2008 Oscar Animated Nominations

Ratatouille, Persepolis and Surf's Up Compete for AMPAS Award

Jan 22, 2008 Dominic von Riedemann

Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille, Sony Picture Classics' Persepolis and Twentieth Century Fox's Surf's Up are 2008's Oscar nominees.

Sometimes Oscar zigs, sometimes Oscar zags.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced this year's Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature Film, and there are a couple of surprises on that list.

Oscar's Picks for Best Animated Feature Film

The three nominees are:

Persepolis (Sony Pictures Classics; Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud, directors)
Ratatouille (Disney/Pixar Animation; Brad Bird, director)
Surf's Up (Sony Pictures Animation; Ash Brannon and Chris Buck, directors)

First off, Persepolis, which was eliminated from Best Foreign Language Film contention, found new life as a Best Animated Feature Film nominee. Then Surf's Up, which wiped out in theatres this past summer, received a surprising Academy nod, edging out DreamWorks Animation's Bee Movie and Shrek the Third, Paramount's Beowulf, and Twentieth Century Fox's The Simpsons Movie. Both Bee Movie and The Simpsons Movie were nominated for the Golden Globe Award, but AMPAS sniffed at both flicks, despite its high profile stars and sizable box office respectively.

Also, despite dominating the category last year, motion capture is all-but-invisible in this year's category. Two films (Ratatouille and Surf's Up) are CGI animation, and Persepolis is black-and-white cel animation. The only motion capture flick in contention was Paramount's Beowulf, and it was an unlikely nominee. So AMPAS managed to duck any controversy over whether motion capture is actually animation.

Who Will Win the Oscar?

Unfortunately for Surf's Up, this is likely where the party ends. The movie didn't make a big splash at the box office and its reviews, while solid, were nothing compared both Ratatouille and Persepolis' notices. Once again, it's a two-horse race for Best Animated Feature Film.

Ratatouille's chances, which seemed all but assured when it won the Golden Globe, now are a lot tougher. Many animation professionals preferred Persepolis over the Brad Bird flick, and there is a general assessment that Pixar's trophy case is pretty full. Also, creative types preferred Persepolis' weightier subject matter (life during the Islamist revolution in Iran) over Ratatouille's feel-good story.

However, it's not just animation professionals voting on this category. Ratatouille opened to a wider North American audience than Persepolis, earned a lot more money, and made a bigger splash with its reviews. As far as AMPAS is concerned, animation is still kids' films, which means that a child-friendly movie is more likely to resonate with Academy voters.

While the Best Animated Feature Film category is friendly to foreign films (Aardman's Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away are both previous winners), no foreign film has ever won the award when a Pixar film was in contention.

Also, both Persepolis and Surf's Up are Sony nominees, which tend to cancel each other out. So while Persepolis is an excellent nominee, Ratatouille, with its lighter message, stellar reviews, and massive box office, is the safer choice, and will take the Oscar on February 14th.

However, even if Persepolis takes the prize, Ratatouille has four other nominations to its credit, including best original screenplay (Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco), sound mixing, sound editing and original score (by Michael Giacchino).

Best Animated Short Subject Nominees

Here are the contestants for the Best Animated Film Short Subject award.

I Met the Walrus - Josh Raskin
Madame Tutli-Putli - Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) - Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse
My Love (Moya Lyubov) - Alexander Petrov
Peter and the Wolf - Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman

Based purely on the animation and story, Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman's stop motion adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is the likely winner. The animation in that short is absolutely stunning, and it's a touching rethink of a classic tale.

The copyright of the article 2008 Oscar Animated Nominations in Animated Films is owned by Dominic von Riedemann. Permission to republish 2008 Oscar Animated Nominations in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.