The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed Tuesday morning which of the year’s onscreen accomplishments will go for the gold as nominees in the 89th Annual Academy Awards. Finally, we found out which of the 27 contending animated feature films, and 10 shortlisted VFX titles and animated short films made the cut!
While animated projects didn’t manage to sneak into the Documentary, Foreign Film or Original Score categories despite strong contenders, it does bear special mention that 2017 will see the first fully animated nominee in the Best Visual Effects race since The Nightmare Before Christmas. And we have to give a shout out to Best Documentary nominee Life, Animated, by Roger Ross Williams.
The names were announced by an alumni class of previous nominees (including Guillermo del Toro, who advised that the newly honored “wear comfortable shoes” to the Oscars). The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on February 26, 2017 in Hollywood.
Below is a select list of category nominees with direct animation and visual effects ties; for more information, see oscars.org.
Best Original Song
“Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land | Music by Justin Hurwitz, lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
“Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls | Music and lyric by Justin Timberlake, Max Martin and Karl Johan Schuster (watch)
“City of Stars” from La La Land | Music by Justin Hurwitz, lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
“The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story | Music and lyric by J. Ralph and Sting
“How Far I’ll Go” from Moana | Music and lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda (watch)
Best Visual Effects
Deepwater Horizon | Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington and Burt Dalton
Doctor Strange | Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli and Paul Corbould
The Jungle Book | Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Dan Lemmon
Kubo and the Two Strings | Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean and Brad Schiff
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel and Neil Corbould
Best Animated Short
Blind Vaysha | Theodore Ushev
Borrowed Time | Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj
Pear Cider and Cigarettes | Robert Valley and Cara Speller
Pearl | Patrick Osborne
Piper | Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer
Best Animated Feature
Kubo and the Two Strings | Travis Knight and Arianne Sutner
Moana | John Musker, Ron Clements and Osnat Shurer
My Life as a Zucchini | Claude Barras and Max Karli
The Red Turtle | Michael Dudok de Wit and Toshio Suzuki
Zootopia | Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer
