Oscar 2013 - Animation

It's probably the most complicated category to predict this year. As I see it, four of the five entries here have pretty much the same chances. But let's get to the point ...

"Brave" is the first on the nominees list and the one representing Pixar this year. We have a story set somewhere in a Middle Ages Scotland, not a very complex one, but sufficiently original to not give more spoilers. Especially since the trailers fortunately don't do that. I think it's one of the few Pixar productions that is a bit less tear-jerking in the most explicit way (ok, shoot me, but I'll keep saying this) or better said, hides that part behind a sufficiently light-hearted animation. Stuff that DreamWorks mastered since ages ago. And reason for most of the critic (sufficiently blind to not be able to see a bit below the script lines) has always taken the side of Pixar. And the same thing turned a bit against brave now being labeled in the first place as one of the "weakest" releases from Pixar. But somehow it managed to get the Globe. And more recently also the BAFTA, although the location setting of the story might have had an influence in that. So I tend to believe we might have also a surprise at the Oscars too, although, again, the majority of the critic circles awards were split among other titles. Maybe I'm a bit subjective, partially due to liking the Scottish accent and that area in general (and Kelly MacDonald & Billy Connolly are doing one of the best voice acting ever). But mostly due to the fact that I avoided seeing this for a while, believing that's nothing else than a gratuitous praising of the idea of "follow your goal & change your life" as superficial as many others do + adding to that billions of FB shared quotes, Internet memes, etc, samd. However, finally I had the surprise to see that the movie is waaaaay, way more mature than than resuming itself to the quotes above :) ...

"Frankenweenie" is Tim Burton's adaptation after an older idea of a short. In brief, what we have here is a "Frankenstein" transposed in the universe of a little boy who wants to resurrect his best friend: the dog hit by a car. I think it's the best animation technically speaking from what we have this year, and that in the conditions that is on black & white. But the style (stop motion, character design, the shadows & lighting) catches that well the air of an old horror, or of a parody for an old horror (with obvious reference to the Boris Karloff "Frankenstein") that gives me reason to think if it shouldn't be the case to include animations also in the nominees from Production Design. To conclude, I guess it's the best movie by Tim Burton since "Big Fish" (= almost 10 years ago). Besides that, as a researcher on IT with deadlines and experiments on the current agenda, I have to say that the scene below touched me a little bit :) and reminded me that I have also a personal motivation for what I'm doing besides just a job ...

"ParaNorman" is another animated "horror". Norman is pretty much the equivalent of Viktor, the boy from "Frankenweenie", but instead of the talent to reanimate corpses, he can see ghosts. From here onwards, things get more complicated. Some say that this has the nicest story from all this year's nominees, and I tend to believe that as complexity is probably in top two. About how nice it is, that's subjective and my opinion on that is on an entry above :) I have to admit one thing though. If the movie itself wasn't above the others, and the animation is probably the most simplistic from all the nominations, the final hits you damn hard. It's clearly the strongest as emotional impact supplemented also technically (despite of what I just said before).

"The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!" is the outsider this year. The plot revolves around a "pirate of the year" contest and dodo bird. Technically - more details below. As an additional information to the clip, the movie is indeed produced by Aardman Studios, responsible for Wallace & Gromit, but unfortunately doesn't have much in common with Nick Park - the genius behind Wallace & Gromit. And it shows.

"Wreck-It Ralph!" from DreamWorks wraps up the least. Initially, being close to the field, it made me to roll my eyes a bit considering the story of a game character "escaped" from an arcade game and rambling into others. But I realized that there's a Tron, the hacking attempts from Skyfall, or other things like that from the computer science area that get on the big screen to catch a general public and I said myself to keep an open-mind (as a parenthesis one of the few movies that doesn't get exaggerated in this matter and which I give as an example whenever I can is "Antitrust"). Leaving apart the viewing conditions in a pretty expensive cinema, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised. To get to an end with this entry, if above I've noted the deepest story, the best technique and the strongest ending, here I can say that we had the most lovely characters ;).