I'm still not over the fact that the Academy choose Ratatouille over Persepolis as best animated feature. I know it is silly to get worked up over stuff like this because there are countless similar examples in all categories. Still, I'm a little fed up with all the hype about Pixar. Now, I haven't seen Toy Story 3 and maybe this is the one that lives up to it, but somehow I doubt it. Guess what? After that recent discussion with Jon, I finally watched Wall-E and found it to be a nice enough and enjoyable movie, technically flawless, but otherwise nothing very special.Sorry for the rant, but Pixar is dangerously close to becoming to me what Tarantino or Twilight are to others around here.
I don't agree that the Academy should drop the Animation category because the approach to making live action and animation is so different. My current favourite film of the year is Bad Lieutenant and while I'm not sure it deserves Best Picture of the year yet, it wouldn't be fair on either film to be nominated against one another. By the way, I don't know if BL has even been acknowledged for a possible nod, I'm just using it as an example.
However, Sophie, do you realise that the campaign is very normal? All the studios start releasing "For your consideration" posters around this time. It's one of the points against the Oscars overall, because whenever someone says "why didn't such and such get a nomination?", it's probably because the studio behind it didn't do as good a campaign as the other guys. Cynical, but true.
The only reason I don't like the animated category is that I feel a film should win best picture regardless of it's medium. Sure Up was nominated last year, and Toy Story 3 will most likely be nominated this year but that probably just shows that people are starting to realise just how long it's been since animated films were nominated for Best Picture. And why should they be nominated them when they have their own special little category that they can easily be lumped into? To me it's almost like saying that these animated films aren't worthy of being next to the live-action counterparts so they set up their own award of lesser glory. We all know that Best Picture is the big one, but up until the last two years what animated film has even had a chance? The only other animated film to ever even be nominated for Best Picture was Beauty and the Beast, and that was before the best animated category was started. And when it was started animated films conveniently stopped being nominated for Best Picture as they were suddenly all lumped away in a smaller award.