Award season is kicking into gear, so it’s the perfect time for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to announce the nominations for the 76th Golden Globe Awards. This award ceremony honours the best in both film and television, local and foreign.

Via The Hollywood Reporter, the HFPA revealed their motion picture nominations for their 2019 session. Vice gained the most nominations with six, while The Favourite, Green Book, and A Star Is Born weren’t too far being with five. Disney fans will also be pleased to know that four nominations were assigned to Mary Poppins Returns including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. But for now, let’s focus on our bread and butter, the animation nominations.

The five Best Animated Feature Film nominees are quite fascinating choices, each with their unique style and qualities. For starters, Disney’s two animated sequels each gained a spot with Pixar’s Incredibles 2 and Disney Animation’s Ralph Breaks the Internet. This is the first time that Disney-branded sequels have been nominated for the award since Cars 2 back in 2011.

Wes Anderson’s gained his second nomination of this award with his dystopian stop-motion flick Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島), his first time being 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Additionally, Alexandre Desplat’s music for Isle of Dogs has been nominated for Best Original Score alongside A Quiet Place (Marco Beltrami), Black Panther (Ludwig Göransson), First Man (Justin Hurwitz), and Mary Poppins Returns (Marc Shaiman).

Continuing the tradition of nominating at least one independent/foreign animated feature, the one that got the spot this time was Studio Chizu’s Mirai (Japanese: 未来のミライ). Released in North America via GKIDS, this is the first time that a Japanese anime feature has been nominated for a Golden Globe.

Finally, Sony Pictures Animation’s ambitious risk-taking Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has been wowed by critics everywhere prior to release, so it seems fitting for the Globes to assign that movie in the final spot of the category.

In alphabetical order, a reminder of the Best Animated Feature Film nominations are:

• Incredibles 2 (Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation Studios)
• Isle of Dogs (Fox Searchlight Pictures / Indian Paintbrush)
• Mirai (Toho / GKIDS / Studio Chizu)
• Ralph Breaks the Internet (Walt Disney Pictures / Walt Disney Animation Studios)
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Animation)

With a solid selection of animated movies, it’s going to be tricky guessing the winner, but we’ll be sure to find out who it’ll be during award night on January 6, 2019. The show will air live on NBC (starting 5:00 p.m. PST / 8:00 p.m. EST) and will be hosted by Sandra Oh (Window Horses) and Andy Samberg (Storks).

What do you think of these animated movies being nominated? Which one do you think will be the winner?