Inside Out dominates Annie Awards

While all eyes were on the DGA last night, ASIFA-Hollywood held its annual Annie Awards. It was a great night for Pixar Studios, which scooped every single eligible category, mostly for Inside Out (quelle surprise), although The Good Dinosaur was tossed one very deserving consolation win for its visual effects.

As a nice change, the organization added a category for Independent Feature Animation. Is it a ghetto category? Sure. But small, scarcely distributed animated films would never stand a chance against widely seen studio fare. I'm delighted to see Ale Abreu's wonderful Boy and the World took this prize, and hope that it helps ensure the continued success of international GKIDS pickups in future awards seasons.

Equally delightful was the decision to give Best Animated Short to Don Hertzfedlt's brilliant World of Tomorrow. Fingers crossed for the Oscar!

Check out all the feature film winners after the cut.

Critics Season Opens, While Films They Honour Do Not

December is officially here, so the critics have begun unloading their year-end superlatives. But since those of us in the real world still have 26 days before the end of the year, some of the biggest honorees are still an unseen mystery to us. Todd Haynes' Carol was undoubtedly the biggest love-affair for the New York Critics Film Circle, who handed it four prizes including Best Film, but I'll be lucky if it opens anywhere near me before the month is out.

The National Board of Review, while naming Mad Max: Fury Road their best of the year, threw far more support in terms of number of prizes behind films like The Martian (Best Director, Actor and Adapted Screenplay) and The Hateful Eight (Best Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay). The latter won't even begin limited engagements until Christmas!

But I was not completely starved for entertainment. Rocky spinoff Creed opened during the American Thanksgiving weeekend, and I found it rather enjoyable. Writer-director Ryan Coogler showed much promise in his 2013 debut Fruitvale Station, as did star Michal B. Jordan, and both continue to prove their genuine talent in this crackerjack boxing flick.

Review - Inside Out

Leave it to Pixar – the animation haven that made us believe a rat could cook, and a house could fly, and a robot could fall in love – to make their latest brainchild... well, the brain of a child. Or more specifically, the feelings that make it tick.
As such, Inside Out is the studio's most ambitious concept to date, and also one of its greatest triumphs. This wonderful invention of cinema does more than make you laugh and cry (and it will make you do both); It blithely examines the human condition and what it finds is deceptively profound.

Riley Anderson (voiced by Kaitlyn Diaz) is a perfectly normal, perfectly happy 11-year-old girl. Her early life growing up in Minnesota may seem a bit ordinary on the outside, but her gray matter is anything but gray. Pixar represents it as a bubblegum-tinted world of pure imagination, overseen by the five core emotions – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger – that literally push her buttons from a command booth in her frontal lobe.

Giving voice to these tiny balls of neurological energy are a quintet of TV comedians who would seem almost too perfectly typecast in a lesser film. It's to their (and the animators') enormous credit that we never get distracted trying to picture the actor behind the caricature.

Top Ten: Pixar Films

I've never committed to a definitive ranking of the films of Pixar Animation. Perhaps having relatively few feature titles under their banner made a top ten list kinda meaningless (although their ever growing roster of memorable characters is always ripe for sorting). Or perhaps the frequently high caliber of their movies made ranking them a more arbitrary exercise than ranking movies already is.

But with raves for their fifteenth feature Inside Out announcing a return to form after a few years of middling success, now seems like a good time to go on record as to which gems sparkle the brightest for me personally. Needless to say, this list is in constant flux and subject to positional shifts at any time – Probably as soon as I see Inside Out!

But which of the studio's first fourteen is on the bubble?...

Early Oscar Predictions: Animated Feature

Animated films are a special case in which the vast majority of the work is carried out in post. Years are often spent on the animation alone, and that's not even taking into account all the other elements such as effects, music and sound.

Walt Disney animation has dominated lately, winning back-to-back Best Animated Feature Oscars and two Best Animated Short Oscars in the last three years, but they have no feature in contention for 2015. With one of the big three American studios sitting it out, one would think that a DreamWorks entry should make the cut, but do Home or B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherwordly Operations really strike anyone as Oscar-worthy? I have my doubts.

Instead, it may be Disney's corporate acquisition Pixar that reclaims some of their lost lustre by double dipping, as for the first time ever they are cranking out two original films in the same year.

