Upon further reflection, if I had to pick one of the five movies nominated to be removed and replaced with Wall-E…

I’d pick Frost/Nixon.

That’s right. Frost/Nixon. Why? Simply put, while the whole “Frost interviews” scenario hasn’t really been done justice before, a movie about Richard Nixon has. That movie? The aptly named “Richard Nixon”, to which the actor portraying Nixon from THAT movie DID win the Best Actor award for that year. That’s not all though. While it was entertaining in parts, I found it to be largely mundane outside of the “generic suspense” I found to be permeating throughout the film.

Now Wall-E: Absolutely FANTASTIC first half of a film. The amount of emotion and character portrayed without any spoken dialog is just astounding. The sense of loneliness one obtains just from observing the barren Earth Wall-E inhabits is incredibly well represented. Then take into account the amount of emotion you, the viewer (in general, not necessarily you, Beej), have for a FUCKING 3D ANIMATED ROBOT…and yeah, one could say that the crew @ Pixar did a pretty good job as far as getting the viewer to care about the main character.

Yes, the second half of the film, wasn’t nearly as ambitious (in a cinematographic sense) as the first half, but as John Gruber states in the post I linked to in my OP, Slumdog Millionaire didn’t necessarily have the most smoothly put together ending either (dudes die, protagonist wins game show, gets girl, PROCEEDS TO DANCE NUMBER). I thought Wall-E’s second half was more than satisfactory.

Now, with regards to your earlier comment about how Pixar could really be (to paraphrase) “shattering perceptions about animated films, if they only tried.” Well, in all honesty, I think they’ve already accomplished the shattering of perceptions of animated films. The one thing about all Pixar movies is that they’re all “All-Ages” films…but in the direct meaning of the term.

The movies work for people of ALL ages. More often then not these days, a movie (or any other form of media such as music or video game) with the label of “All Ages” denotes an immature, child like experience. What Pixar accomplishes with their films is a TRUE all-ages experience, with the enjoyment of their movies independent to the age of the viewer. They’re movies that grade school children can go and enjoy. They’re movies that high school kids can go and enjoy. They’re movies that college kids can go and enjoy. They’re movies that young adults can go and enjoy…etc.

To give some examples:
The Incredibles gives most people a pretty exciting Fantastic-Four analog (I would go as far as saying better than both Fantastic Four movies easily). It also includes some kinda-subtle social commentary on the modern family and topics such as middle school graduations.

Ratatouille, has at its core a plot revolving around a rat named Remy who is looking to become a gourmet chef. Some of the more “adult” humor can be found for example in the scene where Linguini and Collette are pretty much embracing for the first time…Linguini says something along the lines of “I have a small…problem”. At that VERY moment, the eyes of Collette look down very quickly, suggesting that Collette’s character thinks Linguini is talking about him having a tiny dong piece. This isn’t going to be a detail picked up by most children, but should be painfully obvious to most adults. It’s actually one of the most genius scenes I’ve ever seen in a film because of it’s ambiguity. Children aren’t going to be (or shouldn’t be) aware of the true meaning of Collette’s eye movement, but anyone over the age of 16 is going to pick up on it. I could also go into the deeper meaning of Ratatouille with it being an reflection of the history of Disney disguised as a “cutesy film about a rat who wants to be a chef”, but I’ll save that for a later post.

Back to Wall-E:
Essentially what ends up being a romantic comedy in outer space between robots ends up being a clever reversal on the story of Noah’s Ark. Wall-E and Eve corral a bunch of fat humans and more or less “lead” them back to Earth, to which we are led to believe (from the ending credits) that modern civilization begins to take root again. There’s also the obvious Adam and Eve analogy as well, with Eve being this female gendered robot trying to nuture this “plant” in what essentially is her robot “womb”.

Then for crying out loud, how can one overlook the loving homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, or do you have another film that started off with 40 minutes of silence outside a couple of grunts (and in this case, robot whistles and beeps).

For a supposed “kid’s flick”, there’s quite a LOT of depth to be appreciated by a mature viewer, easily more so than Frost/Nixon, and…you know what, I’ll say it, easily more so than any movie of last year (totally my opinion on that one).

Sure one can argue about the politics inherent in the Academy. One has to wonder if the current situation in California regarding Prop 8 had any kind of influence in the Academy’s voting for any categories which Milk was nominated. Now I’m a pretty strong supporter of equal rights and marriage for gays and lesbians, but I really do not believe topical politics should have that much of an influence on the judging of subjective art.

Having said that, I would not have expected or wanted Wall-E to win. Nominated, perhaps, but since I haven’t seen all of the other nominated films so I can’t make that call. Remember, they can’t nominate everything that’s “good” for the year. So, please, if you think it should have been nominated then pick one of the films that was nominated and tell why Wall-E deserved it more.

