As I write some of the parties will still be going on in La-La Land for the post Oscar celebrations. There seems to have been a very international flavour to the glitziest movie awards this year (all four of the main acting awards went to non-American actors according to the BBC, which has plenty of coverage here). As I previously noted comics and SF nominations were thin on the ground this year and the few genre awards last night were in more technical categories, with The Golden Compass (which I thought was a rather lacklustre adaptation from Philip Pullman’s tremendous book) beating Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean for the Best Visual Effects Oscar while the highly enjoyable (bonkers, but terrific to watch) Sweeney Todd won the Best Art Direction.
Sadly Persepolis lost out to the might of Ratatouille for the Best Animated Feature Film; I don’t mean that ’sadly’ in a nasty way, I should add – I thoroughly enjoyed Ratatouille both as a good flick and for the excellent animation which, as ever from Pixar, pushed the envelope of what CGI animation can do well. Its just much as I enjoyed that and much as Pixar is dear to my heart it would have been nice to see Persepolis picking up the gong, especially since earlier in the running it looked like it might make history by also being nominated in the best Foreign Language category (although when the final nominations came out it was cut from this). Still, given the global audience for the Oscars even being nominated is likely to boost the public awareness of the film and hopefully, by extension, the graphic novels. Ratatouille has now picked up a BAFTA, an Annie and the Oscar all in a few short weeks so I’m thinking Brad Bird must be a very happy man.
(Suzie Templeton andHugh Welchman with Peter and the duck from the Oscar winning Peter and the Wolf, pic via the BBC)
On the short animation front the beautiful stop-frame animation Peter and the Wolf won Oscar glory. Written and directed by British animator, the BAFTA-winning Suzie Templeton, this half hour work re-interprets Prokoviev to quite lovely effect; in fact the film has also been designed in such a way that it can be projected in a concert hall to go along with a live musical accompaniment. Peter and the Wolf is also nominated for the British Animation Awards which are held on March 13th; you can see a trailer for the film here. The work comes via Breakthru Films who are also involved with Free Jimmy, a British-Norwegian co-production which won the the top gong at Annecy last summer, the prestigious Cristal for Best Feature. The largest budget animation in Norwegian film-making history the British screenplay is from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz’s Simon Pegg, with current Doctor Who David Tennant, Samantha Morton and Emilia Fox among the UK voice talent. Sadly there isn’t a UK release date on the official site yet, but let’s hope it is fairly soon; I have actually seen the film, but it was the Norwegian cut so I didn’t manage to follow all of it, but a mad junkie circus elephant is interesting in any language. Its something to look forward to on the animated front and a bit different from the usual Hollywood animated features.
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