86th Academy Awards – An Animated Perspective
For the first time in forever – quite literally, Disney have won the Oscar for Best Feature Animation with Frozen directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. It seems almost bizarre that, for a company that seemingly defines feature animation and has populated most of its history with many fantastic productions, the 86th Academy Awards is the first year the team have scooped the award. However the award only has a short history, starting in 2001 and the studio has been nominated 5 times previously during a decade or so which isn’t seen as the strongest for the studio but which does include a few favourites; Frozen appears to have changed that, welcomed by critics and audiences alike. The film also won best original song for “Let it Go“. Others celebrating on the night include the UK based effects house Framestore who won best Visual Effects for Gravity.
Mr Hublot by Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. The film features an obsessive compulsive whose world is turned upside down when a robotic dog enters his life. The film has done relatively well on the festival circuit but wasn’t the surefire winner – in our poll Skwigly readers put the film in joint third place with Get A Horse as our predicted winner, Feral was expected to take the award followed by Room on the Broom. Then again, all the Academy Awards can never be predicted, and it wouldn’t be much fun if you could!
Congratulations to all the winners.