Review - Monsters University

End of June. School's out, but many newly-freed students (and their parents) will be quick to reenter the academic world this summer at the movies via Disney/Pixar's Monsters University, a college-based prequel to their beloved 2001 feature Monsters, Inc.

Those familiar with the original won't need much of a refresher course to recall the clever premise behind Pixar's Monsters universe. The monsters rely on the screams of children as their primary energy source, and where do monsters go to learn how to scare the tots? Why, Monsters University of course – or possibly rival school M Tech, but that's a moot point.

ACE, CAS both announce winners

Winners for the American Cinema Editors Awards went pretty much as expected. Oscar frontrunner William Goldenberg took home the award for Best Edited Dramatic Feature Film for Argo, while fellow Oscar nominees Jay Cassidy and Crispen Struthers won for Best Edited Comedy/Musical Feature Film for Silver Linings Playbook.

Malik Bendjelloul continued Searching for Sugar Man's dominance by winning the Documentary category, while Brave bested Oscar favourite Wreck-It Ralph in the Animated category. I'm starting to get some real vibes that Brave is the one that's gonna take Best Animated Feature next week. The marketing of Wreck-It Ralph may well have deterred many an Academy voter from even seeing it, whereas Pixar is a studio that usually garners respect from the industry. I may have to switch my prediction at the eleventh hour.

One Category at a Time: Animated Feature

Never can I remember the race for Best Animated Feature being as competitive as its been this year. Not that I think it's been a particularly stellar year for the medium. To me, the closeness of the race is due to all the nominees achieving roughly the same level of enjoyable mediocrity, with one standout clearly above the rest, but that doesn't mean it has the Oscar locked up.

Annie Award nominations

Nominations for the 40th annual Annie Awards have been announced by ASIFA-Hollywood. Leading the pack are the prize hopefuls from the Mouse House: Pixar's Brave and Disney's Wreck-It Ralph each landed ten nominations. ParaNorman and Hotel Transylvania took eight apiece. DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians nabbed six.

More than ever, the organization feels like one with a severe identity crisis. In order to quell backlash from the realization a few years back of a disproportionally DreamWorks-based voting membership, they have been continually tweaking their voting process to cast a very broad net. It's more of a dishonour not to be nominated! And yet they still manage to miss obvious achievements in several categories. How does Brave not get cited for storyboarding? How does Frankenweenie lose out on character design? How do Wreck-It Ralph leads John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman get passed over for Alan Tudyk's broad impersonation of Ed Wynn in Voice Acting?

All in all, take it with a grain of salt. This group is hardly an influential one when it comes to the awards race.

Also nominated here are Animated Short shortlisters Paperman, The Longest Daycare, and Head Over Heals.

Best Animated Feature
Brave – Pixar Animation Studios
Frankenweenie – The Walt Disney Studios
Hotel Transylvania – Sony Pictures Animation
ParaNorman – Focus Features
Rise of the Guardians – DreamWorks Animation
The Pirates! Band of Misfits – Aardman Animations
The Rabbi’s Cat – GKIDS
Wreck-It Ralph – Walt Disney Animation Studios

Review - Brave

There's a point in Disney/Pixar's Brave – the latest animated effort to be ushered in under the watermark of Luxo Jr. and (more imposingly) Cinderella's castle – when an impatient character declares, “We've all heard this story before!” The teller of said story defends by emphasizing that stories and legends ring with truths, however familiar they be. The same point can be made of Brave itself, a decidedly predictable fairytale more aligned with the traditional morality tales of the Brothers Grimm than with the wild inventiveness upon which Pixar's brand was built, but that doesn't make the story any less beautiful or touching.

At the centre of this earnestly conceived fable is Merida (Kelly Macdonald), princess of the clan Dingwall who reign in the Scottish highlands, gorgeously rendered here by some of Pixar's most stunning animation to date, courtesy of their newly programmed Presto animation system. Merida is in the illustrious but unenviable position of being able to sire peace between hers and three rival clans if she would only willingly marry one of their first born sons, as prescribed by tradition. No pressure, kid. It would certainly please her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), who spends no small amount of effort primping her daughter to be a perfect lady. But Merida is a tomboy of fiery, untamable disposition – with fiery, untamable hair to match – who would much rather spend her days riding out with her trusty bow and a quiver of arrows than resign herself to a lifetime of wifehood. After one particularly heated confrontation with mom, she takes off into the woods, where the mystical will o' the wisps, lighting up the forest floor like floating pilot lights, lead her to a witch's hut. She bargains with the batty old woman (Julie Walters) for a spell that will change her mother's mind about the whole marriage thing, but failing to be specific, gets a spell with more ursine consequences than she expected.

