Quick Rundown: The Annie Nominations

A couple years ago, I more or less lost interest in the Annies, the awards given for animated films, television shows, video games, and commercials.  Why my loss of faith?  The complete shut-out of WALL-E in lieu of Kung Fu Panda, which swept the 2009 awards.  It was a ridiculous outcome, and revealed a problem in the way the Annies are chosen.  Basically: anyone can buy a membership in the voting body that choses the Annie winners, and Dreamworks gives a membership to every employee, meaning that their films have an unfair advantaged.  So, yes, the Annies can be a little (or very) biased.  Thus, Disney's decision to withdraw its films from the running; this move, effectively taking Toy Story 3 and Tangled out of contention, makes this year's nominations much less exciting than usual.

What's cool to note, though, is that both films made it into a few races, notably Best Animated Feature.  This speaks to the films' quality; indeed, they are perhaps the two best animated films of the year.  How to Train Your Dragon dominated the nominations, scoring 15 in all to Toy Story 3's 3, but hopefully voters will do the right thing and award Pixar's latest masterpiece the big prize.

(Of course, even if Pixar were to win every Annie award that will ever be given out from this point on, it wouldn't make up for the WALL-E debacle.)

Joining Disney's films in the Best Animated Feature race are How to Train You Dragon, Despicable Me, and The Illusionist.  The question is which three will move on to the Oscar race, as there are only enough eligible films this year to allow for a three-horse race.  Despicable Me will definitely not make the cut, so it's between Tangled and The Illusionist to duke it out for the third slot; the other two are locks.

One of the most disappointing categories in this year's batch is for Voice Acting in a Feature Production. Gerard Butler and Jay Baruchel are fine nominees for their work in Dragon, as is Steve Carrell for his fun turn in Despicable Me, but Cameron Diaz doesn't belong within a mile of this race, and for me, the entire voice cast of Legend of the Guardians was forgettably ho-hum; not a one of them stood out.  This is a category where Disney's withdrawal apparently had a big effect.  Donna Murphy, Mandy Moore, Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, and Ned Beatty are all more worthy contenders.

Nonetheless, the Annies will come and go, a mere shadow of what they once were (or at least were perceived to be).  Hopefully they'll make some rule changes in the future to make for a fairer, more interesting contest.