2010 Oscar Nominees

Best Animated Film

 

Up

Up has generated a lot of Oscar buzz, partly because it was the first animated film ever to open the Cannes Film Festival, and partly because of the way the whimsy of the story is tempered by the yearning that can only come with loss—thus giving it very broad appeal. On the eve of his banishment to a retirement home, 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredrickson (Edward Asner) attempts to fulfill a dream he shared with his deceased wife: he joyfully sets his home aloft with balloons and strikes out for South America. Then the curmudgeonly man discovers he’s got an overenthusiastic eight-year-old boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai) as a stowaway. Hilarity ensues, obviously, but this one’s also a tearjerker. Up has also won a Golden Globe for Best Animated feature.

The Princess and the Frog

This Oprah-approved (she voices a small role) modern-day retake of the classic tale The Frog Prince is set in New Orleans’ French Quarter and is as spicy and unique as Cajun culture itself. When a waitress named Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is mistaken for a princess by a frog waiting to be turned back into Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), she’s turned into an amphibian, too. In order to break the evil spell cast by the voodoo magician Dr. Facilier (Keith David), the star-crossed pair must get to the Voodoo Queen, Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), who lives deep in the Bayou. In addition to a compelling story, the film also features jazzy, Broadway-style music, which the Academy may have trouble resisting.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This stop-motion animated film has all the winning ingredients: it’s based on the children’s novel by the inveterate Roald Dahl, features a star-studded voice-over cast including Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, and was directed by Wes Anderson (The Royal Tennenbaums). It’s also an engaging story about a sly fox (Clooney) who tries to go straight but can’t resist raiding the farms of a foul trio of farmers named Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Despite the fact that the characters are animals—and animated—their movements, expressions, insight, and humor make them more true-to-life than some human characters, which means Fantastic Mr. Fox is not an Oscar contender to be trifled with.

Coraline

The world presented in the stop-motion 3D horror-fantasy film Coraline is bizarre and sinister—but it’s also fascinating and delightful. The film, directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) is favoured to win the Oscar largely because of its uniqueness. Dakota Fanning is Coraline, a bored tween who stumbles upon a secret world that seems parallel to the one she already unenthusiastically lives in—except that everything is perfect. Well, almost everything. Coraline is soon buffeted by forces beyond her control before being pressed into a struggle that sees her fighting to save what she didn’t think she wanted in the first place.

The Secret of Kells

The biggest surprise in the best animation category—and possibly the year—is The Secret of Kells, a deceptively simple hand-drawn story about a boy living in ninth-century Ireland who risks everything to help illuminate a famous biblical manuscript, the Book of Kells, in order to help save the world from darkness, so to speak. Twelve-year-old Brendan exists under the watchful eye of his uncle, Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), but when he meets Brother Aidan (Mick Lally) he becomes enchanted by art and soon goes off in search of his dream. It’s a fictionalized story, but the Book of Kells is real (it’s housed at the Trinity College Library in Dublin), and this fact adds interest to a tale already rife with intrigue.

By Marissa Stapley-Ponikowski