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"If the pattern of the past seven years prevails, WALL-E will be nominated for the Best Animated Feature category," writes Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern. "And if justice prevails, it will win. But WALL-E isn't just an animated feature; it's a great motion picture by any measure.
"In keeping with its singular distinction, Pixar's latest gift to movie lovers should be a candidate for the most prestigious award, Best Picture, when Oscar time rolls around. And the time to start the drumbeat is now, because the path to that nomination is strewn with prickly practicalities and marked by timeworn doubts."
And I say no to that. Animated feature making needs to work its side of the fence, and more-or-less-real movies need to work their own. Keep the Berlin Wall up, Mr. Gorbachev! Biological actuality is too precious and beautiful to sully its textures with hard-drive simulations and vice versa. Sometimes segregation is a good thing. Let art flourish in every corner, and let WALL*E be saluted for the superb animated family drama that it is.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 14, 2008 at 12:16 PM
comment #1
MilkMan
says ...
Andrew Stanton is one of the top screenwriters working in Hollywood today, regardless of category.
Posted by MilkMan
at July 14, 2008 12:28 PM
comment #2
nemo
says ...
Biological activity in film is having a bum year so far. If WALL*E is the best film this year -- and when I consider all the films I've seen or even read about so far this year, WALL*E is indeed the best so far -- then to hell with the wall.
Just say no to affirmative action for biological activity. Let biological activity earn its own way. But I'm violating my own directive that says never pay attention to the Oscars ever.
Posted by nemo
at July 14, 2008 12:35 PM
comment #3
Abbey Normal
says ...
Jeff, I don't follow your logic. The line between animated and live-action movies is so blurry these days with the amount of CGI involved, I think the wall you speak of has long since been breached.
Consider two recent movies with live actors: Speed Racer and Wanted. While neither should remotely be mentioned in a conversation about Oscars, both are pretty divorced from "biological actuality," no? Assuming their quality was up to snuff, would they qualify in your eyes?
Posted by Abbey Normal
at July 14, 2008 12:40 PM
comment #4
Gabriel
says ...
I agree that "Wall*E", while it may still be the best film of 2008 six months from now, should stick to the Best Animated Film category.
But unless five better, richer visual feasts come out between now and then, I see no reason why Stanton shouldn't be nominated for Best Director against anyone in the live action field. Ditto the production designer.
Posted by Gabriel
at July 14, 2008 12:43 PM
comment #5
mizerock
says ...
I know a few cinema buffs that refuse to watch any animated movies. I can't see them watching "Speed Racer", either, even if it had turned out to be as amazing as the most optimistic and creative viewer imagined it would be after they saw the first few stills.
There are enough people with this attitude that an animated movie could never win Best Picture. Why set yourself up for failure?
Posted by mizerock
at July 14, 2008 12:47 PM
comment #6
Howlingman
says ...
I'd say Wall*E definitely stands a good shot at Best Original Screenplay. Besides, wasn't the "Best Animated Picture" category created specifically because so many worthy films were disqualified simply because they were animated?
Posted by Howlingman
at July 14, 2008 12:55 PM
comment #7
Jamieson
says ...
Wall*E is great and all, but again, how can we know what the 5 deserving nominations are when almost half a year of releases are still to come. It's premature to say so. It could end up being one of the 5 best of the year, but there's a lot of films still coming to consider.
Posted by Jamieson
at July 14, 2008 1:10 PM
comment #8
K. Bowen
says ...
I admired Wall-E. But I'm tired of the masterpiece talk. This weekend, I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's what a masterpiece looks like.Intellectual development and cinematic adventurousness. Wall-E is just a fairly thoughtful cartoon.
Posted by K. Bowen
at July 14, 2008 1:52 PM
comment #9
PerfectTommy
says ...
Jeff, Weren't you advocating your own crack in that Berlin Wall last year when you supported "Beowulf" for Best Animated Picture?
Posted by PerfectTommy
at July 14, 2008 2:47 PM
comment #10
Richard_Stone
says ...
I second K. Bowen's comment.
As great a technical achivement Wall-E is, one small detail that keeps it outside Great Art territory for me are the two thoughtless Apple products placement. I guess it makes sense that a few iPods would be around on an earth littered with trash (though no Apple batteries would last 700 years, but hey, it's just a cartoon!), but the two instances of the Mac OsX boot sound really annoyed me for their smug gratuitousness.
Posted by Richard_Stone
at July 14, 2008 3:18 PM
comment #11
nemo
says ...
"This weekend, I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's what a masterpiece looks like. Intellectual development and cinematic adventurousness. Wall-E is just a fairly thoughtful cartoon."
Agreed. But look at how lousy WALL*E's live action competition has been this year. It's still the year's best so far, easily, because the competition is so weak.
I can't believe I'm talking as if the Oscars matter! They're nonsense!
"It could end up being one of the 5 best of the year, but there's a lot of films still coming to consider."
They'll have to be a lot better than what's come so far, and the year is already more than half over.
Maybe I've missed something. I'm not in the film business, and I live in the boondocks of the Midwest. But I follow the film press, and I haven't seen nor heard of a single thing that sounds as good as Gone Baby Gone, The Savages, Ratatouille, or Jesse James last year, much less as good as No Country or There Will Be Blood. It's been a lousy year, even looking at what's in the pipeline.
Don't pay any attention to the Oscars! If you ignore them, maybe they'll go away.
Posted by nemo
at July 14, 2008 3:19 PM
comment #12
D.Z.
says ...
"And if justice prevails, it will win."
Actually, if justice prevails, "The Girl Who Leaped Through Time" will win.
Posted by D.Z.
at July 14, 2008 3:49 PM
comment #13
Mark B
says ...
