The 13 Annie Award nominations gathered by Ratatouille have made it a favorite to take the Best Feature Animation Oscar. And the one nomination given to Beowulf (for production design) is obviously a fairly significant diss. Unquestionably, the animators who voted this way did so for small reasons. No film this year delivered quite like Beowulf. Its crime (and that seems an appropriate term now, given the Annie snub) was having used live actors as a mere starting point, in much the same way that portions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were built upon live acting. I only know that the result fit my idea of a wondrous fantasy through and through. If Beowulf isn’t animated, I’d like to know what term I’m supposed to use.
