Now here's a Balloon Boy Hollywood can really get behind. As expected, Up leads the record 20 eligible films for the Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 82nd Academy Awards.
Disney-Pixar's latest instant-classic, which is also aspiring for a Best Picture nod, seems a lock for one of the five animation slots when the nominations are announced on Feb. 2.
Jockeying for the other four will be intense. Japanese master and previous Academy Award winner Hayao Miyazaki hopes for some Oscar bait with the acclaimed hand-drawn Ponyo, about a goldfish who wants to be a little girl.
But he'll need to ward off a slew of big-budget, big-box-office, big-studio submissions, including DreamWorks Animation's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Monsters vs. Aliens, 20th Century Fox's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Universal's stop-motion creepfest Coraline, and a couple other Disney efforts: the Jim Carrey-powered A Christmas Carol and the Mouse House's return to traditional hand-drawn fare, The Princess and the Frog, due out Dec. 11.
Another forthcoming film that has a shot is Fantastic Mr. Fox, quirkmeister Wes Anderson's first foray into animation, a stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl featuring voice work by George Clooney and Meryl Streep.
Get the complete list of qualifying films after the jump.
- Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
- Astro Boy
- Battle for Terra
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
- Coraline
- Disney's A Christmas Carol
- The Dolphin - Story of a Dreamer
- Fantastic Mr. Fox
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
- Mary and Max
- The Missing Lynx
- Monsters vs. Aliens
- 9
- Planet 51
- Ponyo
- The Princess and the Frog
- The Secret of Kells
- Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
- A Town Called Panic
- Up
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Get the latest on the Oscar race in our Red Carpet section.