Will 2009 Oscar Race Be More Animated?

As Best Picture List Increases to 10 This Year, Number of Nominees for Best Animated Feature May Also Rise to 5

(CBS)  There may be more cartoon characters walking the red carpet at this year's Oscar ceremony.

In a movie year which has seen a surfeit of animation, from CGI and traditional hand-drawn to stop-motion and claymation, competition in the Best Animated Feature category is unusually tight. But there may be room for more.

According to the rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, nominations for Best Animated Feature are limited to three if there are fewer than 16 features released theatrically. Since the category was introduced eight years ago, there have been five nominees only once (for 2002).

This year there has been a bumper crop of animated features - and also confusion about how many of these will actually qualify.

Right now 15 features are assumed to be eligible for submission by the Academy's November 2 deadline:

• "Astro Boy," based on the 1960s TV cartoon series;
• "Battle for Terra," a CGI saga of intergalactic war;
• "A Christmas Carol," a 3-D rendition of the Charles Dickens tale from the director of "The Polar Express," using performance capture to re-animate Jim Carrey;
• "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," a popular 3-D comedy combining science with giant foodstuffs;
• "Coraline," a 3-D stop-motion of Neil Gaiman's fantasy/horror tale;
• "Fantastic Mr. Fox," a purposefully retro-looking stop-motion telling of Roald Dahl's charming tale;
• "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," the third of the computer-animated prehistoric comedies;
• "Mary and Max," a claymation feature from Australia about pen pals;
• "Monsters vs. Aliens," another 3-D sci-fi action flick;
• "9," Shane Acker's post-apocalyptic fable;
• "Planet 51," a CGI sci-fi comedy set on a world eerily similar to 1950s suburbia;
• "Ponyo," about a young boy's friendship with a "goldfish princess," from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki (an Oscar-winner for "Spirited Away");
• The hand-drawn Disney musical "The Princess and the Frog," featuring songs by Randy Newman;
• "Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure," which reveals how Pixies make their magic dust; and
• "Up," Pixar's 3-D adventure and one of the most critically-acclaimed films of the year.

If a 16th feature isn't submitted, or is deemed ineligible, then two prospective Oscar nominees from the above list would be shut out.

The official roster of eligible titles will be revealed in mid-November. Then an Academy screening committee will view and grade the submitted films to determine the three (or five) nominees.

Some films which appeared at first to be in the running are in fact ineligible. "Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone," an anime based on a Japanese TV series, played in North American theatres this summer but originally opened in Japan in September 2007; and the plasticine characters of the French-Belgian "A Town Called Panic," which premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival, will not show up on U.S. screens until January 2010.

There are other animated films (such as the French-Belgian-Irish "The Secret of Kells," "My Dog Tulip," and from Spain, "The Missing Lynx") that have played festivals but lack a distributor or have not had a qualifying run in Los Angeles.

Studios have been jockeying for position, of course, in determining whether they would spring for a theatrical rollout of an animated film with little chance of Oscar gold.

While it is doubtful that Disney's "Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure" (a modestly-budgeted title originally slated to premiere on DVD) would make it to the Academy's short list, its theatrical release could boost the chances for a nomination of the studio's major animated releases, "The Princess and the Frog" and "A Christmas Carol," if the final list were expanded from three to five. With the latter two films' total budgets likely surpassing $250 million, booking Tink into a Los Angeles theatre for an Oscar-qualifying week-long run (which Disney did last Friday) looks like inexpensive insurance.

Increasing the field to five may also help Miyazaki's "Ponyo" (left), which Disney distributed in an English-language version. Critics raved, but attendance in the U.S. was sparse. An Oscar-nomination could only help.

In judging qualifications there is also the stopwatch to take into account. According to Academy rules, a live-action film with animated characters may jump into the animated feature pool if "a significant number of the major characters" are animated and if such animation figures in at least 75% of the total running time. Therefore, the kids' films "G-Force" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," each starring CGI rodents with live actors, may qualify as well, as might James Cameron's special effect-intensive "Avatar."

Even if the animated feature category itself does not grow this year, the fact that the Academy has bumped up the field of nominees in the Best Picture category to 10 (due, in part, to Pixar's "Wall-E" being snubbed last year) has led some Hollywood watchers to predict an animated film - such as "Up" or "Coraline" - will wind up on the Best Picture list, which has occurred only once before (1991's "Beauty and Beast").

The Oscars' predictable unpredictability only means prognostications are useless. Last year, "Waltz with Bashir," Ari Folman's animated documentary from Israel about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, seemed a safe bet for numerous nominations after reaping a plethora of year-end critics' awards, but it was shut out of both the animated feature AND documentary races. Still, it did become the first animated picture to receive a Best Foreign Film nomination.

By CBSNews.com producer David Morgan

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I've always wondered why there have often been just 3 films nominated in the Best Animated category. Too bad... there have been many great animated films that didn't even get recognized.