"I know a few cinema buffs that refuse to watch any animated movies."
I do, too, which makes you wonder how they can truly call themselves "cinema buffs". Besides, anyone who wasn't moved emotionally at some level by the "When She Loved Me" number in TOY STORY 2 or didn't feel some kinship with the family dynamics depicted in THE INCREDIBLES needs to check their pulse. There's more humanity in your typical PIXAR film than in all of Michael Bay's movies combined.
Posted by Mark B
at July 14, 2008 6:32 PM
comment #14
saranie
says ...
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Posted by saranie
at July 14, 2008 6:45 PM
comment #15
saranie
says ...
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Posted by saranie
at July 14, 2008 6:48 PM
comment #16
bluefugue
says ...
I have no idea why Jeff continues to harp on this point. I haven't seen Wall-E, but a movie is a movie. It's all been artifice from the beginning. "Real" movies are sheer illusion, pastiches constructed out of thousands of strips of film shot on different days out of sequence with artificial lighting featuring actors pretending to be characters they're not, often dubbing their dialogue in months later in an air-conditioned studio, while canned music and foley effects are mixed in to fill out the soundtrack. Whether a film achieves emotion by holding a closeup on Robert Mitchum's face or by animating Totoro's widening eyes, it achieves it through tremendous craft and artifice and sleight-of-hand and charlatanism. That is the common heritage (and glory) of all cinema. And much of the time even the technical distinction between "real" movies and "animated" ones becomes so blurry as to lose any useful meaning. I suspect Jeff would agree with me that 2001 is a great film, for instance. But a huge amount of that film is constructed of process shots, miniature work, compositing, and the like. The only distinctive character in the piece is a disembodied voice visually represented by a red glass circle. There's nothing remotely "real" about it. It's fantasy, construct, pure imagination, the toymaker in his shop manipulating his wind-up figurines. Unless one wants to say that an animated movie isn't a movie at all, then it has every right to aspire to be the "best" through whatever artistic, emotional, and intellectual spell it may weave upon its viewers. It's silly for it to be ghettoized and placed in an arbitrary box just to preserve some fundamentally wrongheaded notion of "real" cinema.
Posted by bluefugue
at July 14, 2008 7:18 PM
comment #17
bluefugue
says ...
I understand, by the way, that the Best Animated Picture award allows cartoons to be honored in an environment that might otherwise be prejudice against them. The practical rationale for the category makes sense. What puzzles me is Jeff's insistence on some strange, arbitrary, platonic, idealized division between one type of movie and another.
Posted by bluefugue
at July 14, 2008 7:22 PM
comment #18
worrywort
says ...
Back in 2004 Jeff was singing a different tune. He'd be ok with a Best Pic nomination for Fahrenheit 9/11. Not just ok, but he'd "feel awfully damn good."
http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2004/11/posting_later_t.php
How can he justify a documentary in the Top Five, but not an animated feature?
Posted by worrywort
at July 14, 2008 9:18 PM
comment #19
hillcoat31
says ...
I keep wondering why everybody seems to view WALL-E as entitled to the Best Animated Feature award when the year is not yet over. Has anybody seen Waltz with Bashir or Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff?
I haven't, but I will only be making my predictions/conclusions after having seen the latter.
Posted by hillcoat31
at July 14, 2008 9:25 PM
comment #20
BurmaShave
says ...
D.Z., you just made up a movie. I will not be dissuaded. And as good as WALL*E* is, it is no RATATOUILLE, THE INCREDIBLES, or TOY STORY. Mgmax criticized the second half better than I ever could, but it definetly brought it down to B+ territory.
Be nice if the Oscar-watchers could start talking up IN BRUGES, the film of the year so far.
Posted by BurmaShave
at July 14, 2008 9:32 PM
comment #21
BurmaShave
says ...
Holy shit Miyazaki has a new movie? Sweett.
Posted by BurmaShave
at July 14, 2008 9:34 PM
comment #22
MilkMan
says ...
Good call, Burma. I watched In Bruges on Saturday and I really, really liked it. Farrell, who I cant stand, was great. it was funny and violent and a pleasure to watch. But then again, how could something from the mind of the man who wrote Pillowman not be great?
Posted by MilkMan
at July 14, 2008 10:14 PM
comment #23
D.Z.
says ...
hill: It's not been confirmed whether Ponyo's getting a U.S. release this year.
Burma: No, I didn't. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808506/ It'll even be out on dvd at the end of the year.
Posted by D.Z.
at July 14, 2008 10:54 PM
comment #24
Krillian
says ...
Best two movies of the year so far are Wall-E and The Bank Job. Haven't seen The Dark Knight yet.
The problem with allowing Wall-E be nominated for Best Picture is that Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille were in the top 5 for movies that came out in their years. Pixar's just that good. As long as they're not forgotten for screenplay, direction, etc., I'm okay with them not being up for the main prize.
Posted by Krillian
at July 15, 2008 5:31 AM
comment #25
BurmaShave
says ...
I will not be dissuaded! MilkMan glad to hear people are still seeing it and enjoying it. Yeah Farrell was a real surprise.
Posted by BurmaShave
at July 15, 2008 5:47 AM
comment #26
john.shan61
says ...
well, Wall_e is the best animated moive since last few month and i think it will roll its place on oscar award. It can be compared with the live movie. So, it got own identity and features of the movie.
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comment #27
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comment #28
John Miller
says ...
The best Hollywood Animated movie I've ever seen is Kung Fu Panda. Its very fun and the stories are very real like the normal movie. And a good animation too.
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Posted by John Miller
at February 1, 2010 7:58 AM
comment #29
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