Furry Movie Award Watch: September

September is an important month for next year’s awards. Major film festivals earlier in the month (which didn’t feature anything remotely furry, so this is their last mention), plus the beginning of screenings of studio hopefuls and even the first precursor award make September the unofficial beginning of “awards season” for movies.

Meanwhile, back in the furry fandom, a major player has had a setback, completely changing my Ursa Major predictions.

crossie’s Current Guesses

Ursa Majors

In approximately 2 minutes and 47 seconds, EZWolf went from “hero of the fandom” to “persona non gratis” – and no, I didn’t miss the obvious pun, I just didn’t stoop to it.

The furry director’s follow-up to Bitter Lake, Room 366, “leaked” to YouTube earlier this month, hasn’t exactly gotten the same rave reviews as its predecessor. Opinions all over the fandom and even beyond have popped up, but I’m not here to add to the discussions of the video’s sociopolitical ramifications.

However, I am here to try and predict which movies will be nominated for and win the Ursa Major, and I’m guessing Bitter Lake is out; if there is one rule in the furry fandom, it is that you do not provide evidence of fursuit sex to the public at large.

My predictions have changed accordingly; I was going to bump Winnie the Pooh for Happy Feet Two anyway, figuring the latter’s late release date would keep it in furry’s minds, but the former just got a reprieve.

I’m moving Kung Fu Panda 2 to the winner’s circle. A lot of furries seem to actively despise Jack Black, but I think Roger Ebert’s furriest review since The Howling gave the movie a bit of a boost, plus it currently is the only movie released this year with a thread on fchan’s toon board (not going to link to it for obvious reasons; you’ll just have to trust me), which features the kind of porn furries vote for.

Well, actually not since it's mostly straight and/or female/female but ... okay, maybe I need to move along now ...

Academy Awards

First thing you’ll notice in my predictions is that The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is back in the mix; basically, if Hop can count as an animated movie (and I’m still counting on it to), and not Tintin, well, that would be kind of stupid.

So, either the “iffy” animated movies (live action/animation “hybrids” Hop, The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and mo-cap Tintin and Mars Needs Moms) are eligible, and it’s a five horse race, or they aren’t, and we’re back down to three nominees.

I’m still betting on Rango for Best Animated Feature; early screenings of Tintin for the press seem to suggest its pretty good, but Rango still has the award. Furthermore, Rango won the very first precursor award for animation of the year earlier this month, so it’s got that going for it.

Rango has been screening this month for Academy members, with “for your consideration” ads for pretty much everything except acting, including “Big Five” awards for Picture, Director and Original Writing; the last of which it is even getting a bit of buzz for.

The ads are probably focused on the Best Animated Feature prize; Paramount is also screening and placing ads for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which is probably only good for Visual Effects and Sound awards. It doesn’t cost anything to add the words “Best Picture” to an ad you’re already placing, however, and you can’t win the lottery if you don’t play.

Last month I talked about Rango’s Best Picture nomination chances; I’m still cautiously optimistic, though I’ll add my original calculations that the Animation Branch of the Academy accounts for more than five percent of the Academy didn’t take into consideration the fact that 100% of the Academy rarely votes for nomination. I’m actually not sure if the five percent of the first place votes needed for a nomination are for five percent of the total Academy or five percent of the Academy who bother to vote for a nomination. [Ed: It's the latter. rule seventeen, section 2, p. 22]

The fact that most of the filmmakers for Rango are first time animators is actually an advantage for the film’s Best Picture nomination chances; it would be against the rules for Academy members to ask other members to vote for their own movie, but there is currently no rule saying a member can’t ask other members for votes for a movie that they were not actively a part of.

The animators seem to stick together; animation directors for smaller studios with no real chances and no illusions have submitted their movie in the past just to give what are essentially their business rivals a shot at nomination. The Animation branch is probably the one branch with the most to prove, and therefore the most reason to pull together.

Furthermore, Paramount was impressed enough with Rango to greenlight an animation studio; getting their first picture out of the box a Best Picture nod may be worth campaigning for, so the Animation branch conspiracy theories may be unnecessary.

In other news, The Rabbi’s Cat still hasn’t found an American distributor; I’m starting to despair for it, and so have bumped it for Rio, which I finally managed to see this month. It’s worth a nomination for no other reason than it is an original movie in a sequel happy year, though I don’t think it’s strong enough on its own to win the contest.

Finally, the Academy announced this month that Donkey will be hosting the awards next year.

Annie Award

Not much change here, other than to say I still think Kung Fu Panda 2 will win mostly because this is the “animator’s” award; while the Animation Branch of the Academy may pull together to give an “outsider’s” movie a Best Picture nomination, if it makes animation as a whole look good, animators in general will probably give “their” award to one of their own.