BadAtGender

I think it was one category I didn't nominate at all, because there's so much to the editing process that isn't seen in the final film. I don't know enough to judge.

Well, the library's closing so I guess that's enough of me saying how y'all have collectively terrible opinions.

BARON FUCKING ZEMO?

Agreed.

What if you took all his films of him doing the cowboy performance and had him do the dude performance instead. And vice versa.

You like Sing. I don't think you have any worry about turning into any character in Birdman.

Glenn Close is who you hire if you want to get Meryl Streep but realize she's never going to do your blockbuster effects porn.

Mag7 should have gotten a cinematography nod. Even if it didn't get anything else exactly right, it nailed those American vistas just like a classic western.

I admit that I haven't yet watched Warcraft.

I've had food poisoning that's better than Hardcore Henry. It's atrocious. It's in my bottom five of all time for films I've seen in theaters.

Haven't seen, yet. I'm kinda excited to see how low my expectations can be by the time I do. Still, if the forum is actually going to bag on comic book films, why not actually select the worst of the year? Like TMNT 2. Or something else.

I admit, I've only seen two of those worst films, but neither is particularly bad. Y'all need to actually watch some shit. Go see Hardcore Henry. Go watch London Has Fallen. Now those are complete crap on the celluloid.

None of my nominees in most underrated made it. Hell, I don't think I've SEEN any of the underrated ones, yet. (I've got two or three on hold at the library, so perhaps by the end of the year I'll get them.)

Or going sub-2.0? Edit: Goddamit @TalismanRing!

So's your face.

I'd like to congratulate @CoolioD1 on his win.

Other distributors can have lower scale releases. Sony Classics, Focus, and so forth. Not to mention the chance that the likes of a major distributor releasing something smaller, even if they aren't the primary producer. There are plenty of potential releases that could get nominations, and many, again, that we haven't heard about, yet. Loving Vincent is a possibility. Some thought it would get released last year, but that didn't happen. The Thousand Miles, Sylvian Chomet's latest, is also due out this year. Mary and the Witch's Flower is Hiromasa Yonebayashi's latest, could get a qualifying release this year. It'll be as close to Ghibli as you can get.

It will be pretty amazing if any of the major studio films besides Coco snag an award. No, LEGO Batman isn't doing it. Neither is Ferdinand. Blue Sky hasn't snagged a nom since, um, the first Ice Age? It'll be like 2015, pretty much, where we've got four really small releases (probably at least one we haven't even heard about yet) and one big one that's the de facto frontrunner. Of course, if Coco turns out to be a bit of a dog, like TGD, maybe we'll get a year with no major films. That could lead to something like The Breadwinner getting a win, which would be nice, because Cartoon Saloon is fantastic.

I did nominate Gods of Egypt for at least one award.

Well, yes, the business of the industry does mean that studios may not grant such large budgets, but that's true for Disney, too. They could spend far less on their films, but they choose not to. And it's not as if their higher budgets are getting them astronomically more business than the competition. Illumination spends half as much on their films and makes a comparable amount of money. Still, while you might be correct that the polish associated from the tech may not be an overriding factor, there is a correlation between budgets and the technical quality. It isn't JUST that WDAS sunk a lot of money into developing Hyperion, but also that they sink a lot of manpower into utilizing that technology, and to working and reworking their stories until they're hitting the right emotional beats. Disney and Pixar spend a lot of money on their films, but they also spend a lot of time. And that effort is what's rewarded. The tendency for pretty much anything stop motion to get a nomination is probably related to that. Such films are all about the labor of love. There probably isn't anything more time consuming than stop motion animation. Of course, as @Jason noted, we really don't have enough data to tell if the animation branch holds stop motion in particular favor, or if it's just that stop motion films tend to be pretty damn good. And it's sort of a similar thing with the big budget computer efforts. Though in their case, there are enough of them that a few are pretty guaranteed to miss each year.

130k points is not nearly a comfortable enough lead

Huh.

