Frozen Takes Home WDAS' First Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature

It's not a shocker, but it's extremely well deserved nonetheless: last night at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, Walt Disney Animation Studios' acclaimed hit, Frozen, took home the statue for Best Animated Feature, making it the first WDAS film to do so since the award's inception seven years ago.

Brave Wins at Golden Globes

2012's awards-circuit has been a very close one - nowhere more so than where animation is concerned. Certain awards circles have picked Laika's ParaNorman as their Best Animated Feature of the year, others have gone for Wreck-It Ralph and Frankenweenie, and a couple have chosen DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians. One film that, sadly, seems to have not received a lot of awards love though is Pixar's latest, Brave. Well, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association just changed that.

The Mark Andrews/Brenda Chapman directed film took home the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony last night, beating out Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, Rise of the Guardians and Wreck-It Ralph. Co-director Mark Andrews and producer Katherine Sarafian were on hand to collect the award (check out the acceptance speech above); nice to see Andrews thank the brilliant Brenda Chapman, the heart of Brave, as well.

I think Mark Andrews is quite happy... Via Pixar Post.

It's worth noting that this is Pixar's sixth Golden Globe win in this category; it was established at the 64th Annual ceremony and Pixar have won the award every single year, apart from last year when The Adventures of Tintin rightfully won the award. Congrats to the Brave team on this well deserved honour!

Other winners at the ceremony included Argo and Les Misérables taking home the Best Picture awards for Drama and Musical or Comedy respectively; Daniel Day-Lewis and Hugh Jackman took home the two best actor awards for their roles in Lincoln and Les Mis, Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence won the lead actress awards for Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook. Game Change and Homeland were the big TV winners. Full results here.

70th Golden Globes Nominations Revealed

Yep, awards season is definitely upon us. A few days ago we posted a round-up of a collection of critics' choices for Best Animated Film of the year, but, today, we move closer to the "big" awards of the year; first on the agenda, the Golden Globes.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association have announced the picks for the 70th Annual Golden Globes - the nominees that is, the actual Globes will take place on 13th January, 2013. Leading the pack is Spielberg's Lincoln with 7 nominations, with Django Unchained and Argo clocking in at 5 each. In terms of animation though, they're... well, they're somewhat odd choices.

The nominees for the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature film are:

• Brave - Pixar Animation Studios; Walt Disney Pictures
• Frankenweenie - Walt Disney Pictures
• Hotel Transylvania - Sony Pictures Animation; Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures
• Rise of the Guardians - DreamWorks Animation SKG; Paramount Pictures
• Wreck-It Ralph - Walt Disney Animation Studios; Walt Disney Pictures

Firstly, that's three nominations for Disney-owned animated films, meaning the Mouse House stand a 60% chance of taking home the coveted award. Noteworthy, though, is that Hotel Transylvania is nominated, and ParaNorman is not. I liked Hotel T, it was fun, but ParaNorman is clearly the better film (and an awards favourite for that matter). It's too bad to see that Aardman's The Pirates! isn't get much love either, as it's definitely one of the year's finest animated films.

Check out this interesting article from Cartoon Brew, making the case as to why Tim Burton's Frankenweenie will probably win. Congrats to everyone nominated, and commiserations to Laika, Aardman and everyone who didn't quite make the cut - there's always the Oscars!

Golden Globe Nominations Revealed

The nominations for the 69th Annual Golden Globes Awards have been revealed today, the full list of nominations and categories can be viewed here.

In terms of animation, the nominations for the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature are:

• THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
  Paramount Pictures/Columbia Pictures/ Hemisphere Capital/Amblin Entertainment/Wingnut Films Production/ Kennedy/Marshall Production A Steven Spielberg Film; Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures
• ARTHUR CHRISTMASColumbia Pictures & Sony Pictures Animation; Sony Pictures Releasing International
• CARS 2
  Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios; Walt Disney Pictures
• PUSS IN BOOTSDreamWorks Animation; Paramount Pictures
• RANGO
  Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present A Blind Wink / GK Films Production; Paramount Pictures

It's somewhat strange to me that Puss in Boots and Arthur Christmas (or even Cars 2, due it's rather negative reviews) were nominated, whereas Kung Fu Panda 2 - definitely one of the best films of the year - was omitted.

Nonetheless, it is a very solid field this year, and it seems likely to me that the HFPA will pick either Tintin or Rango. However, we'll have to wait until January 15 to find out.

Via Big Screen Animation.

Golden Globe Nominations

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (or HFPA) has just announced their nominations for the Category of Best Animated Feature Film for the 68th Golden Globes Awards, due to take place on January 16th, 2011.
The nominations are pretty much as expected and are as follows:

• Despicable Me - Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures
• How to Train Your Dragon - DreamWorks Animation
• The Illusionist - Django Films
• Tangled - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Toy Story 3 - Disney/Pixar

You can read this on the HFPA website here.

On the subject of awards remember to keep an eye out for more information concerning the 1st Annual A113Animation Awards coming late December.