One Category at a Time: Best Visual Effects

The age-old rule that Best Picture nominees never lose Best Visual Effects to movies not nominated for the Academy's top prize was bucked last year when three effects-driven Best Picture nominees (plus Star Wars) apparently split the vote and allowed the subtle supporting CG of Ex Machina to sneak up the middle for the biggest shocker this category has ever seen. At least that's one theory.

The point is, I don't think I'll be able to trust my own predictions in this category ever again. Even with a stone cold frontrunner in this category, I suppose anything could happen, but let's start by assuming conventional wisdom prevails...

VES Loves 'The Jungle Book'

To no one's surprise, Disney's "live-action" Jungle Book remake was the toast of the Visual Effects Society's annual awards, taking the group's top prize for Effects in a Photoreal Feature in addition to four other awards.

Oscar nominees Deepwater Horizon and Kubo and the Two Strings won their respective categories for Supporting Effects and Effects in an Animated Feature. Oddly, Kubo didn't win any of the other feature animation categories, which is unusual for a group that has rarely spread the wealth like this in the past.

Rogue One, which had been nominated in six categories (more than any other project), was shut out. Ouch.

Feature film winners after the cut.

My Award Nominations: Visual Effects

Tomorrow the VES will bestow a bunch of hardware on The Jungle Book (or so I presume), but there was a ton of other impressive work done out there worthy of Best Visual Effects consideration. And I have to hand it to the Academy's vfx branch too: This year, they got it exactly right.
Here are my top five:

Is It That Time Already?

Has it really been four months since I've posted something? Yikes. Time to scrape the lime deposits off my knuckles and start typing again.

You must excuse my silence this past summer. For once it had nothing to do with professional obligations (those will take their toll soon enough), and everything to with having little to say in regards to the summer movie scene.

Let's face it: This was a lousy summer at the movies.

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: