Mar 4, 2018

"Coco", "Dear Basketball", "Blade Runner 2049" won the Oscar

Disney-Pixar's Coco, directed by Lee Unkrich and co-directed by Adrian Molina, has won the Oscar for best animated feature.

A Pixar animated film won the animated feature Oscar for the ninth time – and the Walt Disney Company won the award for the 10th time in 11 years.

The streak matches Walt Disney's Oscar wins for best animated short in the first 11 years of the award (1931-1942) when his studio won 10 times. Following that streak, the Academy broadened its perspective on the art form and began to acknowledge the creative expression of non-Disney filmmakers. In the following 25 years, the Disney studio won just once.

It's been a similarly slow start with the Academy's animated feature category (since its inception, 71% of all the awards in the category have been presented to the Walt Disney Company). While history tells us that the Academy has managed to break out of this rut once before, time will tell when the Academy finally starts to treat animated features as seriously as it does live-action features, recognizing animation as the rich and diverse art form that those of us who love it know it to be.

In the animated short category, the winner was Dear Basketball, marking the first time that a person who has had rape charges filed against them won the best animated short Oscar.

The other nominees in the category were Garden Party (dir. Gabrielle Grapperon, Victor Caire), Lou (dir. Dave Mullins), Negative Space (dir. Ru Kuwahata, Max Porter), and Revolting Rhymes (dir. Jakob Schuh, Jan Lachauer).

Director Theodore Ushev, who was nominated for an animated short Oscar last year for Blind Vaysha, commented on tonight's curious Oscars where the executive producers of both the winning animated feature (John Lasseter) and short (Bryant) have been accused of sexual misconduct:

In the visual effects category, Blade Runner 2049 edged out the favorite, War for the Planet of the Apes, to win the Academy Award. John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover accepted the award.