Annie Award nominations for "Cars"

According to Upcoming Pixar, Cars has just

received a total of nine Annie Award nominations, and they are the following:

1. Best Animated

Feature
2. Directing in a Animated Feature Production - John Lasseter
3. Character Animation in Feature

Production - Carlos Baena
4. Character Animation in Feature Production - Bobby Podesta
5. Music in a

Animated Feature Production - Randy Newman
6. Animated Effects ? Keith Klohn
7. Animated Effects ? Erdem

Taylan
8. Production Design in a Feature Production ? William Cone
9. Writing in a Feature Production ?

Dan Fogelman

Flushed Away also got nine nominations but oddly enough, it was

not nominated for Best Animated Feature. The other Best Animated Feature nominess

were Happy Feet, Monster House, [i]Open

Season[/i], and Over the Hedge. This is the first time that an Aardman

feature film did not get nominated in that category (I’m not sure about their animated shorts

though).

Anyway, go Cars!

Just to add to my above post, all seven of Pixar’s films have

been nominated for Best Animated Feature in the Annies. Four of those Pixar films ([i]Toy

Story[/i], Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, and

The Incredibles) won the award, which means that Cars

could make it Win #5 for Pixar.

Go Cars!!!

Cars does indeed have competition. It think

it would be a great accomplishment to see Cars win everything they were nominated for.

Wonderful news! I just read

about this on Upcoming Pixar, as well.

Well…we’ll just have to cross our

fingers and hope for the best. Although, there is a part of me that wants Happy Feet

to win the title of Best Animated Feature, unfortunately.

In my opinion, we are all being a little biased. You all have to admit, any

film that got nominated for Best Animated Feature is definetely a great film worth watching.

The Star Swordsman - Yes, you’re right. A majority of the films

that were nominated are all worthy to be viewed and critiqued in a respectable manner, most notably

Cars, Happy Feet, and even [i]Monster

House[/i]. Of course, the votes are all affected by each person’s individual opinion, so it’s

anyone’s game as to who wins the grand title of “Best in Show”.

I am very surprised Flushed Away isn’t on this list.

I’m still wondering why

Flushed Away wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature, though. I mean, I haven’t

seen the film, but a lot of critics seemed to have liked it. And of course, this is Aardman that we’re talking

about - as in the same Aardman that made the great Chicken Run and absolutely

brilliant Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Unfortunately, snubs

occasionally do happen (I still cringe over the fact that Shark Tale was nominated

for Best Animated Feature in the Oscars, while The Polar Express wasn’t.

Ugh!)

But I guess I’m going to have to see the movie first before I make any such strong claims. Who

knows? Maybe DreamWorks had too much of an influence in making the movie . Not that DW hasn’t made any good

films, but their films are, in my humble opinion, far inferior to those made by Pixar or Aardman

The Star Swordsman and CountSolo - I am also rather surprised that

Flushed Away was not nominated for the [i]Best Animated

Feature[/i] award. What’s up with that? Maybe the critics base the success of the film entirely on

it’s revenue/income? Of course, that is absolutely ridiculous, but hey…

Well, some said it was the “Best Animated Film Since The Incredibles”

Ouch - this is actually really painful for me to look at.

I’ll be

interested to look at the full list of nominees when it becomes available.

But really, gone I guess are

the days of blowing out the Annie Awards. There are 10 categories in which a feature film can be nominated and

in 2004 The Incredibles was nominated 16 times in all 10 categories and took home all 10 awards including 3 to

Brad Bird himself with the unprecedented trifecta of writing, directing, and voice acting.

Here now we

have Cars with 9 nominations in 6 categories being completely blanked in 4 categories including three voice

acting, story boarding, and character design (three areas in which Pixar should excell) and a fourth, animated

effects.

I’m just shocked at these numbers and I see the industry now telling John "hey, it was

still great but this just wasn’t your best movie." Maybe sweeping the Annies is just a Brad Bird thing

since the unprecedented sweep in 2004 only surpassed the unprecedented sweep of 1999 in which Brad Bird’s Iron

Giant was nominated 15 times in all 9 categories possible at the time and won all 9 awards (and this was even

against A Bug’s Life) but I digress.

