Best Animated Feature - 2016: Zootopia, Moana, Kubo, Zucchini, Red Turtle

[Mojoguy]

I'm not here to argue about Spirited Away's merits, just that it is generally bad for Disney whenever they have several of their own movies competing against each other in the same year.

[yjs]

Yeah, and the others are saying that it may not be the case even if it seems so at a glance. It's just basically unprecedented that split voting has negative effect since it usually narrows down to the frontrunner anyway. 

 

Not the same category but both Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King had three songs in the Best Original Song category respectively and it didn't stop neither from winning a trophy.

Same for the Steven Soderbergh's double nomination in Best Director category 2000, he did win with Traffic, even against very strong competitions like Gladiator's Ridley Scott, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon's Ang Lee and Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry. 

[Jason]

38 minutes ago, Mojoguy said:

I'm not here to argue about Spirited Away's merits, just that it is generally bad for Disney whenever they have several of their own movies competing against each other in the same year.

 

Right, but there's no evidence that that's the case. The only year that Disney (incl. Pixar) has had multiple nominations and didn't have one of them win the Award is 2002. Even if you ascribe that to vote-splitting rather than Spirited Away being the superior film, the general pattern is that years with multiple Disney nominations do not prevent a Disney winner.

[cannastop]

13 hours ago, Jason said:

 

Right, but there's no evidence that that's the case. The only year that Disney (incl. Pixar) has had multiple nominations and didn't have one of them win the Award is 2002. Even if you ascribe that to vote-splitting rather than Spirited Away being the superior film, the general pattern is that years with multiple Disney nominations do not prevent a Disney winner.

Also, Disney distributed Spirited Away, and probably wanted a win so that it could prop up video sales.

[cannastop]

Zootopia won the Animation Award at the Hollywood Film Awards, which probably means that it's the current frontrunner at the Oscars.

 

http://www.hollywoodawards.com/2016/10/the-jungle-book-zootopia-craft-artists-to-be-honored/

 

The only question now is how much people will like Moana.

Edited October 6, 2016 by cannastop

[Jason]

13 hours ago, yjs said:

It's just basically unprecedented that split voting has negative effect since it usually narrows down to the frontrunner anyway. 

 

This is an excellent point. In most years there's a clear frontrunner in terms of critical reception, and in all of those years that film has won the Award. In 2013, Frozen wasn't a clear frontrunner in terms of critical reception, but it was still the obvious frontrunner. Brave and Big Hero 6 are the only winners that come to my mind as not being clear frontrunners in any way, so there isn't enough of a sample to examine whether there's any kind of vote-splitting going on, studio-based or otherwise.

 

13 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Also, Disney distributed Spirited Away, and probably wanted a win so that it could prop up video sales.

 

True, I imagine Disney was happy about Spirited Away's win, a month before the home video release. But given the strength of its reception relative to the competition that year, I'm quite sure Spirited Away would have won regardless of whether Disney wanted it to.

[BadAtGender]

The other thing about Spirited Away was that John Lasseter was pushing it (and Miyazaki in general) very, very hard at the time. (If you watch the Disney release DVDs of the Ghibli films from around then, several of them have him doing a little introduction where he is super excited to show you this great film.) Lilo & Stitch was well liked, but it didn't have any sort of push that was equitable. 

 

Plus, the entire nature of how Spirited Away was released probably means that the normal rules for animation winners don't exactly apply. In general, the biggest DOM box office film wins, because many academy voters probably aren't particularly interested in seeking out all the nominees, so they just go with whatever their kids/grandkids like the most. But Spirited Away had a domestic push that was much more akin to an indie sensation film. So it's more likely that they'd be exposed to it directly than because it was the chosen film for a family weekend.

[Jason]

On 10/6/2016 at 9:38 PM, DamienRoc said:

Plus, the entire nature of how Spirited Away was released probably means that the normal rules for animation winners don't exactly apply. In general, the biggest DOM box office film wins, because many academy voters probably aren't particularly interested in seeking out all the nominees, so they just go with whatever their kids/grandkids like the most.

 

It's actually not clear to me that Spirited Away broke from the 'normal rules' of animation winners. It's true that eleven winners have had the biggest DOM box office, but twelve winners have had the strongest critical reception (looking at RT and Metacritic combined). A total of eight winners have had both the biggest DOM box office and the strongest critical reception, so it's impossible to tell what the most important deciding factor is from those examples alone. Of the remaining seven winners, a total of four had the strongest critical reception but not the biggest DOM box office, while three had the biggest DOM box office but not the strongest reception.

