideration, according to an article in the Hollywood Reporter. The offerings include computer generated, hand drawn, and stop motion productions from a variety of sources, which pretty much covers your choices of how to create animations. The Short Animated Films category alone had 56 works being looked at, which was narrowed down to a short list 10 films long, and will probably be trimmed further to result in 3 to 5 actual nominees in that category. I haven’t seen many of them at all, except for John Kahrs’ Paperman which impressed me no end. It was the short piece just before Wreck-It Ralph in the theaters, which is itself under consideration. Other contenders include Studio Ghibli’s Up on Poppy Hill, Disney’s Brave, and Peter Ramsey’s Rise of the Guardians. The number of quality animation pieces just keeps growing year after year, and there are some wonderful films in the race this time around; I can’t wait to see who gets to take home the statues.
I should have posted her song Fashion Monster on Halloween, but I didn’t, so you get to see it now. Ever since Pon Pon Pon I have been fascinated by her relentlessly happy music and terminally kawaii clothing styles. As she continues to crank out tunes and designer outfits her popularity in Japan just keeps growing, especially among the Shinjuku crowd. One of Japan’s top rock TV shows, Music Station, reported this song being at number 8 on the singles charts during last Sunday’s program.
Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in or from the USA, wherever you are. One of the things to be thankful for is the Avengers Initiative Lite game, available for free for a limited time over at the App Store. Rampaging as the hulk is probably around the limits of my game skills, so I am expecting this to be fun. Obviously Marvel and Disney are hoping you get addicted to the free version and go ahead and buy the full version.
The movie is now in theaters in Tokyo, and while it will be a while before they put together an English version and release it in North America, the extended trailer is still fun to watch even in Japanese. Thanks to the folks at Otaku USA for the heads up on this one.
The new trailer came out on the 14th, but I haven’t posted it yet, so hear it is. The Great And Powerful Oz is the first Oz project I have been excited about since Tin Man surprised me several years ago.
Because of the holiday weekend, things kick off on Wednesday, the 21st, with Rise of the Guardians for those looking for an animated fantasy quest. Dreamworks does their usual world-class job on the animation, and the voice talent is pretty amazing, so it should be quite good. Life of Pi is an adventure story about survival that puts quite a twist on the classic man in a lifeboat plot. Hansel and Gretel & the 420 Witch is a horror/comedy about the brother and sister team who battle the evil witch who is attacking their classmates.