Lets do a quick Breakdown of past Pixar Appearances at the

Annies…

1996
Toy Story
Biggest Competitors: Pinky & The Brain, Hunchback of Notre

Dame
NOTE: Not all stats know this year
Categories Possible: 10
Nominated: at least 8 times in at least

8 categories (inc. Best Feature)
Won: 8 categories (inc. Best Feature)

1999
A Bug’s Life
Biggest

Competitors: Iron Giant, Tarzan, Prince of Egypt, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, Antz
Categories Possible:

9
Nominated: 4 times in 4 categories (inc. Best Feature)
Won: 0 categories

2000
Toy Story

2
Biggest Competitors: Fantasia 2000, Chicken Run, Titan A.E., The Road to El Dorado, Dinosaur, Stuart Little

(in select categories)
Categories Possible: 10
Nominated: 9 times in 9 categories (inc. Best

Feature)
Won: 7 categories (inc. Best Feature)

2002
Monsters Inc.
Biggest Competitors: Ice Age,

Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Spirited Away, Treasure Planet
Categories Possible:

10
Nominated: 7 times in 7 categories (inc. Best Feature)
Won: 1 category

2003
Finding

Nemo
Biggest Competitors: Brother Bear, Looney Toons Back in Action, Millenium Actress, Triplets of

Belleville, Sinbad, Jungle Book 2
Categories Possible: 10
Nominated: 12 times in 9 categories (inc. Best

Feature)
Won: 9 categories (inc. Best Feature)

2004
The Incredibles
Biggest Competitors: ShrekII,

Shark Tale, Ghost in the Shell 2, SpongeBob Square Pants Movie, Polar Express, Home on the Range
Categories

Possible: 10
Nominated: 16 times in 10 categories (inc. Best Feature)
Won: 10 categories (inc. Best

Feature)

2006
Cars
Biggest Competitors: Flushed Away, Open Season, Happy Feet, Monster House, Over

the Hedge
Categories Possible: 10
Nominated: 9 times in 6 categories (inc. Best Feature)
Won: ?

categories

The point is, with the exception of Monsters Inc and A Bug’s Life this is Pixar’s worst

showing to date especially coming on the heels of blowouts by both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. It’s even

worse when you consider the films these have gone up against (Monsters Inc pitted against both Lilo & Stitch

and Spirited Away and A Bug’s Life pitted against Iron Giant. Yes I’ll admit competition was light for some of

the others, but this years Happy Feet, Flushed Away, and Monster House aren’t exactly what I would call super

contenders either).

In other news I’m quite shocked that Flushed Away became Aardman’s first movie to

miss Best Film especially considering it got 9 nominations total. That could hurt Cars if it gets lots of

sympathy votes in those categories. Other than that I guess I’ll have more to say when the full list comes

out.

I just hate that it won’t be another major pick up for Pixar. *fingers crossed for a short

nomination* =/

Don’t worry. I have a strong gut feeling that

Ratatouille will make up for the losses.

Besides, the fact that

Cars garnered the most nominations (even though, as you said, these nominations are

spread over six categories) is nothing to sneeze at.

Oh, and for the full list of nominees, you can take a look at it on

this IMDb page.

And one more thing: Unless I counted incorrectly,

Cars’s nominations are actually spread over seven categories, not six.

Flushed Away didn’t get nominated for Best

Picture?! Shock and Outrage! It’s a great movie!

Methinks the best picture award will be a fight between

Cars and Happy Feet. Cars is slightly hindered by the shadow of Pixar’s previous success, and Happy Feet is

slightly hindered by being made by a “rookie”, as 'twere. We shall wait and see…

I also kinda

wish Paul Newman was nominated for best Voice Acting. He was great in Cars.

Go Cars!!! Whoo!

And pardon me for being naive, but what 2 characters were the

character animation nominations for?

I think they mean the animators who animated

the characters, not the characters themselves. I assume these two guys did a particularly great job of showing

expression and behaviour on the Cars that the Annie guys felt it merited the nomination.

The biggest suprise is probably that Cars wasn’t nominated for Best Storyboarding, but Over

the Hedge 2 times (And the story of OTH was almost nothing…)

Another surprise was that Flushed Away

wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Perhaps they didn’t want to give Aardman a chance to pick up the award the

second time in row.

And to Dash’s post: Yeah, you’re right. But it’s just that Cars wasn’t as well

received by the critics. It got almost the same Tomatometer as Over the Hedge. So it’s clear that it won’t be

so easy for Cars to pick up the awards in Animated Feature (Oscars, Golden Globes, Annies…). Some critics said

it was completely disapointning. While almost everyone said to The Incredibles: THIS IS THE BEST ANIMATED MOVIE

EVER!!!

So it was clear for me that Cars won’t be as dominating as previous Pixar movies at this years

award season.

RMS: ohhhhhhhh okay. I

thought maybe they were the supervising animators for specific characters. now i get it