81st Academy Awards - 22nd February 2009
The contenders: Bolt, Kung Fu Panda, WALL-E
The winner: WALL-E
The rightful winner: WALL-E
The barrel-scraper: Bolt
Other notes:
The years 2007 to 2009 are what I fondly (if awkwardly) refer to as Pixar's "Fountain Age", by which I mean that they tapped into this almost mythical spring of mind-bending creativity and the results were like seltzer to the soul. This was the time in which Pixar seemed absolutely unstoppable, delivering three outstanding films in a row, each crafted with a singularity and sophistication that had one positively salivating, and each very, very joyous to watch. The middle film was Andrew Stanton's Wall-E, which saw Pixar dip into its most arthouse mode yet, by reviving a practice I'd considered long extinct in Hollywood animation - that is, a deep trust in silence and non-verbal character interaction. In an age where big budget animation was predominantly driven by stunt voice casting and non-stop wisecracking, it was refreshing - even a little startling - to have a major animated film where the two leads only speak a scant handful of words between them, and where the entire first third of the film is almost completely devoid of dialogue. The relationship between WALL-E and EVE is depicted with a heartfelt elegance, capturing both the purity of these two artificially intelligent souls and also the haunting stillness of a world were most other life-forms are apparently either dead, defunct or got out long ago. It moves at a contemplative pace that implores the viewer to slow down and sniff the figurative daisies along the way, befitting for a film that advocates, above all else, the necessity of being awake in order to be alive. Oh, and as a side-note, WALL-E's (non-anthropomorphic) cockroach companion is wretchedly adorable, which goes some way to rebut Pixar's earlier insistence, when promoting A Bug's Life, that insects have this inherent "ick factor".
In other news, DreamWorks Animation were officially back in favour again. Kung Fu Panda scored them their first nomination in four years and did a lot to restore their credibility following a string of Shrek sequels and mediocre-at-best comedies about farting animals...perhaps because Kung Fu Panda was the first DreamWorks Animation in ages to give the impression someone had genuinely cared about bringing this particular story to life as opposed to just clinging to the mentality that, "Farting animals sell!" It treats its world, its characters and the culture from which it derives with more gravitas than one would reasonably expect from a late-00s DreamWorks film with the title Kung Fu Panda, drawing a good balance between the drama and the low comedy and actually being quite a lovely film to look at (no small feat given how much I've complained about about the ugliness of some of those DreamWorks features in the past). Story-wise, nothing overly unexpected happens - it's a pretty straightforward Unlikely Savior narrative, but one made with such an obvious affection for all things chopsocky that it keeps you smiling through the predictability. It's not a masterpiece for the ages, but if nothing else, it was reassuring to see that DreamWorks were capable of growth and aspiring to be more than just the edgier-than-thou alternative to Pixar.
Finally, we have Bolt, the first (non-Pixar) Disney film to have been nominated in this category since Brother Bear in 2004. Bolt is an interesting film. Well, okay, no it isn't. In itself, Bolt is about as tortuously uninteresting as Disney feature animation gets - the story and characters are derivative as snot and there's this terribly disposable air to the entire affair, as if the film never had aspirations of being even vaguely remembered a few months after its release date, provided it was able to shift enough plush toys within that time. What's odd and strange and curious about Bolt has absolutely nothing to do with the finished product but with the shadow of that altogether weirder picture that will forever stalk and haunt this one, although you'd have to have a bit of background knowledge on the film's development history to know that it's there. Before Bolt became Bolt it started life as American Dog, the much anticipated follow-up project from Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders. It was to star a pampered celebrity pup named Henry who finds himself stranded in the Nevada desert and has to team up with a couple of real oddball critters - a cranky one-eyed feline and a radioactive mutant bunny - in order to make his way back to civilisation. From the sounds of it, it would have been one hell of a freaky feature. Then in 2006, John Lasseter was brought on as creative head of Disney Feature Animation and supposedly he wasn't very keen on where Sanders was going with this project (or with Sanders in general - rumours also stipulate that Lasseter positively hated Lilo & Stitch). He gave Sanders a lengthy series of notes on how to "fix" the film, there was apparently a bit of butting of heads between the two and, long story short, Sanders was booted off the project and replaced with two more compliant directors, Chris Williams and Byron Howard. The resulting film was safe, predictable and totally impossible to feel any excitement over, unless you happen to have a thing for American white shepherds.
To some, Lasseter's treatment of Sanders would be the first chink in his reputation as Mr Artistic Integrity (it gets a lot worse from here, but we'll address that elephant in the room in due course), as it suggested that Lasseter was ultimately more concerned with delivering a commercial product than he was with supporting the creative visions of his individual directors - but then everyone has their limits and, without having seen how American Dog was shaping up, it's difficult to say whether or not Sanders' vision merited infinite amounts of patience. Inevitably, fans tended to side with whichever of the two names they preferred. Myself, the tiny glimpses we got of American Dog didn't really appeal to me.* But then Bolt most certainly didn't.
The Snub Club:
Besides WALL-E, the trendy highbrow animation to see in 2008 was Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir, an Israeli animated documentary about the Lebanon War, which found itself competing in a different category, for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost out to Yojiro Takita's Depatures. Other than that, 2008 didn't really have a lot else going on. Blue Sky released their second non-Ice Age feature, an adaptation of Dr Seuss's 1954 book Horton Hears a Who!. Why Hollywood keeps trying to churn out feature adaptations from a writer renowned for his playful brevity is beyond me - Blue Sky's attempt has none of the eye-gouging nastiness of that live action Cat In The Hat film from 2003, but it still succumbs to the usual pitfalls in having to pad out a story designed to be read aloud in less than a tenth its length. It's watchable, but not much else. Also, as if to balance out their recent encounter with narrative integrity, DreamWorks Animation released Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa, just to remind everyone that they were still the house of half-based franchises and ugly comedies about farting animals. I loathed the first Madagascar with such murderous intensity that I've managed to successfully steer clear of this one for close to a decade. I don't intend to give in now.
*Actually, I think the dog, Henry, is quite cute. Not so sold on the rabbit or the cat though.
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