BadAtGender

I've been wanting to do a best animated shorts listing, so I may try to organize it at some point after you finish this one up. Is The Thief and the Cobbler eligible? Arabian Knight got a theatrical release, IIRC, but TatC itself didn't (which, uh, is understandable given its incomplete nature.) Is the Arabian Knight release sufficient, or would a vote have to be for that specifically? Also, while World of Tomorrow isn't eligible, as a short, Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day did get a limited theatrical release and is (as much as I've seen) also very good, so take that into consideration. It's currently on Netflix, if you want to take a watch.

My friends and I watched it a year or two ago, and what we realized was the newer translation and dub done by Pioneer/Geneon is a vast improvement over the original Harmony Gold release. So many things that were incomprehensible were cleared up. I think originally we were just engaged by the very pretty visuals, but it's pretty cool how well the story works if you can understand it.

No! The director said that people who had seen his film loved it? What are the odds?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I can't wait to drop 10 or so places due to screwing up something monumentally in my preseasons, just like in the Winter Game. I mean, something has to happen for Tele and me to end up next to each other in the standings.

Third place was Kubo, not Suicide Squad.

Maybe, but it's not important, either. They movie isn't about trying to come up with a plausible scenario for machines to take over the world. It's to have a "machines take over the world" as the baseline so they can explore a number of different philosophical and sociological ideas. Spending time to explain something that might make more sense would be a waste, really, for what they're trying to do. It's easier and arguably better to throw out an easily digested idea so that they can move on and get with what they're trying to do. This is what irks me about a lot of nit picking. Any film (or novel or comic or tv show or whatever) only has a limited amount of real estate to get the point across. If you're trying to do everything to make sure you're ironclad against the nitpicks, you're probably not getting to the point in any good way, either. So you need to choose what's important enough to spend the time on. A recent example I noticed. In the show iZombie, Clive (the police officer) accepts the explanation that Liv (the zombie) is a psychic, which explains how she knows things about the crime. He doesn't question this frankly out there reason. During the writing process, they originally had a much longer build to that, where he needs to be convinced first. But they found that it was getting in the way of the plot (and using up time they didn't have in the show), so they switched it so that he accepted the reason because his aunt is a psychic. But then they found even THAT explanation was slowing things down too much, so they excised it entirely. Now, while it might be a thin justification on screen, it works well enough so that they can get to the point of the show, which is solving crimes, not coming up with a reason for one character to believe another character is a psychic. Another example. DC released a new Prez series last year. It's really good. Updates a concept from the 70s where a teen becomes president of the US. However, despite it being good, the comic is a pretty slow build. The main character doesn't become president by the end of the first issue, and it takes several to get all the base concepts for the series in place. While it reads fine as a collection, I could see the argument that it kinda failed as a series because it didn't utilize the page real estate the best to get the point across in that first issue. Movies, obviously, don't have quite the strict requirements as TV and comics, but they still need to work. If you're going off on a tangent to explain some minor detail, you fuck up the pacing and make the final product worse. Give the audience what it needs to comprehend and move on with you. Sure, it might raise questions after the fact, but that's AFTER THE FACT, and thus you've already gotten them through the movie.

STID, tho.

Yeah, all in their own ways. Word of warning, though, Grave might be the most gut-wrenching movie ever made.

Well, I'm not dead yet.

1. Pete's Dragon Total Gross as the end of the game

Everything is for the 3 day, top 12 and Domestic UOS 1. Will Mechanic Open to more than $8M? NO 2. Will Mechanic Open to more than $11M? 2000 NO 3. Will Don't Breathe Open to more than $7M? YES 4. Will Don't Breathe open to more than $10M? YES 5. Will Hands of Stone open to more than $4M? NO 6. Will Hands of Stone open to more than $6.5M? NO 7. Will Suicide Squad remain in first place? 3000 NO 8. Will the three main new releases combine to more than $22M? 2000 YES 9. How many films will make more than $9M this weekend? 3000 TWO 10. Will Greater have a PTA above $2,000? NO 11. Will Level Up have a PTA above $3,500? YES 12. Will Sausage Party stay in the top 3? NO 13. Will War Dogs stay above Kubo? NO 14. WillSausage Party pass $80M domestic by Sunday? NO 15. Will Pete's Dragon stay above Ben Hur? YES 16. Will Jason Bounre fall more than 34,5% on Sunday? YES 17. Will Bad Moms remain in the top 10? 3000 YES 18. Will Star Trek drop more than 44%? NO 19. Will SLOP have the lowest percentage drop in the top 15 excluding any film that increases? 2000 NO 20. Does the Mechanic need some added shark punching action in order to truly break out? It probably needs more cars jumping out of airplanes 14/20 - 2000 15/20 - 3000 16/20 - 5000 17/20 - 7000 18/20 - 9000 19/20 - 12000 20/20 - 15000 Part 2 1. What will MEchanic's OW be? 5000 $6.54m 2. What Ben Hur's PTA be? 5000 $1,593 3. What will the fifth placed film gross this weekend? 5000 $7.31m Part 3 1.Don't Breathe 3. Kubo & The Two Strings 5. Sausage Party 8. Ben-Hur 11. The Secret Life of Pets 15. Hands of Stone 3/6 - 2000 4/6 - 5000 5/6 - 9000 6/6 - 13000