One... er, Three Categories at a Time: The Shorts

Thanks to Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures, all the nominees for Oscar's least exposed categories do get to see the light of day in select theatres, allowing us mere mortal Oscar pundits to make more informed (but not more accurate) predictions than we ever could before. In the interest of conciseness, I'm only going to briefly highlight the contenders of each race in a few quick blurbs. It's best not to over analyze these categories. There's no telling how the voters will lean any given year.

Sunday Top Ten - Pixar characters

This upcoming Friday, Pixar will release their annual animated feature, Cars 2. While I profess that this new entry in their portfolio has me less than excited, it still seems like an appropriate enough time to celebrate the proficient studio with an edition of my Sunday Top Ten that lists my favourite characters from their wonderful filmography.

One Category at a Time: Best Animated Feature

I'll be honest, I do not have high hopes for animation this year. About half of the contenders I see are either sequels or reboots or spin-offs, and what little original material there is just doesn't intrigue me much. Even the filmmaking Garden of Eden that is Pixar Studios is offering me little in the way of hope. So, what will be nominated?

Even though I find the upcoming Cars 2 a less-than-promising prospect, Pixar should never be counted out for the nomination. But after four consecutive years of dominating this category, I think this is where the streak ends. I just can't see them winning for a sequel to what is commonly cited as the studio's weakest film.

As if to directly challenge Pixar's reign, Happy Feet (the film that beat the original Cars) is coming out with its own sequel, directed again by George Miller, which may give us a repeat of the 2006 BEST ANIMATED FEATURE SHOWDOWN! Forgive all-caps hyperbole, but it's the only way I can muster up any excitement in either of these movies.

Oh, original material, why hast thou foresaken me!... But wait! We've already seen one of this year's original cartoons, the delightfully surreal Rango from Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. Though not perfect, this film was an entertaining and kooky throwback to the great Westerns of yore, and could standout from the crowd by the mere virtue of being an original concept.

Predicted three:
Cars 2
Happy Feet 2
Rango

Also consider: Arthur Christmas, The Dreaming Machine, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Lion of Judah, Puss in Boots, The Rabbi's Cat, Rio, Tales of the Night, Winnie the Pooh

One Category at a Time: Best Sound Editing

The degree of overlap between this category and Best Sound Mixing was smaller this past season than it's been in a while, with only two films nominated for both. Will we see a repeat next year? For the sake of early predictions, it's nice to be as spread out as possible, so let's assume the answer is "yes" for the time being.

Pixar is on a roll in this category, having earned nominations for the last four consecutive years (even for work that may not have been that awards-worthy, but thus is the benefit of being a studio with a high reputation). Can they make it five years in a row with Cars 2. I can think of a few reasons why the streak may end, but Pixar is never that much of a longshot for Sound Editing.

Perhaps a longer shot would be Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens, which looks like it may be a lot of fun, but not really up the Academy's alley. Nevertheless, David Farmer and company have an interesting opportunity to meld rip-roaring Western sound effects with sci-fi alien gadgetry.

Steven Spielberg has two big pictures that could find their way in here this year; War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin. The former, a late-release WWI drama with sound effects supervised by three-time Oscar winner Richard Hymns (Saving Private Ryan) seems like a good enough bet. The latter, a motion-capture adventure with big box-office potential and the attached prestige of a respected director at the helm is probably a formidable contender too.

Finally, one of the few original premises that aims to make some serious coin this summer is J.J. Abrams Super 8. The fact that it isn't based on a comic book hero or previous movie already gives it a leg up with the Academy, who tend to stay away from blockbuster sequels unless they're absolutely amazing. Super 8 looks like it'll have lots of nice loud sound effects to satisfy the sound branch.

