Oh,
if only it were a normal year! Best Animated Short would be so much
easier to predict if only it were a normal year! But as we've been
observing throughout the season, this Oscar year is anything but
normal, and that abnormality extends to the arena of live-action and
animated short films. For the first time ever, they are being sent on
screeners to Academy members, all of whom are now welcome to vote,
going by nothing more than the honour system that they did indeed
watch the nominated films.
Some
of the logic guiding pundits through the Animated Short race (filled
with delights on a yearly basis) is that block voting will benefit
studio entries like Paperman and Maggie Simpson in “The
Longest Daycare”, whereas the old voting system would certainly
have been more advantageous to lengthier and more artistically
rendered fare like Head Over Heels or Adam & Dog.
