It’s Oscar season! The time of the year that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honour the best in cinema. The various nominees for the upcoming 90th Academy Awards, set to be hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, were revealed on January 23. Movies like The Shape of Water and Dunkirk are among the top nominees, but for this article, we’ll be looking into the animation categories.
In the Best Animated Feature category, it is virtually the exact same list that the Golden Globes had for their Best Animated Film nominations. These were DreamWorks’ The Boss Baby (which Kimmel coincidently voiced in), Cartoon Saloon’s The Breadwinner, Pixar’s Coco, Blue Sky’s Ferdinand, and the Vincent van Gogh biopic Loving Vincent. Like with the Globes, The Boss Baby and Ferdinand are unusual choices since they lack the massive acclaim of the other nominees.
Then there is the Best Animated Short Film category, which has nominated a good variety of short animated projects. The list includes Glean Keane’s Dear Basketball, Illogic Collective’s Garden Party, Pixar’s Lou, Max Porter and Ru Kuwuhata’s Negative Space, and Magic Light/Triggerfish’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. Coco additionally gained a Best Original Song nomination for the song “Remember Me”.
Below is the list of nominees for the animation categories (via The Hollywood Reporter):
Best Animated Feature
- The Boss Baby (Tom McGrath and Ramsey Naito)
- The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey and Anthony Leo)
- Coco (Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson)
- Ferdinand (Carlos Saldanha)
- Loving Vincent (Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welshman, and Ivan Mactaggart)
Best Animated Short Film
- Dear Basketball (Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant)
- Garden Party (Victor Caire and Gabriel Grapperon)
- Lou (Dave Mullins and Dana Murray)
- Negative Space (Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata)
- Revolting Rhymes (Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer)
Moving away from the Oscars, there is the opposite award ceremony with the 38th Golden Raspberry Awards, dedicated to awarding the worst in cinema. And believe it or not, Sony Pictures Animation’s universally-despised movie about emojis became a big contender in the nominations.
The Emoji Movie was nominated for Worst Picture alongside Baywatch, Fifty Shades Darker, The Mummy, and Transformers: The Last Knight. It was also earned nominations for Worst Director (Tony Leondis), Worst Screen Combo (“Any two obnoxious emojis”), and Worst Screenplay (Tony Leondis, Eric Siegel, and Mike White). Aside from Worst Screen Combo, this is the first time in the award’s history that an animated feature has been nominated in these categories.
Recognition of animation in the Razzies is extremely rare, as only two have won an award. These were Thumbelina (1994) for Worst Original Song (“Marry the Mole”), and Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (2014) for Worst Supporting Actor (Kelsey Grammer as Tin Man). Other animated films nominated for a Razzie include Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Eight Crazy Nights (2002), and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008).
The full list of the 38th Golden Raspberry nominations can be viewed via The Hollywood Reporter.
The Razzie winners will be announced on March 3, 2018, while the Oscar winner announcements will occur the following day on March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. In closing, we would like to congratulate all the nominees for their big recognition!