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Before I really start, I’d like to get this out of the way: You and I both know that The Two Towers is going to get next to nothing on Oscar night. The Academy is going to wait until next year, and rightly so. “TTT” isn’t a movie, it’s the middle part of a movie. And that’s all I have to say on that subject.

The meat of this particular meandering diatribe is the Animated Feature Film category, the only one to which I have any emotional attachment of any kind. Let’s just run down the list as presented on the official Nominees page, shall we?

• Ice Age: Splendid 3D animation work, not a bad little story. The technical bits that qualify as “cutting edge” nowadays are becoming more and more difficult for the average viewer to discern, but there’s just enough of that edge to make this a completely valid contender on technological merit alone. Add to that a cute, if generally bland and harmless, story with talking animals and what you get is an Oscar contender.
  
• Lilo & Stitch: Of the two (or three, depending on how you count them) Disney flicks in the running, this is the only Mouse-made production to have even a slim chance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute enough movie. I liked it, the family liked it, and you don’t have to twist my arm too much to get me to watch it. Like Ice Age, though, the things that are good are only barely discernable against the overall harmlessness of the film. There’s nothing that stands out from this picture, so a vote for Lilo is just a knee-jerk vote for Disney tradition.
  
• Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron: Hoo boy. I’m torn on this movie. For one thing, it has next to no story. It’s a series of vignettes and sketches loosely tied together by recurring characters. Some of the bits are truly inspired, while others inspire you to take a long bathroom break. The animation quality is similarly uneven. There are moment of unquestionable brilliance and quality, and the animators do things with computer-assisted action sequences that will be ruthlessly, shamelessly copied for years to come. There’s just not enough good material bridging those bits together to make this movie a winner.
  
• Spirited Away: I’d like to offer a reasoned, unbiased account of this film. I really would. It’s probably impossible, though, since this is undoubtedly one of the most enchanting, intriguing and marvelously beautiful animated films of all time. As for its Oscar chances, it all depends on how you look at it. I’ll get into that in a moment.
  
• Treasure Planet: As near as I can tell, it was included because there wasn’t much else in the available field. I haven’t seen this movie. I don’t know anyone who has publicly admitted to seeing this movie. In a year without any other 3D-assisted or 3D-animated fare, in a year without Miyazaki competition… maybe. But I sort of doubt it.

The competition is clearly between Ice Age and Spirited Away, with Spirit as a sort of dark horse. (Stop that groaning, I’m being serious.) Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet, besides being less than stellar on their own, represent too many chances for the votes to be spread thinly. A vote for Disney is a vote for… which movie?

Disney’s smartest move would be to put their public relations muscle behind Spirited Away, since any attempt to champion their own products would probably split too many votes to be effective. Miyazaki’s film is going to get some votes, no question about it and no matter what Disney’s PR people do between now and late March. If Disney only had Lilo or Planet in the running, they could get away with championing that one at the expense of Spirited Away, which admittedly they would probably love to do. Even though they’re the distributor for Spirited Away, getting the Oscar for it might be something of a Pyrrhic victory. “Yay, we won… distributing a movie that is in every way superior to the movies we made last year.”

A side bonus for Disney is the chance to rake in some cash with the mid-April release of Spirited Away on DVD. They’re also putting out Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle In The Sky on the same date as a sort of Great Big Miyazaki DVD Fest. Given the timing, do you figure they hope to ride Oscar coattails? But of course. Hell, it works for me.

The other serious contender, of course, is the quirky and charming Ice Age. It’s certainly not a better movie than Spirited Away, but the fact that it’s 3D animation (the current hot animation “thing”) and lacks all of the disturbing strangeness and cultural subtexts of Spirited Away may count for a lot when the votes are tallied. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Blue Sky Studios take the little gold man home. Saddened a bit, but not surprised. It wouldn’t be a completely horrible thing, mind you, since Blue Sky is such a new studio and Fox (the distributor) hasn’t seen much success with animation lately, so a win would add incentive to fund more creative efforts.

And there you have it. One man’s thoughts on an Oscar race that most sane folks will generally disregard in favor of speculation on whether Jack Nicholson or Daniel Day-Lewis will win for Best Actor, or which of the actresses from The Hours will take home statuettes. *shrug* As if I cared.