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: Animated Short

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.

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...

Academy rule change in three categories

DVD screeners are being sent out with the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, Live-Action Short, and Animated Short to all Academy members, eliminating the necessity to attend official screenings in order to vote them, although screenings are still being held.

How will this rule change affect the voting dynamic in these oft marginalized categories? Will it open the door for more populist fare to finally triumph over artistic fringe contenders? For instance, studio efforts haven't won Best Animated Short in years, so maybe this is good news for Disney's Paperman, one of the most breathtaking filmmaking displays of 2012. Does this help popular Best Documentary contender Searching for Sugar Man tighten its stranglehold on the Oscar? We shall see.

Sunday Top Ten: Oscar noms that'll make me smile

Poles officially closed on Friday for Academy Award nominations. While the accountants at Price Waterhouse Coopers crunch the numbers, we're left to ponder and anticipate. My predictions are likely to shift and slide during the next few days. What will stay consistent are my personal rooting interests. There are certain contenders in several categories who feel like they're on the cusp of a nomination -- contenders who I'd love to see make good on that possibility -- but who could just as easily miss the cut. Here you go, Academy; you have ten chances to make me smile on Thursday morning.

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

Animated Short race gets a Shortlist

Best Animated Short is always one of my favourite fringe categories at the Oscars, often serving up an eclectic cross-section of cultural and technical styles. Most years yield a richly diverse lineup of nominees, and this year's roster will be selected from the following ten titles:

The Eagleman Stag - Mikey Please, Benedict Please
Head Over Heels - Timothy Reckart, Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly
Paperman - John Kahrs
Dripped - Leo Verrier
Adam and Dog - Minkyu Lee
Combustible - Katsuhiro Otomo
The Fall of the House of Usher - Raul Garcia, Stephan Roelants
Tram - Michaela Pavlatova, Ron Dyens
Fresh Guacamole - PES
Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare" - David Silverman

Some of these are viewable on the web. I've seen five of the ten, three of which look good enough to make the cut (Paperman, The Eagleman Stag, and Dripped) and two of which seem unlikely (Fresh Guacamole and The Longest Daycare). We'll reassess the playing field once nominations are announced.