| Show Ratatouille Surfs Surf's Up not your average cartoons Robert W. W Los Angeles Times One is a tale about a rodent who dreams of becoming a gourmet chef in France Another is about a rebellious girl living under shah post-shah rule in Iran The third is a documentary- documentary style slapstick comedy about a penguin who surfs But together Ratatouille and Surfs Up provide a glimpse into animations animation's possibilities and engaging storytelling that grabbed Oscar voters who nominated each for best animated feature film Few other filmmakers had more reason to smile Tuesday than Brad Bird the writer-director writer of Ratatouille whose film captured five nominations including Bird for original screenplay as well as musical score sound editing and sound mixing The only animated film to toJ J receive more was Beauty and the Beast with six Ratatouille also compared well with the live-action live best film nominees Only four other films this year had more nominations Im just thrilled Bird said Its particularly gratifying to get five That was really wonderful We felt we had a pretty good chance of a nomination in the feature animation category but to get nominated for screenplay and sound and score I was thrilled about that The other nominees are really interesting films Bird added Surfs Up approached the film from sort of a documentary point of view while is really a breath of fresh air It validates my belief that h hand drawn animation is alive and well and vibrant These are three very different films After celebrating her W u nomination with friends in Paris where they downed three bottles of Champagne upon learning the goodnews goodnews good goodnews news Marjane who wrote co-wrote and directed co-directed the film with Vincent said it was just incredible that her little indie film which was based on her own graphic novel and cost only 8 million is now vying for an Oscar This is my first movie my first nomination she said Tuesdays Tuesday's nominations were not dispensed without surprises Ratatouille Disney with its potentially putting off-putting story of Remy the rat handling food in a restaurant and Sony Pictures Classics with its graphic novel style are idiosyncratic tic stories far afield from the standard targeted kid animation feature And few expected Surfs Up Sony Pictures to make the final cut while left out of the mix were two profile high hig profile length feature-length cartoons The Simpsons Movie Century Fox and Jerry Bee Movie Both films were nominated for a Golden Globe with Ratatouille taking the prize Ash Brannon director co-director of Surfs Up with Chris Buck said being nominated makes up for a lot of the disappointments along the way the biggest of which was Surfs Up not finding its audience in release He called Ratatouille a fantastic movie and while he has only seen pieces of added having a small indie in the mix this year is amazing noted that she used D 2 hand drawn animation in her film because she doesn't know how to work with computers I dont don't know how to type said Imagine making a. a a movie with computers t P t |
