This year’s healthy flow of animated feature films has given the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences plenty to think about as Oscar time nears. The organization has released a list of 16 movies qualified to compete for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Pics making the first cut are Warner Bros.’ The Ant Bully and Happy Feet, The Weinstein Co.’s Arthur and the Invisibles, Paramount/Nickelodeon’s Barnyard, Disney/Pixar’s Cars, Disney’s The Wild, Universal’s Curious George, 20th Century Fox’s Everyone’s Hero and Ice Age: The Meltdown, DreamWorks/Aardman’s Flushed Away, DreamWorks’ Over the Hedge, Sony’s Monster House and Open Season, Warner Independent’s A Scanner Darkly, Miramax’s Renaissance and Sony Pictures Classics’ Paprika.
Perhaps the darkest horse in the race, Paprika is the latest anime feature from director Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue). In the film, a young female psychiatrist must put an end to evil doing when the wrong hands get hold of a machine that lets therapists enter their patients’ dreams. The thriller’s clever tagline is ‘This is your brain on anime.’
Paprika, Arthur and the Invisibles and Happy Feet have not yet had their required Los Angeles releases and will drop off the list if they do not open within the year. If the number of features drops below 16, a maximum of three films will be nominated under Academy rules. Films submitted in the Animated Feature category also may qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories.
Nominations for the 79th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Awards will then be handed out on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony will be televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m.
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