Predicted five:
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Cars 2
Cowboys and Aliens
Super 8
War Horse

Also consider: Captain America, The Green Lantern, Transformers 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 4

What to do about Sound...

Interesting factoid: The Academy has only been nominating five films for Sound Editing for the last five years (up until 2006 it was only three nominees), and every year those nominees have matched up 4/5 with the Sound Mixing nominees.

Assuming a continuation of that pattern, I might touch up my Sound predictions a bit, but that means that only six films can earn nominations for Sound, and as we know, there are many more contenders than six.

What are the locks? I'd say Inception is safe in both categories, and, despite its absence from the CAS nominees, so is TRON Legacy. What else is there?

Well, if there is a 4/5 matchup, then there can be only one film per category that is not nominated the other. For Sound Mixing, the hopeful that best fills that description might be The Social Network, which has a fine mix recognized by the CAS, but is highly unlikely to grab a Sound Editing nomination.

Best of the Decade #4: Finding Nemo (2003)

Finding Nemo is a film best described with superlatives: of all Pixar films to date, it is the most moving, most resonant, and most sincere, presenting the fears and struggles of parenthood through a funny, touching, and truly original story.
Thanks to the meticulous effects animation and production design, it is also the most gorgeous computer-animated movie you're likely to see, relishing in vibrant colours set against an oceanic backdrop of deep pastel blue. Equally as vibrant are the characters, fleshed out by perfectly written dialogue and an exceptional voice cast, boasting standout performances from Albert Brooks and especially Ellen Degeneres. Another important character is the one-of-a-kind music of Thomas Newman, who captures the emotional ebb and flow of the story like no one else could.

All said, Finding Nemo is an unrivaled gem of a movie, the acme of refined and intelligent family entertainment, and quite simply the best animated film of the decade.

BRILLIANT SCORE ALERT:


(For those keeping track, this gives director Andrew Stanton the distinction of being the only film maker with two movies in my top ten of the decade.)

Best of the Decade #7: WALL-E (2008)

The opening scenes of this masterpiece from Pixar play out as a dark Kubrikean science-fiction; a disturbing painting of the ravages of environmental indifference and mass consumerism on our planet. But at the heart of it, WALL-E is a love story of beautiful simplicity yet surprisingly deep in its subtextual implications. The ultimate message is one of hope for the future of humanity, presenting the two robots as a kind of futuristic Adam and Eve. Some might even perceive one particular scene as being the pseudo-sexual conception of a new humanity, whereby WALL-E puts his "seed" into the "egg-shaped" EVE (this character's name is no coincidence). The next generation of humans is even meant to resemble babies in space, sucking up liquid meals, virtually no bone density, unable to walk. It signifies human civilization in infancy, a civilization of which WALL-E and EVE are virtual father and mother.

As for the somewhat blunt environmental message, the film makes a point of suggesting that our new technology (and consumption thereof) is not to blame for the environmental crisis, but our own contentedness to sit back and assume everything is OK. The machines are not an enemy that needs to be fought. Our story's savior is one such machine himself. It's human kind's paradigm that needs to be confronted; Man cannot rely solely on his machines, but with machines, he can achieve more than he ever could alone. It's through that combination of the old and the new that civilization will evolve (an idea poignantly evoked during the gorgeous end credits).

The film-making itself is a testament to the combination of the old and the new, where the classics of the silent era are emulated with the most visually stunning of modern technology. High praise must be sung for writer-director Andrew Stanton, who recognizes that a picture is worth a thousand words. WALL-E is made up of thousands of said pictures, each one as effective and filled with emotion as the wordiest of dialogue. WALL-E speaks a different type of dialogue. One with a more universal appeal. With WALL-E, Pixar has created a perfect marriage of the most modern film making techniques and the most ancient ones, hearkening to a time when the movies didn't rely on sound to get the point across.

Not that I've got anything against sound. On the contrary, Ben Burtt's exceptional sound effects for this picture intelligently help convey the thoughts and moods of all the robot characters. His achievement here almost equals his groundbreaking accomplishments on Star Wars over 30 years ago. Credit also Thomas Newman for his equally inventive score.

It may not be perfect, but WALL-E represents one of the decade's cinematic milestones; utterly gorgeous in its visual and audio design, brimming with thoughtful and important ideas, and above all else, a genuinely moving romance that overcomes all odds.