The truth here is that Pixar dominates the scene. It’s so hard to get into animated feature film making. As you guys have pointed out, it’s very difficult. So, imagine pitching a new film to a studio, with you having no Pixar-level experience to back it up. You’re asking them to gamble on a newb turning out what is admittedly a very hard thing to get right. What that means is that Hollywood is mostly live-action film makers, some CG special effects guys, a few animators. The Academy doesn’t pretend to represent the “people.” There’s no fair. Don’t blame a live-action industry from favoring live-action. It’s what they know and what they appreciate.

If I was asked to rank technological advancements for the year I guarantee you I’d be biased towards realtime graphics. I don’t blame them at all.

It still holds true however, that even though a film CAN be nominated for both categories, it has NEVER happened. Having a Best Animated Feature category still seems silly, as its a category based off of the technique, not a genre (such as Best Documentary).

All I was attempting to do with my “definition” is say that these “blurry lines” he spoke of aren’t that hard to decipher. It’s clear when a large majority of the movie was created by filming individuals acting or by a group of artists creating the content digitally. I recant my previous definition, it was uneducated and not well thought out.

Here is the Academy’s definition of an Animated Feature Film, taken from Rule 7 of oscars.org’s rules & regulations:
An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of at least 70 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. In addition, 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.

Also stated in Rule 7 under section III-F:
Films submitted in the Best Animated Feature Film category may qualify for Academy Awards in other areas, including Best Picture, provided they comply with the rules governing those categories.

Guess I pick C.

@Kyle I was wrong about Wall-E, seems according to the Academy it counts as animated.

Edit: Fixed link to Rule 7

Also, Wall-E kicked ass, and I got all misty at the end.

1.) An established something or other has a specific way of handling whatever it claims to be good at.
2.) Some worthwhile, rational thought seems to conflict directly with the core foundations of the establishment.
3.) Conflict arises, and the modern rational thought is either thwarted (return to 1) or accepted (proceed to 4).
4.) A documentary about the conflict gets nominated for an Oscar, but loses to an animated film about a caterpillar who can’t find his shoes.
5.) Eventually, proper balance is restored and everything works out as it should, except for a couple of really old people who will complain until they die.
6.) Repeat

There’s always Brad Bird’s “1906″, but oddly enough that’s going to be all live-action.

Hrrm…

hahahah priceless Rob!

OK then. Now let me ask you another question:

If a movie is considered to be a “Hybrid” under your definition, does it:

A.) Depending on the quality, be eligible for only Best Animated Feature.

B.) Be eligible for only Best Picture

C.) Be eligible for both.

If you answer A, then technically are you saying that any film with any sort of Animation thrown in be considered “An Animated film” (regardless of if its hybrid or not, as there is no Best Hybrid-Animated Feature).

If you answer B, then technically are you saying that if a movie has some sort of Live-Action acting that it cannot be considered an “Animated film” (by yours and the Academy’s “definition”).

If you answer C, well…that won’t happen, as the Academy doesn’t allow films to be within both categories to begin with, as far as I know.

From the statement’s you’ve provided, am I to believe that because a film as an “Animated” film, it cannot be considered for a category which has no real requirement attached to it except for it’s nominees to be MOVIES?

@Chad
I mentioned Beauty and the Beast above, but remember that was before the Academy implemented the Best Animated Feature category. I’m sure they had the best intentions for doing so (that being to not overlook the more and more animated films coming out each year), but unfortunately it’s turned into a “ghettoization” of animated films.

Art is subjective, I’m not going to fight that, I completely agree with that. I just hate seeing extremely talented people who work ridiculously hard not get the same type of recognition as people/films that do get nominated for Best Picture.

Essentially this is all meaningless as I believe the Academy has overstayed its relevance in this age of YouTube and media being distributed faster and easier than ever, so yeah, let the studio exec’s masturbate furiously to their new shiny bald marketing idols.

The perception of animated films in this country is that they are movies about singing animals and slapstick gags–basically, that animation is meant for children. (As great as the Walt Disney studio was for animation and all of our childhoods, this is its tragedy.) In reality, the scope of the animated film is, and should be recognized as something much broader than this.

But, sadly, this is the perception of animation. This is what sells and this is what gets made. We’re left with shit animated films like Ice Age and Happy Feet. The tragedy is then, when a film like Wall•E comes along, which is brilliant on maybe every level there is, it gets lumped in with the shitty penguin movies for no other reason than because it’s animated. As an animator and appreciator of fine films, this is incredibly frustrating. It should be to you too.

Pixar is doing alot of good to heighten the level of animated discourse, though. The academy will come around sooner or later.