Why can’t animated films be ranked among the best?
The industry’s tendency to isolate animated films as something separate from the “real” movies that everyone else is making got a mild scolding from “WALL-E” director Andrew Stanton, in a gracious statement he made the morning that the film received six nominations that, of course, didn’t include best picture. Part of Stanton’s statement read, “This is a tribute to all of us at Pixar and Disney who do our best to make films, not just animated films, but films for everyone that just happen to be animated.” Waiting for Hollywood in general and the Academy in particular to bridge the gap and to treat animated films as just another kind of moviemaking may just be a dream (which, thanks to Walt Disney, we know is just a wish your heart makes). “The best animated feature category seems to have been instituted to isolate the medium,” Solomon laments.
