Pixar's Awards Circuit: 3 Academy Award Nominations!

The official Academy Award Nominations for the 2016 Oscars are out and Pixar struck gold this year with 3 nominations- Inside Out for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Screenplay and Sanjay's Super Team for Best Animated Short Film! Following Inside Out's Golden Globe win for Best Animated Feature, director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera and co. should be incredibly proud of their work garnering top honors in the season's awards circuit, especially grabbing a screenplay nomination. More on what the nominations say about Pixar's chances at the Oscars this year as well as identifying some of the categories where Pixar may have been left out after the break!

Academy Award Nominations 2016:

Best Animated Feature Film:
Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was there

The clear frontrunner in this field is obviously Inside Out. I do want to note that I initially thought that Pixar's The Good Dinosaur should have gotten a nod, along with Blue Sky's The Peanuts Movie. However, while I haven't seen Boy and the World, all of the other nominations I do feel are worthy of the recognition, and it's refreshing to see different animation medium's (we have all three represented- 3D, Stop-Motion, and traditional 2D animation) being recognized for their work. 

Best Animated Short Film:
Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay's Super Team
We Can't Live without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow

I honestly can't give much commentary because I haven't seen any of the other short films beside Sanjay's Super Team, so while I'd love for Pixar's short film to win the award, I would be unjustly dismissing the work of the other films. I'd also like to note that Pixar's earlier 2015 work, Lava, didn't get a nod, but I did not particularly think that the film was going to be an awards contender so I can't say that I'm that surprised. 

Best Original Screenplay
Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton

This is an interesting field. I do believe that Inside Out has an outside shot of stealing the award, but I think that Spotlight holds the current lead. This nomination is particularly refreshing because it shows that the Academy does consider Inside Out to be a strong competitor against some of the live-action films up for best picture. This nomination is the sixth time Pixar has been recognized by the Academy for best original screenplay, following Toy Story, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. Major congratulations to director and screenwriter Pete Docter, co-director and screenwriter Ronnie Del Carmen, and co-screenwriters Josh Cooley and Meg LeFauve for the very exciting nomination. 

This also would be a good time to comment on Inside Out not getting a Best Picture nomination. I don't want to sound bitter, but considering the competition, I truly feel that Inside Out is deserving of the recognition, especially being one of the few films from 2015 that earned an unprecedented 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Inside Out's critical success is nothing to scuff at, and while some of the other films that were nominated were very good, I would argue that they did not quite reach the critical success of Pixar's work. I'd also add that not getting a nomination for best picture is particularly surprising since Inside Out DID get a nod for it's screenplay. I suppose the Academy just wasn't ready to give a Best Picture nomination to another Pixar film, even considering the rather lackluster competition.

While it also would have been nice to see some recognition for Michael Giacchino's score for Inside Out, and even the Visual Effects work on Peter Sohn's The Good Dinosaur, Pixar still has very exciting nominations up for this years Oscars. Now bring home the gold!