That was crap and this one is a masterpiece. Never ever seen any animation like this. Holy Crap I was in tears most of it, very brave, 9 outta 10, it takes so much courage to make this kinda animation and Oscar went to that crap.
shareOscar usually always goes to whichever most Academy members actually bothered to watch. I imagine a lot of them just watched mainstream Big Hero and then just voted for it. I can't imagine anyone that watched both would NOT give their vote to this instead.
shareYes! Thank you!, I really didn't like big hero 6, song of the Sea is a masterpiece, is a beautiful movie, and beautiful animation!
shareBIG HERO 6: 7/10
SONG OF THE SEA: 9/10
It was a ridiculous decision but money talks. Oscars aren't always about the best film. Politics and economics usually trump art.
shareVery excellent point. Although personally I'd prefer Song of the Sea, and the nominations committee went out of their way to award this and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (another GKIDS feature) nominations over The Lego Movie, unfortunately final voting is performed by the Academy at large, which often either votes ignorantly (Cartoon Brew had an article a while back on this), votes with a mob mentality, or votes for the film that they themselves, or their company/friends/business partners, worked on. Disney employees make up a disproportionately large amount of the Academy if you were to compare it to the number of nominations they actually receive, so I'm not too surprised the Disney movie won in the end.
To be fair, the Oscars aren't about awarding art, they're about awarding prestige. Rarely the highest rated movie of the year, either on IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic, walks away with Best Picture. However, I'm still very much happy that the nominations committee (thank god that Animated Feature is one of two Oscar categories, with the other being Foreign Language Film, that has its nominees chosen by committee rather than by branch) chose to recognize this film — I'd pick Song of the Sea over The Lego Movie — and quite frankly any other film of 2014 — any day.
On the bright side, Song of the Sea did win the Irish equivalent of Best Picture at the IFTAs, Ireland's Oscar equivalent :)
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No worries about awards all the time, yah? At least this time, I think it really teaches some of the critics a lesson, no?
Cheers, Thanks for stopping by! I'll reply as soon as possible.
Well, although Big Hero 6's awards success has certainly brought more attention to it, from both critics and non-critics alike, critics and awards bodies have always had different tastes, and it would be unfair to categorize either as right or wrong. Although both groups analyze films for their artistic merits, they have very different perspectives. Critics are usually journalists and use their criticism in journalistic reviews, intended to give both audiences and filmmakers a neutral third-party opinion; on the other hand, awards bodies are usually composed of industry insiders, who may openly exhibit a variety of biases.
In 2009, Kung Fu Panda swept the Annie Awards, leaving WALL-E in the dust. The result was criticism of how Annie Awards voting was purely on partisan lines — all the DreamWorks members voted for KFP, while all the Pixar members voted for WALL-E. It is alleged that KFP won not on its artistic merits, but rather because DreamWorks simply bought more memberships for its employees than Pixar.
The Oscars have tried to limit such studio-based voting with the creation of a nominations committee. Best Animated Feature is one of three Oscar categories to have its nominees NOT determined by branch. By branch I mean the actors choose the acting nominees, cinematographers choose the cinematography nominees, documentarians choose the documentary nominees, etc. Foreign Language Film doesn't have a corresponding branch and is thus chosen by committee, and Best Picture is chosen by all branches. However, the Feature Animation & Short Films branch doesn't choose the nominees for Best Animated Feature; they do for Animated Short and Live-Action Short, but feature animation is chosen by committee to avoid the interference of studio politics.
The result is the nomination of foreign gems with minimal domestic industry support, over other choices from American studios, like Warner's Lego Movie, Blue Sky's Peanuts Movie or Pixar's Good Dinosaur.
However, because final voting for all categories is through an Academy-wide vote, domestic animated features have a distinct advantage. Disney has scores if not hundreds of their employees in the Academy; the studios behind foreign films like Song of the Sea would be lucky to have a handful at most. And if you were faced with the choice of voting for the film you yourself worked on, or that your best friend worked on, versus the film that the critics liked better, which would you choose? Thus it isn't just about quality, but rather about politics now. I liked Song of the Sea better, but if I was one of the many Oscar-voting Disney animators who worked for years on Big Hero 6, I'd probably vote for Big Hero 6.
Anyway, do excuse my lengthy speech on awards. My point is, awards are heavily politicized, whereas critics are paid and expected to be unbiased (though perhaps some less reputable publications mightn't be as strict on the latter). This causes them to have different points of view, but that doesn't make one better than the other. Awards reflect industry sentiment, while critics cater more to cinephiles; which opinion you go with would depend on what you're looking for.
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Both are good movies. Either of them are good enough to win
shareI didn’t care for either film. Really, the category should be jettisoned with the occasional special award given - but if forced to choose that year, I’d have gone with The Tale of Princess Kaguya, with How to Train Your Dragon 2 as an acceptable runner-up.
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