Star Wars has one modern film, so there isn't enough to go on. It will need to show it has more than nostalgia going for it. Marvel has settled into "entertaining, but of journeyman construction". There isn't anything particularly innovative. An MCU film might be a good way to spend a couple hours, but I'm not hankering to revisit them. F&F is always looking for a new cool thing to do. It consistently gives a reason not just to see the film, but to see it in the theater. I'll take it for my action over the others 9 times out of ten. So, yeah, it's the best extant action franchise.

Once the DCEU gets 7 or so installments in, we'll see about it being repetitive. It also needs to step up and be more than "interesting, but flawed." As it stands at the moment, though, F&F is the best ongoing action franchise.

It's not better than Zootopia, though?

A mystery book series could be nice, especially if it veers slightly older than the Frozen "Sisterhood" series. (Which I've been collecting, but haven't read beyond the first. It's mostly because a friend of mine does the art.) It's a nice way to do "filler" stories that don't set any story or world precedent while still in keeping with the tone of the movie. Something Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew-esque. "Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde in the Mystery of the ____"

1. Will Ben Hur Open to more than $16M? NO 2. Will Ben Hur Open to more than $20M? 2000 NO 3. Will Ben Hur Open to more than $24M? NO 4. Will War Dogs open to more than $16M? YES 5. Will War Dogs open to more than $20M? 3000 NO 6. Will War Dogs open to more than $24M? NO 7. Will War Dogs open to more than Ben Hur? YES 8. Will Kubo Open to more than $12M? 2000 YES 9. Will Kubo Open to more than $16M? YES 10. Will Suicide Squad stay at number 1 this week? YES 11. Will Sausage Party stay in the top 3 this week? YES 12. Will Jason Bourne stay above Bad Moms? NO 13. Will Star Trek stay above Florence Foster? 3000 NO 14. Will Pete's Dragon increase more than 47% on Saturday? NO 15. Will Ice Age's PTA stay above $850? YES 16. Will Nerve drop more than 65%? NO 17. Will Jungle Book stay above Civil War? 3000 YES 18. Will Ghostbusters decrease more than 25% on Sunday? YES 19. Will SLOP cross $350M by the end of the weekend? 2000 NO 20. Are these questions the simple ramblings of a crazy jetlagged maniac? Increasingly so, over the course of the summer, yes. 14/20 - 2000 15/20 - 3000 16/20 - 5000 17/20 - 7000 18/20 - 9000 19/20 - 12000 20/20 - 15000 Part 2 1. What will Ben Hur OW be? 5000 $8.76m 2. What will Suicide Squad percentage drop this weekend be? 5000 53.1% 3. How much will Sausage gross on Friday? 5000 $5.2m Part 3 2. Sausage Party 4. War Dogs 7. Jason Bourne 10. Florence Foster Jenkins 12. Hell or High Water 15. Nerve 3/6 - 2000 4/6 - 5000 5/6 - 9000 6/6 - 13000

Zoo, Dory, Moana, and Kubo, I'd guess.

