Annecy 2024: A First Look at "The Wild Robot"

by Cláudio Alves

Photo by Marc Piasecki | © Getty Images for DreamWorks Animation

Paper airplanes fly through the air, zipping across the auditorium and above the audience. Some crash land on unsuspecting heads, while others sway wild into oblivion, lost in dark corners of the cinema. It's a merry sight, which only grows merrier when these crafts arrive at their intended destination – the stage – prompting applause from the crowd in good festival fashion. Within this hubbub of enthusiasm, a sense of community prevails, made more heartfelt by the presence of children among press folk, the families of filmmakers and animators excited to see how the world reacts to their work. Such was the scene at the Annecy Film Festival, as DreamWorks Animation came to celebrate its 30th anniversary and present The Wild Robot…

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April Foolish Predictions: Best Supporting Actor

by Nathaniel R

Samuel L Jackson was Tony-nominated for The Piano Lesson on Broadway. Will the transfer result in another Oscar nomination?

It's the last four days of April Foolish Predcitions and, thus, time for the acting categories. A year out nobody knows anything, particularly in regards to the supporting categories since they're less dependent on juicy obvious-from-a-distance leading roles and far more dependent on things you can't really know in advance like who will "steal" the movie, how large their supporting roles will be, and whether they'll film will have enough heat to ignite their campaigns. This is when it's most fun, especially in the supporting categories where you can imagine almost anything happen. By the time the televised awards roll around each year there is zero drama in Best Supporting Actor (though we infrequenely see some in Best Supporting Actress).

Last year's lopsided contest was the Robert vs Ryan showdown with two full blown movie stars competing for the supporting gold, one leaning into a career achievement narrative while the other was content to ride his film's pink zeitgeist wave rather than worry about the gold...

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April Foolish Predictions: Eye Candy and Music

by Nathaniel R

The Dietzes are back in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and so is costume design goddess Collen Atwood. Photo © Parisa Taghizadeh for Warner Bros

Our April Foolish tradition continues with the visual and sound categories. For this installment we're just picking highlights from our crystal ball. Read on...

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April Foolish Predictions: What will happen in 'Toon Town'?

by Nathaniel R

Will the new emotions in "Inside Out 2" impress voters?

Last season, we finally saw another hand drawn film take the Best Animated Feature Oscar with The Boy and the Heron emerging triumphant. Will we have another rarity this year or will Oscar voters return to their Pixar and/or American CG habits? Each year we root for the underdogs in this category since great studios like Laika and Cartoon Saloon have yet to take home an Oscar. Sadly, neither of those companies will have a film ready this year. Still, we'll dream that it will prove a truly competitive year no matter what emerges. That always makes it more exciting.

Herewith our April Foolish predictions...

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April Foolish Predictions: Setting the Table for "Best Picture"

by Nathaniel R

Is it anticlimactic to start our annual blindfold guessing with Best Picture? Of course! Does it make sense? That, too! You all know the drill. If a film has Best Picture heat they have a leg up in every single category, whether or not they deserve it in that particular category. Best Picture heat means that people end up aware of and actually screening your movie. If you think about it, that’s half the battle. So as we stumble foolishly into April prophecies in all categories, roughly ten months before Oscar nominations will even roll around (January 17 next year), we have to set the major playing field first. 

We call these April Foolish Predictions because who can possibly know a thing in April?!? Last year at this time nobody would have seen Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest emerging as major Oscar titles. They were already tipped for Cannes, of course, but Cannes and Oscars are very different contests, despite what ended up happening last season. The increasing globalization of the Oscar race makes predicting even harder (we love a challenge!) because who can possibly know which of the hundreds of non-English language titles vying for global attention at festivals will catch the English-language audience’s fancy in a big way? It stands to reason that a non-English language picture will factor into the race again but we’ll have to wait for festival buzz on that front to narrow it down from hundreds of options to a few.

Anyway here are 15 pictures we think could enter the awards conversation...

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