Search

2007-02-25

Oscar Night - Best Animated Feature

WOW!!! That's a shock! I thought John Lasseter was a lock for this one. Hmm. What does this portend for Pixar? Cars wasn't as highly received by critics, and its performance at the box office was below the studio's last two features. You just know that after the money Disney paid for Pixar, the knives will be drawn at the first sight of blood in the water. The real pressure will be on Lasseter to perform with Ratatouille this summer - Brad Bird was brought in to save the project, so we're told - and the next Disney animation feature. If those movies aren't monster hits, then our friends at Pixar are in real trouble. Winning an Oscar tonight would have provided some needed ammo for the studio. But it seems the Academy would prefer the dancing penguin. Ah, well, that's life, kids. What are your thoughts on the matter? How far off the mark am I on this one?

3 comments:

Michael Jones said...

I'm disappointed that Tales from the Earthsea didn't even warrant a nomination. Or does Mr. Lasseter only put his backing behind Papa Miyazaki?
But Hollywood does love its Dancing Penguins.

Anonymous said...

This year its Mocap. The new darling of directors always looking for something "shiny and new" to take a movie with a lame story into box office success. Fickle and short-sighted as it is, it is the reality of Hollywood it seems. Hopefully, after everyone gets over the love-fest of what is only a tool to help tell better stories, we'll get to those better stories.

My fear in the meantime is that many many well qualified 2D animators and many 3D animators will be forced to again, learn another set of tools, and put down pencils yet again. Sad day for animation but not unexpected.

Chris Sobieniak said...

That's how I felt about the whole thing. Mocapping is really a terrible crutch to lean on.

When I think of were we are or have came to because of "motion capturing", I think back to this little PSA, which Robert Abel and his CG team slaved many months to put together for the canned foods industry for an airing during the Super Bowl in '86.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMK_8Njr60

More Ghibli Blog Posts To Discover