If I was going to go for historical importance/greatness, it'd probably be something like: 1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 2. Toy Story Actually, those are the only two easy ones, because in both cases you've got clear historical precedent for their inclusion: the first feature length animated film* and the first computer animated film. *This actually isn't true. There are earlier features, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed is probably especially worth noting as the oldest surviving feature. However Snow White was the first fully hand-drawn feature that was completed, AFAIK. But what do you select from there? Clearly, there needs to be something Miyazaki, but do you go for his biggest (Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, likely, but maybe you make the argument for Ponyo) or do you select something earlier like Cagliostro, Nausicaa, or Totoro, because those set the foundation for Ghibli and his later career. And what about the other Ghibli directors? Does Grave of the Fireflies merit inclusion. Further, say we need to note the importance of the Disney Renaissance. What's the inclusion point? The Little Mermaid is first* but what about Beauty and the Beast, which managed the BP nomination? And The Lion King's box office dominance? Which is the most important inclusion. *Or is it? While the Renaissance is often declared to stat with it, the seeds of what became the Renaissance began much earlier, with Basil the Great Mouse Detective. In a way, it's probably down to which people are deemed most important for it being a Renaissance. Alan Menken & Howard Ashman, who started on TLM, or the directors and other people at Disney, like Musker, Clements, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. I don't know. Does anything else from Pixar beside TS1 get in there? Finding Nemo, perhaps. I'm completely in the tank for Pete Docter, but are any of his films historically important enough? Up for it's BP nom, maybe? Actually, what do we do for box office dominance in general. Shrek 2 is a largely mediocre film, but it destroyed records. Does it merit a slot? What about Frozen? What else? Does Akira merit a slot? (I'd say so, but I could also see arguments against it.) What about films that had some not-quite-so-revolutionary but still very amazing technological leaps. Big Hero 6 introduced Hyperion, which is pretty amazing to behold and has definitely caused things. As great as the writing of Zootopia is, it wouldn't have worked so well if they didn't have the tech to pull off the worldbuilding. And everything above is pretty focused on just two countries, the US and Japan. What about others? Even if a lot of animation talent has been focused in those two, there are plenty elsewhere. You've got films like The Triplets of Belleville (France) and The Secret of Kells (Ireland) that are making some pretty strong cases for inclusion, to say nothing of things further back. (Achmed came from Germany.) And what about stop motion? Surely at least one stop motion film has to be considered historically great enough to merit inclusion. But which one? The Nightmare Before Christmas? Chicken Run? Back in the 70s, there was a lot of counter-cultural animation. Fritz the Cat or something else Bakshi might need to be there. (Sausage Party certainly isn't the first to tap that adult animation well.) So, I dunno. It's probably easier to just get personal favorites, few of which would match up to historical importance.

No, he's right. I thought it had missed the nomination.

Neither was DM2. And as much as I like The Croods, it's not like there's an argument to be made for it standing vastly ahead of MU. Or perhaps even slightly ahead. You're right that the circumstances are different, because right now we have a TON of really good films to consider. That, IMO, makes it less likely three Disney branded ones get through as nominees, not more.

The Academy has previous snubbed WDAS and Pixar. 2013, MU (admittedly mid-tier at best for Pixar, but still some amazing animation) loses a nom to both The Croods and DM2. In 2010, Tangled, despite some revolutionary work on the hair animation, misses a nom. While Cars 2 missing in 2011 makes a fair bit of sense, since it got critically reviled, Cars itself missing in 2005 doesn't as much. Yes, there are many people in the academy who are associated with Disney, but they very often aren't exclusively associated as such. Animators move around from job to job and studio to studio. They people voting aren't going to think "Hey, I worked at Disney once, therefore they MUST get three of my choices!" Also, at this point we have a huge question mark. You seem to be taking it as a given that Moana is going to be good enough for a nom. I'm not. (

You're saying that like there's some predisposition in the animation branch towards WDAS and Pixar. I don't think that's the case at all.

The nominees are chosen by the animation branch. That the film snubbed animators is absolutely the death knell. Yes, it was already a longshot, because anything below ultra-high budget computer animation isn't likely to get there, but any dream it had wasn't gone due to Kubo (which could probably get a nod even with merely good reviews.) And Moana is going to have to be a hell of a lot better than mediocre. If, when the animation branch comes down to a decision, and they've got two WDAS films to consider, both of them absolutely gorgeous and one of them a critical juggernaut, well, the other had better be right in that same conversation of excellence before they decide it doesn't measure up. You're right that Little Prince is probably on the snubbing block, if only because of the distributor woes. Netflix might push it hard, but Netflix is still a massive outsider, so it may not mean much. Actually, now that I consider it, I'm pretty sure that one of the big Disney 3 is going to miss. In every year when there have been 5 nominees there's only been one where three computer animated films got the nod: 2013, which was arguably a weak year overall. This year is decidedly not weak, and there's ample evidence that the animation branch really likes to give recognition to the smaller films that use other techniques. (Weirdly, there were several years with only 3 nominees where all three were computer animated.) I'd almost start to wonder if they could use that, and the fact that the winner tends to just be the highest grossing of the nominees, to tactically choose them. Pick the one big film that they like best for a nom to get the win, and then fill up the other four slots with the smaller fare they think are deserving recognition. Zootopia or Moana or Dory The Red Turtle April and the Extraordinary World Kubo and the Two Strings The Little Prince

Any chances Sausage Party had of getting a nomination died once the word about unpaid and uncredited animators got out. And now that the reviews for Kubo are coming in, it seems pretty safe to assume it's a lock for a nom (even if it wasn't a lock before because it's stop motion.) It's still a tight race to try to fill up five slots, though. I count seven hopefuls. Zootopia Kubo The Red Turtle Finding Dory The Little Prince April and the Extraordinary World Moana Something's gotta give. Moana's chances are down to quality and reception. It's got a really high bar to pass to get there. I suppose if it manages to become something of a zeitgeist it'll be easier. We'll have to see. Regardless, there's going to be some disappointment.