 

That isn't much of a difference by itself, but what I find interesting is that of the four winners that had the strongest critical reception but not the biggest DOM box office, two of the four examples had a very large deficit at the DOM box office compared to the films they beat (Spirited Away, The Incredibles). But among the three winners that had the biggest DOM box office but not the strongest critical reception (Brave, Frozen, Big Hero 6), there was actually no single frontrunner with stronger reception than all other nominees in a (statistically) significant way. In fact, in every year where there was single clear frontrunner, that nominee went on to win the Award. In other words, it appears that DOM box office becomes an important factor only in the absence of a clear frontrunner in terms of critical reception.

 

While there are no counterexamples to the pattern that DOM box office is an important factor only in the absence of a single critical reception frontrunner, there are still only two counterexamples to the converse possibility of critical reception being important only when DOM box office grosses are relatively close. So it's far too small a sample size to draw any firm conclusions. That being said, using the most general rule available, Spirited Away adheres to that rule rather than being an exception.

 

Here's a table showing the results for each year. The "CR FR?" column shows whether there is a single clear critical reception frontrunner for that year, and if not how many nominees there were in total. The "CR Win" column shows whether the winner was the critical reception frontrunner for that year, or among statistically tied frontrunners.

 

Quote

Year	Winner	CR FR?	CR Win	BO Win
2001	Shrek	N/3	Y	Y
2002	Spirited Away	Y	Y	N
2003	Finding Nemo	Y	Y	Y
2004	The Incredibles	Y	Y	N
2005	Wallace and Gromit	Y	Y	Y
2006	Happy Feet	N/3	Y	N
2007	Ratatouille	Y	Y	Y
2008	WALL-E	Y	Y	Y
2009	Up	Y	Y	Y
2010	Toy Story 3	Y	Y	Y
2011	Rango	N/5	Y	N
2012	Brave	N/5	N	Y
2013	Frozen	N/5	N	Y
2014	Big Hero 6	N/5	N	Y
2015	Inside Out	Y	Y	Y

 

[eXtacy]

There should be a few reviews coming from the London Film Festival for Your Name this upcoming Friday/Saturday. Theres a rave review from Variety already out.

[SchumacherFTW]

On Sunday, October 09, 2016 at 4:22 PM, eXtacy said:

There should be a few reviews coming from the London Film Festival for Your Name this upcoming Friday/Saturday. Theres a rave review from Variety already out.

I cannot wait to finally see it on Saturday 

[Morieris]

I read the Novelization for Moana on Saturday...of course a movie is different from a story, but there are some things I can definitely see translating to lulls on the big screen. Not enough to break it by far. I can see Zootopia beating it but not Dory.

 

[cannastop]

11 minutes ago, Morieris said:

I read the Novelization for Moana on Saturday...of course a movie is different from a story, but there are some things I can definitely see translating to lulls on the big screen. Not enough to break it by far. I can see Zootopia beating it but not Dory.

 

The novelization probably has the entire plot in it.

 

Are you predicting that Finding Dory will win the Oscar? Because that's not the most common choice.

Edited October 10, 2016 by cannastop

[Morieris]

4 minutes ago, cannastop said:

The novelization probably has the entire plot in it.

 

Are you predicting that Finding Dory will win the Oscar? Because that not the most common choice.

 

Flub on my part; Two different thoughts there. Zoo and Moana will probably be nominated, maybe Dory (long shot), but Dory won't win over the other two.

[cannastop]

Monthly Results from the Awards Watch panel:

 

http://awardswatch.com/predictions/2017-oscar-predictions-animated-documentary-and-foreign-language-film-october/

 

1. 41 Points: Zootopia
2. 36 Points: Moana
3. 33 Points: The Red Turtle
4. 24 Points: Kubo and the Two Strings
5. 8 Points: My Life as a Courgette
6. 7 Points: Finding Dory
7. 1 Point: April and the Extraordinary World

Still a big gap between 4th place and 5th place.

[eXtacy]

On 11/10/2016 at 0:45 AM, SchumacherFTW said:

I cannot wait to finally see it on Saturday 

 

The director, Shinkai, might be there.

[SchumacherFTW]

42 minutes ago, eXtacy said:

 

The director, Shinkai, might be there.

I would have thought he'd be more likely for Friday's screening  

[eXtacy]

On 12/10/2016 at 1:59 PM, SchumacherFTW said:

I would have thought he'd be more likely for Friday's screening  

 

I look forward to hearing your reaction today!

[SchumacherFTW]

7 hours ago, eXtacy said:

 

I look forward to hearing your reaction today!

Funimation needs to get their finger out, that's the best animated movie of the year by far! 

[eXtacy]

5 hours ago, SchumacherFTW said:

Funimation needs to get their finger out, that's the best animated movie of the year by far! 

 

 

 

Edited October 15, 2016 by eXtacy

[cannastop]

Walt Disney Studios has an Oscar campaign site, which includes their 3 big animated movies:

 

http://www.waltdisneystudiosawards.com/