Happy Feet Dances Off with Oscar

Sunday, February 25, 2007
By: Ryan Ball

There was no checkered flag for Disney and Pixar this year as Cars was upset by Warner Bros.’ Happy Feet, which snagged the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Sunday night at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. Many expected the night to be a victory lap for director John Lasseter's Cars, which has had a successful awards season run that resulted in top toon awards at the Golden Globes, the Annies and the People’s Choice Awards, among others. Disney fared better on the visual effects side as Industrial Light & Magic as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest plundered Oscar gold for visual effects.

As a testament to how important animation has become in Hollywood, the Oscar broadcast started off with an animated segment that featured a group of penguin characters from Happy Feet sending Mumbles off to Tinsel Town for the big night. In his travels to sunny California, Mumbles even came across Lightning McQueen, the Owen Wilson character from Cars.

Directed by George Miller (Babe: Pig in the City), Happy Feet ended a winning streak for Disney and Pixar, who took Best Animated Feature for its last two releases, 2003’s Finding Nemo and 2004’s The Incredibles. Mumbles and his arctic pals also won over Sony’s Monster House from first-time feature director Gil Kenan. Accepting the award, Miller remarked, “I asked my kids what should I say and they said to thank all the men for wearing penguin suits.” He added, “They gave me a lucky coin and a lucky penguin, but my real good luck was to work with hundreds and hundreds of great people.”

Pixar also came up empty-handed in the category Best Animated Short, which went to Norweigen filmmaker Torill Kove’s The Danish Poet (National Film Board of Canada). In addition to beating Lifted from Pixar and director Gary Rydstrom, Danish Poet bested Roger Allers’ The Little MatchGirl (Disney) Geza M. Toth’s Maestro and Chris Renaud and Mike Thermeier’s No Time for Nuts (Blue Sky). Accepting the award, Kove commented, “I want to thank the Academy for continuing to support this animated short category, it means a lot to us.” She went on to thank the thank National Film Board of Canada and all those in Norway who supported the film.

There was little doubt that the hugely successful Pirates sequel would lay waste to the competition, especially after team at ILM got the nod from their peers by sweeping the recent Visual Effects Society Awards. The swashbuckling adventure, which features a healthy helping of impressive CG animation, won over the Warner Bros. releases Poseidon and Superman Returns. Accepting the award for Dead Man’s Chest were John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall.

Director Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which features visual effects by CafeFX, was favored to win Best Foreign Language Film but ended up losing to the German entry The Lives of Others. Labyrinth did, however, walk away with wins a number of categories, including make-up, art direction/set design and cinematography.

For a complete list of this year’s Academy Award winners, visit www.oscars.org.

Reader Comments

• Daryl : animation student :

  Monday, February 26, 2007

  Aww poop monkey\'s. Cars and The little Matchgirl should won. Happy Feet only won because it is ecological and I have no idea why some badily animated canadian film won best short.

• cathy : director : indie

  Tuesday, February 27, 2007

  The big companies should leave the short animation oscar up to the indies to fight for. Having the financial and production capabilities companies like Blue Sky, Pixar, Disney, etc is simply unfair and big buisiness is not condusive to producing small gems anyway! Get the big raketeers out of the short subject category!

• Jamin8r : animator :

  Tuesday, February 27, 2007

  Gotta disagree with both of you -cathy and Daryl. Obviously there is room for the big studios in the Shorts category...none of them took the Oscar...it went to an Indie after all...which contrary to Daryl\\\'s comment (perhaps more schooling will be good for him) was animated quite beautifully. What Daryl so quickly throws aside is the hard work and dedication of Torill and company...which all animators should appreciate no matter the outcome of the Oscars decisions. Happy Feet, while not my cup of tea, was widely loved by the masses. Happy animating...indie, feature studio, and students alike. There is room for all in such an amazingly beautiful artform...should we choose to appreciate the craft we all love so dearly.
  Jamin8r