Next Club Meeting:September 20, 2025,at the Fountaindale Public Library in Bolingbrook from 11:00 am - 5:00 pm
The Animatrix Network is an anime & manga fan club located in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We usually meet on the third Saturday of each month (except when holidays or conventions coincide). The meetings are free and open to the public. Join us for a day filled with anime.
This site provides news, reviews, commentaries, and previews of the world of anime and everything it inspires, such as live-action films, comics, music, art, and other weird things to enjoy and contemplate.
Flow is a 2024 animated fantasy adventure film directed by Gints Zilbalodis, written and produced by Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža. A Latvian, French and Belgian co-production, it features no dialogue and follows a cat trying to survive along other animals in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world as the water level dramatically rises.
Flow is now an Oscar-winning animated movie. A movie that's so steeped in the world of animation that after seeing it for the first time, it made me realize why the movie won the award but also why the movie could be so much bigger than that. Bigger in the way that makes Flow's win at the 2025 Oscars a big step in the future of the animation medium.🎥
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron film for Best Animated Feature Film in the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday. The film was competing with Elemental, Nimona, Robot Dreams, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in the category. Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki could not accept the award in person. This is Miyazaki's second film to win after Spirited Away in 2003. He also received nominations for Howl's Moving Castle and The Wind Rises.
Oscars: ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ Wins Best Animated Feature
[Source: Variety] In a major validation for Sony and Marvel, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” has won the Academy Award for animated feature for Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
While accepting the award, Lord celebrated what the representation in the movie meant for many. “When we hear that somebody’s kid was watching the movie and turned to them and said, ‘He looks like me,’ or ‘They speak Spanish like us,’ we feel like we already won.”
Sunday’s win capped a strong awards season run for the film, which won the top animated film honor at the Annies, Golden Globes, BAFTA and Producers Guild Awards. It’s one of the biggest awards to date for a title based on Marvel characters, along with “Big Hero 6,” which also won the animated feature trophy in 2015.
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” centers on 13-year-old Brooklynite Miles Morales, who becomes one of many Spider-Men, is rated PG and marketed toward families. Shameik Moore voiced Morales as an admirer of Spider-Man. The movie was specifically created to have a unique look that combined computer animation with traditional hand-drawn techniques.
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which carries a $90 million budget, was an unexpected box office success and wound up grossing nearly $360 million worldwide. The film was directed by Persichetti, Ramsey and Rothman from a screenplay by Lord and Rothman and a story by Lord. Miller and Lord produced along with Avi Arad, Amy Pascal and Christina Steinberg.
Ramsey became the first African-American director to win an Oscar in the category.
Critics were dazzled. Peter Debruge said in his review for Variety: “The brilliance of Sony’s snappy new animated “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” shows itself in the project’s uncanny ability to simultaneously reset and expand all that has come before, creating an inclusive world where pretty much anybody can be the superhero … even you!”
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” topped a pair of Disney titles — “Incredibles 2” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” — along with Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” and Japanese adventure “Mirai.” Of the 17 Oscars given out since the category was created in 2001, Disney has won a dozen, including “The Incredibles” in 2005 and the last six: “Brave,” “Frozen,” “Big Hero 6,” “Inside Out,” “Zootopia,” and “Coco.”
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” was only the second Sony Pictures Animation film ever nominated for an Oscar after 2007’s “Surf’s Up.”
As for Marvel movies getting Oscars, there has only been one prior to this year: 2005’s “Spider-Man 2,” which won for Best Visual Effects for John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier by topping “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “I, Robot.”
Marvel is up for eight other Academy Awards this year. Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War” is nominated in best visual effects and its “Black Panther” is up for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, costume design, production design, original score, original song, sound mixing and sound editing. It won for costume design for Ruth E. Carter, production design for Hannah Beachler and original score for Ludwig Goransson.
Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony’s Motion Picture Group, said in a note to employees, “‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ became one of the few non-Disney films to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar in the history of that award. It’s sweet indeed to see the Academy honor originality, diversity, and revolutionary animated craftsmanship. And it recognizes SPA and Imageworks’ rightful place among the first rank of animation studios, under the leadership of Kristine Belson and Randy Lake, respectively.”
Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird, John Walker and Nicole Paradis Grindle) Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson) Mirai (Mamoru Hosoda and Yuichiro Saito) Ralph Breaks the Internet (Rich Moore, Phil Johnston and Clark Spencer) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)
Nominations for Best Animated Short Film:
Animal Behaviour(Alison Snowden and David Fine) Bao (Domee Shi and Becky Neiman-Cobb) Late Afternoon (Louise Bagnall and Nuria González Blanco) One Small Step (Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas) Weekends(Trevor Jimenez)
[Source: Anime News Network] Pete Docterand Jonas Rivera won the Animated Feature Film category at the 88th Academy Awards for Pixar and Disney's Inside Out film on Sunday. The film competed against Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Studio Ghibli's When Marnie Was There film as well as Anomalisa, Boy and the World, and Shaun the Sheep Movie.
