Sunday Top Ten - Animated Disney films

It feels like it's been ages since I last cobbled together a Sunday Top Ten list... because it has. But if I don't do one now, before the heat of Oscar season really starts beating down upon us, then it'd never get done! So here's a top ten list that a number of people have been asking for.

In anticipation of Frozen's imminent release (which I am very much looking forward to), I've finally joined the sizable flock of Gen-Y-ers on the Internet who have their own distinct ranking of the animated features of Walt Disney Studios. No two lists (and there are a ton of them out there) are quite the same, but they all share one thing in common: No one has an easy time making them.

I've discovered that my own relationship with the iconic studio's 52 theatrical releases – needless to say, the works of Pixar do not count – is a conflicted and perpetually evolving one. As a child of the 90s being raised on the miracle of “home video”, I indiscriminately loved Disney films of all ages, from the antiquated Snow White to their most state-of-the-art releases. Frankly, I couldn't tell that some of these films were made 60 years apart, and the notion of systematically ranking them against each other never crossed my mind for even a split second. It was the only phase of my life when what I felt for the movies was pure, unconditional love.

As my burgeoning interest in cinema (and a nettlesome sense of pretentiousness) began to develop in adolescence, I suddenly found that certain toons I had blissfully smiled through not long ago were failing to pass my new-found discernment. At the same time, new charms and nuances that had flown over my head when I was knee-high began to reveal themselves. The magic wasn't gone from these films – not all of them. The magic was simply changing. Letting a movie win you over a second time but for different reasons is a special sensation.

Weighing a combination childhood nostalgia and that unnameable quality that genuinely speaks to me as an adult was the only way I could come close to sussing out a top ten. I'm sure many readers will cry foul that 'this' film or 'that' film was omitted, but I believe it to be an appropriately diverse and personal list that nicely represents the things I love most about the Disney legacy. And no, I did not have an easy time making it (although long-time readers should easily be able to predict my #1 pick). 

So without further ado, my top ten Disney animated features:

MPSE winners

The Motion Picture Sound Editors dropped their superlatives last night after the WGA, and it does little to clear up the picture in the Academy's corresponding category. Traditionally, it's the Sound Effects and Foley award that most closely represents the Best Sound Editing Oscar, so that may bode well for Skyfall, which won its fourth guild award here. But War Horse won that from the guild last year and then fell short to Hugo on the big night.

I'm still feeling Life of Pi for either one or both of the Sound awards, and since Les Mis looks good in Mixing, Sound Editing looks good for Pi. It won two of the MPSE's prizes, technically making it the "big" winner of the night.

Speaking of Les Mis, it predictably won the category for Music Editing in a Musical (inarguable, if you ask me), while Wreck-It Ralph recovered from a CAS loss to Brave with a victory in the Animated category. Both films had excellent Sound Designs, so I guess it's fair that they shared these two industry honours. It's a shame neither of them managed to impress AMPAS, though.

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.

My Award nominations: Animated Feature

Didn't think it was the strongest year for animation all around, but there was lots of variety of technique upon which to feast the eyes. My five Best Animated Features nominees are:

Sunday Top Ten: Top Ten of 2012

Thanks to all who emailed or posted in the comments their top ten lists. I read them with great interest. What fine tastes we all have! [back pat, back pat]

I never got into the habit of publishing an official top ten list when I started this blog. After putting so much work into my own awards each year, an additional list reiterating what I thought were the best films of the year seemed redundant. But I guess it's never too late to start. So here's a ranked, illustrated writeup of my ten favourite movies of the 2012.

Before getting into that, I have to highlight some honourable mentions:

There were some great documentaries this year, at the fore of which are The Queen of Versailles -- which humanizes the obscenely rich while shrewdly dismantling the American Dream -- and 5 Broken Cameras -- which brings a refreshingly personal touch to a complex political issue. 2012 was also a triumphant year for blockbuster franchises. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises gives his influential trilogy the stirring conclusion it deserves, while Sam Mendes' Skyfall respectfully reinvigorates old-hat material with a classy new treatment. Sundance indies refound their mojo after a bit of an off year in 2011. Ben Lewin's The Sessions reveals intimacy that extends beyond the physical with an endearing sense of playfulness and heart. And finally, even though it's not a feature, no article on the best filmmaking achievements of 2012 would be complete without a big sloppy kiss to John Kahrs' superb animated short Paperman. This is probably my biggest cinematic crush of the year. Its groundbreaking innovations in hybrid animation combined with its hopelessly romantic story took my breath away, leaving an impression equal to any feature I saw over the last 365 days.

