One Category at a Time: Animated Short

Year in and year out, this is always one of my favourite categories, boasting a wonderfully diverse array of styles that make it well worth your time to seek out the Oscar Shorts program that brings them to theatres. While I still lament that Glen Keane's stunning Duet was left on the sidelines (ditto Bill Plympton's trippy Footprints), there's still lots to enjoy in the five toons that made the cut.

So, yeah, this happened:

I'd love to stay and break down why this might be one of the greatest national teams Canada has ever assembled, but I've got some partying to do. With luck, my hangover will wear off in time for the Oscars seven days from now.

That is all.

Tomorrow is the big day...

Well, the last couple of weeks have been tightly contested indeed, with multiple players making a case for themselves as potential champs, but it ultimately comes down two formidable competitors. The showdown for gold is tomorrow, and you can bet I'll be up bright and early to take it all in with baited breath...

... What was that? The Oscars are next Sunday you say? I knew that! I'm not even talking about the Oscars right now. For the next twelve hours and a bit I'll have something much more pertinent on my mind:

Annie nominations kick off a crowded December

It must be December, because lists of nominations, top tens, and critics' superlatives are officially upon us. Today, ASIFA-Hollywood dropped their bloated slate of nominees for the 41st Annie Awards, and the Golden Satellite nominations were announced. If those two groups don't quite have you titillated (neither of them move the needle much in terms of influence on the awards race), then look forward to the coming days when we can expect announcements from the New York critics, LA critics, and the National Board of Review.

But back to the Annies...

In the feature film categories, Monsters University and the likely Oscar frontrunner Frozen lead the way with ten nominations. Following with nine are The Croods and Despicable Me 2 (no, I'm not inclined to count the latter's short film Puppy or its nominated TV commercial towards its total).

Speaking of shorts, the only ones to pop up both here and on the Academy's shortlist are Disney's Get A Horse! (the presumed frontrunner), the NFB's Gloria Victoria (a fringe contender if ever there was one), and the BBC's Room on the Broom (from the makers of the 2011 nominated short The Gruffalo). So make of that what you will.

Best Animated Feature

• A Letter to Momo - 
GKIDS
• Despicable Me 2 - 
Universal Pictures
• Ernest & Celestine
 - GKIDS
• Frozen - 
Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Monsters University - 
Pixar Animation Studios
• The Croods
 - DreamWorks Animation
• The Wind Rises
 - The Walt Disney Studios

Sunday Top Ten: Pet Peeves and Highlights of the 2012/13 Awards Season

I decided for this last piece of Oscar coverage to split the difference between stuff that bugged me and stuff that made me happy. I could probably come up with ten highlights and ten pet peeves, but it feels cleaner to go with five of each. I will however acknowledge some things that just missed the peeves list (the Lincoln makeup snub and Global TV's SAG Awards snafu) and just missed the highlights list (Argo making history and Barbara Streisand).

And now, my top five pet peeves, and top five highlights of the 2012/13 awards season:

One Category at a Time: Foreign Language Film

Last year marked the first tine in many years when the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film actually went to the best foreign language film! And with this year's best import also boasting four major nominations, it seems almost assured that the same will happen this year.

My Award nominations: Foreign Film

Like with the documentaries, I always play catch-up with foreign films as they become available, but for now, my five for Foreign Film are:

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.

One Category at a Time: Foreign Language Film

It's usually best to approach Best Foreign Language Film with a fair bit of distance. In most categories it pays to go with your gut, but in this one it almost always pays to try and second-guess the Academy's softened tastes. The widely believed reasoning behind this paradox is that only a small cross-section of the membership – those with the luxury and inclination to attend the official screening of the nominees – may vote on the winner. This group typically skews older, and never bodes well for edgier critical favourites.

One Category at a Time: Foreign Language Film

I've only been able to see three of this year's nominees (one of the disadvantages of living in Southern Ontario - not exactly the cultural hub of the country), and of the two I haven't seen, one is the likely winner. Figures.

Said likely winner is Susanne Bier's In A Better World. Having won the Golden Globe over higher-profile nominee Bituiful has given the Danish drama some valuable exposure. Apparently it's a stirring examination of the consequences of revenge, which has received strong reviews from nearly every festival it's played.

Of course, so has it's biggest competition, French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (which I have seen). It's a terrific bit of storytelling with dramatic heft and the weight of important history going for it, but the nonlinear chronology might not be to the voting membership's liking. But then again, last year's winner, The Secret in Their Eyes, also used liberal flashbacks. I'll be rooting for it (Go Canada!).

It may be a coin toss between these two, although I suspect Algeria's Outside the Law could have an outside shot, being a slick period drama and all.

As for the quiet, existential Biutiful and the bold, absurdist Dogtooth (the other two nominees I've seen), I imagine they just won't tickle this branch's fancy.

Will win: In A Better World
Runner-up: Incendies

Should win: Incendies
Should have been nominated: The Illusionist

My Award nominations: Foreign Film

My picks for the Best Foreign Film of the year are always subject to change because so many of them don't even get exposed in North America until much later. But as of the moment this was typed, my five are:

All That I Love (Jacek Borcuch):
Poignant coming of age for the youth of 1980s Poland as seen through the eyes of a budding punk rock music movement. Wonderfully captures the tumultuous thoughts of both the nation and the individual characters.

Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu):
A densely depressing existential essay, told with sure-handed restraint and tact by Inarritu and his star Javier Bardem. It's beautifully shot throughout, creating a beautiful sense of place with textured, carefully composed shots.

Dogtooth (Yargos Lanthimos):
If nothing else, Dogtooth is at the very least a hard film to forget (for better or worse). Lanthimos' style is simple, intimate, gives proper focus to his actors, and features some really sumptuous cinematography.

I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino):
A fervent but ultimately pessimistic interpretation about the dangers of succumbing to your passions and exploring beyond the societal norm, framed as a stylish melodrama. Tilda Swinton owns it.

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve):
Denis Villeneuve's back-and-forth chronology may bother some, but I think it succeeds at highlighting the passage of time and the values that differ as a function thereof. Performances are strong, as is Villeneuve's confident direction, which is unafraid to jar or disturb us.

And now I play the waiting game...

Time for a brief sociogeographic aside:

It's not often you'll hear me complaining about being a Canadian. Indeed, there are many blessings that come with being a citizen of America's frostbitten northern neighbour, including our preference of the kilometre over the mile, our woollen winter wear, our speciality for ice hockey, and our delightfully idiosyncratic spelling of words like "neighbour", "kilometre", "woollen", and "speciality".

But if there's one time of year where I'll curse my otherwise proud hoserhood, this is it.

While U.S. audiences are quickly crossing the must-see Oscar contenders off their lists, I continue to wait, shivering in the cold cold snow, for several buzzed-about titles to finally see the light of day in Canada (cue "Jeopardy" theme music). Some films that I'm really looking forward to won't even get a limited release until after Oscar nominations are out! Needless to say, the distributors aren't making it easy for me to see all the nominees before the big night.

So here's my plea: Release the damn movies already! Stop making me rush around in January to catch this or that. Most years I can't even build my top ten list until months after everyone else has released theirs. I need more time! Open up earlier! Expand faster! People in Ontario like watching movies too, eh!