No anime were nominated for this year's Animated Short Film category. The nominees were "Bear Story," "Prologue," "Sanjay's Superteam," "We Can't Live Without Cosmos," and "World of Tomorrow." Gabriel Osorio Vargas and Pato Escala Pierart's Chilean short "Bear Story" won the category.
Mamoru Hosoda's The Boy and The Beast and the religious anime film The Laws of the Universe Part 0 were also eligible for the Animated Feature Film category, but neither received a nomination. When Marnie Was There's theme song "Fine on the Outside" was eligible for the Original Song category, but it did not earn a nomination.
Last year Disney's Big Hero 6 film won the Animated Feature Film category, and competed against Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya film. Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed won the Animated Short Film category for Disney's "Feast."
[Source: LA Times] The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "Big Hero 6," "The Boxtrolls," "How to Train Your Dragon 2," "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya" and "Song of the Sea" for best animated feature, a diverse list of films which nevertheless omits a popular favorite, "The Lego Movie."
In a year with no film from frequent contender Pixar Animation and some very strong movies from industry outsiders and newcomers, the category reflects the tastes of the academy's animation nominating committee, a group that tends to select films with an eye toward the roots of the craft in stop-motion and hand-drawn techniques.
"The Lego Movie," the first film from the newly rebooted feature animation division at Warner Bros., is the highest grossing animated movie of the year, having collected $257.8 million domestically, and it's among the best reviewed, with a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
"In previous years there’s been an obvious front-runner in the animation race," said Eric Beckman, president of GKIDS, the tiny New York-based distributor of Japan's Studio Ghibli movie "Princess Kaguya" and Ireland's Cartoon Saloon film "Song of the Sea." "Without 'Lego' in the race, I'm at a loss as to who that is."
The animation nominating committee, which is composed of both members from the animation branch and from other branches, selected two computer-animated movies at large studios -- Disney's "Big Hero 6" and DreamWorks Animation's "How to Train Your Dragon 2" -- and three smaller films made with the industry's oldest techniques, Laika's stop-motion "The Boxtrolls" and GKIDS' two hand-drawn films.
"We’re in a time where the CG film is the main expression of animation these days, and in a weird way, the old stands out as new," said Graham Annable, who directed "The Boxtrolls" with Anthony Stacchi.
The branch may have stumbled on "The Lego Movie's" genesis as a film about a toy brand, or on its mostly CG animation, which was produced by Animal Logic Studios in Australia.
"It's less about box office or popularity or visibility," said "How to Train Your Dragon 2" director Dean DeBlois. "The nominating committee are absolute lovers of animation. They get together and carefully watch each film."
The animation world is a small and tightknit one -- Chris Williams, who directed "Big Hero 6" with Don Hall, was recently in DeBlois' wedding -- but it's been growing rapidly, which may have also affected "The Lego Movie's" prospects.
"The Lego guys are so insanely talented," Williams said. "I was saddened to see that. But it’s one of those years where there's so many great animated films. Pixar and [Disney and Pixar chief creative officer] John Lasseter have been really important as far as raising the bar and pushing what an animated movie can be, and a lot of other studios have answered that call and raised their game. I see an industry that is so strong right now."
"The Lego Movie" did earn one nomination, for its original song, "Everything is Awesome" by Shawn Patterson. But its filmmakers, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, expressed their disappointment on Twitter about their omission from the animation category.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that twenty animated feature films have been submitted to be considered as award nominees for the 2014 Oscars. Provided that at least sixteen of the submissions ultimately have a mandatory qualifying run in Los Angeles and follow the Academy’s other rules for eligibility, there will again be five nominations for the Oscar award for Best Animated Feature.
Nominations for the 87th Academy Awards will be announced on January 15, 2015 at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. The award ceremony will be held and broadcast live by ABC on February 22, 2015, with Neil Patrick Harris hosting.
The films submitted for Oscar consideration follow in the alphabetical order given by the Academy:
Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney Animation Studios). Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams
The Book of Life (Reel FX Creative Studios). Directed by Jorge Gutierrez
The Boxtrolls (Laika Animation). Directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi
Cheatin’ (Bill Plympton Studios). Created and directed by Bill Plympton