It. Is. Perfect.

Money shot! This is my favourite image I saw on screen in 2012

And now, the top ten...

Busy night for industry kudos with DGA, ADG, and Annie Awards

Oh what a night. Lots of precursor announcements to parse through, the biggest of which was the Director Guild of America, awarding their top prize to Ben Affleck for his Oscar hopeful Argo. At this point it can hardly be called a surprise to see Affleck picking up more hardware, especially after last weekend's PGA and SAG victories. Indeed, it could be that his Best Director "snub" by the Academy turns out to be one of the biggest deceptions in recent Oscar history, because it's looking like Argo may have been the unbeatable frontrunner all along. Time will tell.

In the documentary category, Malik Bendjelloul continued his awards season sweep for Searching for Sugar Man, likely on way to the Oscar. I liked the movie, but is it too much to ask the film industry to spread the wealth a little bit. There were other good documentaries this year, y'know.

PGA winners!

Well whadya think about that? My hunch (and several other pundits' hunch) about Argo being in the best shape to win with the Producers Guild turned out to be true. That preferential ballot, I tells ya! It works wonders for the least objectionable film on the slate, and of all the Best Picture nominees this year, Argo seems to be the one that just about everybody likes.

Its big win last night pushes it into a slight lead in the Best Picture race, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions: If Argo wins Best Picture, who wins Best Director? With so much time until Academy ballots are due, could Argo be peaking too soon? Final voting doesn't even start for nearly two weeks. That's more than enough time for either a backlash to take hold, or for the SAG and/or DGA Awards to shift momentum to another player.

My Award nominations: Original Screenplay

Read about my favourite Original Screenplays after the cut.

American Cinema Editors nominate...

ACE Eddie nominations have landed just one day following Oscar nominations. Oscar snubees Les Mis and Skyfall can take some consolation in their citations here. All five Oscar nominees for Film Editing are accounted for.

Best Editing - Drama
Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

The decade long streak of an ACE winner going on to win Best Film Editing at the Oscars was broken last year when The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won (no comment) over The Descendants and The Artist. Not sure what the case will be this year. Argo and Zero Dark Thirty have showier editing, but Lincoln and Life of Pi appear to be more popular with the Academy. I'd still look to the winner of this prize to be the Oscar favourite.

Cinema Audio Society noms

The guild announcements continue as the CAS has dropped their five (*actually ten) best mixed films of the year. I had only recently removed The Hobbit from my own predictions, but its inclusion here forces me to re-reconsider. All three LOTR films got Best Sound Mixing nominations after all. Presumed nominees Les Mis and Skyfall (the former the likely winner) were also mentioned, while Best Picture heavyweights Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty round out the top five.

The biggest surprise for me is the society's decision to inaugurate a separate category for animated films -- further suppression of this increasingly ghettoized medium. I'd have thought that if there's any field in which animated films could, and should, be judged on an equal playing field with live-action, it's sound!

Anyway, the nominees, and some final pontifications, after the cut.

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 - Wreck-It Ralph

Spinning off of an imaginative, Monsters, Inc-like concept about a community of video game characters living within the same arcade, Wreck-It Ralph may seem at a distance to be little more than a nostalgia trip for parents and a seizure-inducing distraction for their kids, but the marketing is a mirage. While it starts out merely as a clever homage to the arcade culture of the eighties, it transitions into something more substantial and compelling before its ingenious but admittedly thin premise has the opportunity to wear out its welcome. You need not be a gamer in order to relate to this beautifully spun tale about seeking acceptance and discovering self-worth, which is frankly the best movie Walt Disney Studios has given us since its 1990s heyday. It's like the Pixar movie we never got last year (what is this Cars 2 of which you speak?).

We all know what it's like to be in a rut; that feeling of desperation that comes from going through the motions of a dissatisfying routine, the frustration of being doomed to your “lot in life” when you desire so much more. Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) understands it all too well. He, the villain of an antiquated arcade game called “Fix-It Felix Jr.”, has been performing the same Sisyphean grind for 30 years. Ralph wrecks the building, Felix (John McBrayer) fixes the building. Felix is rewarded with medals and admiration from the tenants, Ralph is tossed in the mud and made to sleep on a heap of discarded bricks all by himself. Sunrise, sunset.