Yes, it has happened. It has finally happened. For only the second time in history, an animated film has been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards!

Pixar’s Up is not only one of my favorite films of the decade, but one of my favorite films of all time. It exudes the magic that only animation can bring to cinema. And it seems others are realizing its brilliance.

True, the Best Picture field has now been upped to ten films, as opposed to the usual five, but even still, one should not overlook this achievement. After all, the Academy upped the number of films so they can nominate more mainstream films, and if that’s what it takes to get the sticks out of the collective butts of the members of the Academy, then I guess that’s how it has to be.

Only one other time in history has an animated film been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (watch it again and you’ll see why).

Although I firmly believe there have been many animated films deserving of the nomination, with a good number of those deserving to win, it is only now that the Academy can get over their bias and ignorance against such a wonderful medium, and nominate an animated film for Best Picture.

But will Up win the award? Given all the aforementioned bias and ignorance of the Academy, and how they love to play favorites, I would say it isn’t likely to win, despite that it’s a far better film than the other nominees. There are no politics to it, no agendas,  none of the Academy’s favorite actors. It has only art, creativity, great storytelling and memorable characters. It is too pure to win the award, at least that’s what history shows us. Maybe the Academy will do the right thing for once…….

The entire lineup for Best Picture looks like this:

Avatar (because the Academy is selective when deciding when a billion dollars constitutes art)

The Blind Side (a pleasant surprise)

Disctrict 9 (whoamigosh! Another surprise!)

An Education

The Hurt Locker

Precious

A Serious Man

Up (Woooo!)

Up in the Air (George Clooney is possibly the Academy’s very favorite actor)

Those are the ten nominees. As you can see, it is more diverse than it ever was, joining Up are two sci-fi films, as well as some you may not normally see (The Blind Side). I actually like the idea of ten Best Picture nominees. I was skeptical at first, but if it means actual good movies can be nominated, then it’s a very good thing.

I guess we can thank The Dark Knight for opening these gates. Because once Batman wasn’t nominated, people finally said “enough is enough!”

Along with the Best Picture nomination, Up is also nominated for Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Editing and Best Animated Feature.

On this subject I would like to add that Ponyo, the newest animated film by the famed Hayao Miyazaki and the other best reviewed film of the year, is nowhere to be found, not even on the Best Animated Feature list. Miyazaki won that award before for Spirited Away, and was nominated an additional time for Howl’s Moving Castle. Though Ponyo’s absence from the Best Animated Feature category seems incredibly odd, I would even say wrong, given it’s acclaim (it has already made it onto a few best of the decade lists). Howl’s Moving Castle, whilst a great film in its own right, tends to not be quite as heralded as Miyazaki’s other works, which makes the lack of Ponyo all the more strange. I’ll assume it simply didn’t meet all the criteria (because there are many convoluted reasons why a film can’t be nominated for an Oscar, just ask Gran Torino).

But on another animation note, The Princess and the Frog is nominated for Best Animated Feature as well. And it also has two songs nominated in the Best Original Song category, “Down to New Orleans” and “Almost There.”

I remember reading an article a few months back saying that with ten nominees, it would have been great to see a few animated films join the Best Picture lineup (along with Up, they also mentioned Ponyo and Fantastic Mr. Fox, another acclaimed animated feature). And hopefully one day, we can see something like that. But for now, we can at least celebrate Up’s nomination for Best Picture. It may be far from the second animated film deserving of the award, but it is the second animated film nominated for it. And just as was the case with Beauty and the Beast, it is more than deserving of the nomination, it deserves to win.