I was looking over my 2014 Oscar predictions for the Best Animated Feature category and I made a few changes, but nothing altogether major.
This weekend sees the release of Pixar’s Monsters University and while my review is coming later this week I can tell you right now, it’s not much of a contender. Then again, sometimes the name Pixar is all you need attached to win, such as last year when Brave was one of the worst animated films in the field and it ended up winning over Wreck-It Ralph… Perhaps the same will happen this year.
This year Disney’s non-Pixar offering, outside of Planes, is Frozen, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen”, which follows Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) as she heads out on a treacherous quest to find her older, more powerful sister, Elsa, the Queen of Arrendelle (Idina Menzel). Elsa has fled after accidentally setting off a curse, leaving her kingdom in perpetual winter.
Disney has delivered some quality animated features recently including Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph and perhaps it’s finally time they took home the gold statue allowing Pixar to take a backseat for once.
Today USA Today brings five new looks at Frozen, which hits theaters on November 27 and, as far as I can tell, is the one to beat for the Oscar this year. Despicable Me 2 may have a chance and maybe Turbo as well, but with Disney’s latest releases I think they have a non-Pixar win coming to them.
Right now my updated animated predictions look like this:
You can browse the full field of 13 contenders right here.
You can check out all five new pics from Frozen below and with Monsters hitting theaters this weekend I have to assume we’ll be getting a trailer for Frozen with it, so stay tuned.