It's likely that the campaign doesn't matter so much for nominations, but I actually think the distributor might. GKIDS has a sort of mission statement to go and find the best animation worldwide and bring it to the US. They pretty much exclusively deal with feature length films. Funimation mostly does TV anime distribution, and many of their actual films are tie-ins to the same. And that different might mean that members of the branch would be inclined to support something that's more appealing to them in the sense of broadening the medium. A bit, yeah. Those technical merits happen because WDAS, Pixar, and DWA (at least in the past) are willing to spend the time and resources on their films. There isn't anything that says Illumination, WAG, SPA, or Blue Sky couldn't do the same. They just choose not to.

Here's what I'm thinking. 1. Zootopia 2. Kubo and the Two Strings These two are guarantees. They've got the bulk of the critics awards, generally fantastic reviews, and both are exemplary in their respective mediums (computer and stop motion, respectively.) There's no way they miss. 3. Moana OR Finding Dory This is a bit more tricky. I think it's likely that Moana gets the nomination rather than Dory, the circumstances of Zootopia already being there, so it's not like WDAS will get shut out if Moana misses, mean that we probably can't count Pixar getting a nomination. It's not as if Dory isn't an undeserving film in its own right. Critically, the films are close (95/7.9 for Moana and 95/7.6 for Dory), so it could be a tossup. However, I think back to 2014, and the upset when Lego didn't get a nomination, despite critical raves. I've argued that it makes sense from a budgetary standpoint, but I also wonder if there might have been a case of tactical voting. Where animation branch members might have felt it would have been a deserving nominee, but also realized it was guaranteed to win if it did get a nom, when they saw other films (any of the other films, perhaps) as more deserving winners. There's no way to prove this, of course, but it's possible that Dory beats Zootopia as the winner if it gets a nomination, and I doubt anyone in the animation branch feels Dory is a more deserving winner. Moana isn't likely to pull an upset in the same way. (In contrast to '14, if Dory misses a nom, nobody will cry foul.) 4 & 5. Two spots left, and they'll be filled by indies. We've had a swath of them this year, so there's no lack of hopefuls. I'd rank their chances thusly: a. My Life as a Zucchini b. The Red Turtle c. Your Name d. April and the Extraordinary World e. The Little Prince f. Miss Hokusai g. Phantom Boy h. whichever misses between Dory and Moana I almost put Zucchini as slot 4 and left the others for the fifth, but there are so many possibilities here, I won't really be surprised if any miss it. Still, Zucchini is stop motion, which gives it a pretty massive medium bump. The Red Turtle is partially Ghibli, so that may come into play. Your Name does have some pretty great critical response, though again, as with Lego, that's no guarantee. A lot might come down to how well regarded the character animation is. Shinkai does some phenomenal stuff with backgrounds and such, but his character work isn't jaw-dropping in comparison. Outside of Ghibli, anime in general doesn't seem to be well regarded. April feels like it's a bit outside the top three. It's got some great animation and character work, though, plus some delightfully off-kilter worldbuilding that brings to mind Miyazaki blended with European influences. The Little Prince, I don't know. The story itself has some great stop motion work, which is in its favor. But it's got the less well regarded framing story, which might ding it as lower budget computer animation. Plus there's those distribution woes. Had it gotten a wide-ish release, I'd put its chances as much more likely. Miss Hokusai has the problem of running in the same year as Your Name, so it's got a much higher profile and probably better regarded anime film competing with it. Still, it's probably not completely dead. Phantom Boy is from the same studio and directors as A Cat in Paris, which got a fairly surprising nomination in 2011. It's got about the same blend of off-kilter charm and suspenseful adventure, but it also is in a much more competitive year. And we're back to Dory and Moana again. I put this here mostly because it's possible that both of them do get a slot, but I consider such a thing slim. Part of the reason I don't want to count any of these out is what I'd call the Boy and the World effect. It doesn't matter how low profile something is. The animation branch can still give it a push if they like it enough.

For that the matter, the scoring would have to happen at some point. ^_~