Annie Awards swing giddily into the "Spider-Verse" and might predict Oscar's Animated Short winner

by Nathaniel R

The directors of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had a great great night at the Annie Awards

Though Disney dominated the Annie nominations with huge tallies for both Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet  it was Sony Animation's all time biggest hit that proved the ultimate champ with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hogging the big prizes at the event. Other big winners were Disney's Mickey Mouse, and two series from Netflix: Hilda  and Bojack Horseman. The winners list and commentary including a few full winning short films and notes on Oscar's animated short race after the jump...

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Streaming Roulette, February: Ant-Man and the Edge of Velvet Buzzsaws

As is our practice we've selected two handfuls of titles of note and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up) for this quick preview.  Do any of these screencaps make you wanna watch the movie? At the bottom of the page full listings for Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and HBO this month. Okay, let's go...

Guess what? You're my favorite student.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016) on Netflix
Remember how good this Hailee Steinfeld high school comedy was?  She was nominated for a Golden Globe even! But why has Hayden Szeto, her love interest, not busted out yet as a star? He was great, too. Turns out (just looked it up) that he's got three movies coming out this year and will also be a guest star on the TV series adaptation of Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows so there's still hope that people (or in this case Hollywood) will realize how fab he is. Yay!

A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin'
We'll make you happy 🎵

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"Incredibles 2" Earns its Title with 11 Annie Nominations

by Nathaniel R

The Annie Award nominations have been released with Disney totally and utterly dominant: Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet lead with 11 and 10 nominations respectively and even when the prizes don't involve animated films (such as with animated effects or animation work in live-action features) the nominations still lean heavily toward a Disney majority.

But all is not lost for non-Disney contenders hoping to win something at the Annies or to score one of those five coveted Animated Feature nomination at the Oscars. Into the Spider-Verse, Isle of Dogs, and Early Man have to be taken seriously as Oscar threats and though foreign animated productions never fare all that well at the very American-centric Annie Awards, Oscar is a different story and both Japan's Mirai and Hungary's Ruben Brandt Collector, scored two nominations with the animation guild. They were already looking like the two most likely foreign players to spoil the Oscar dreams of some big studio CG effort and this confirms it. The complete list of nominees is after the jump along with a few comments...

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25 Films to Compete For "Best Animated Feature" Oscar Noms

WELL WELL WELL

Just last night we were speculating about what might be on Oscar's eligiblity list for Animated Feature and today, two weeks ahead of schedule (according to when they usually announce that is),  the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has gone and revealed the list. Perhaps we should have bought a lottery ticket?

Five of the 25 titles listed after the jump will go on to Oscar nominations in January...

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Review Catch-up: Eighth Grade, Ant-Man and the Wasp, etc...

by Nathaniel R

A few recent major pictures we didn't post full reviews on. Oops. Let's take them in order of preference...

Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)
Synopsis: A slice of life in middle school as an introverted teenager with an unwatched YouTube channel tries to survive eighth grade. 
Capsule: Such is the miracle of this movie that I felt pangs of recognition all throughout it even though I am basically the dad's age and not the daughter's, and also not a parent. I went to middle school a million years ago and so much about life as a teenager has changed radically since then. We didn't have social media, cel phones, and gun drills when I was a teenager...

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