“Kung Fu Panda” Dominates the Annie Awards, “Wall-E” Receives None
Despite all of the mainstream praise for Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda took all of the top honors in the recent Annie Awards for animated films.
From www.annieawards.org:
“Kung Fu Panda” pulled out all its martial arts moves Friday night at the 36th annual Annie Awards, where it was named best animated feature.
Winning the top prize over such other nominees as the critical favorites “WALL-E” and “Waltz With Bashir,” “Panda” swept the feature film categories as it picked up 10 trophies, bettering Pixar’s “Ratatouille” run last year when it earned nine Annies, including best feature.
For a complete list of all nominations and winners by categories, click here
In fact, Wall-E did not win a single award. Previously, the Disney/Pixar film had won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature along with a number of other accolades. Wall-E has also been nominated for several Academy Awards.
I find it very interesting that it did not receive any recognition amongst awards given out by the International Animated Film Society. Perhaps I’m really not the only person who thought that it didn’t live up to all the hype it has received.
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Kung Fu Panda was not a bad movie at all, but I believe artistically speaking, Wall-E is far superior.
You’re still one of the few who thinks it didn’t “live up to the hype” (it did, and then some, you know it whether you admit it or not). Several critics have named it not only the best animated, but the BEST movie of the year, an honor Kung Fu Panda has not and will not win. One quick fact: you can buy a vote in The Annies, that’s what their members are, people who pay them money in order to get a membership to vote. All it would take to stack the odds against WALL-E is Katzenberg’s money.
You can’t change my opinion of the movie, whether you’d like to or not. ;) I thoroughly enjoyed the first 20-30 minutes on Earth and would watch gladly those sequences on repeat. Stunning visuals and lots of heart. But once the story took me away from all of that, I simply lost interest. It’s definitely a technologically superior movie to any other animated film out there (except maybe other Pixar films) but I stand by my opinion that the story fell somewhat flat once the characters left Earth.
I never listen to critics. Most of the time my opinions greatly differ from theirs. The job of a critic is to give an educated (hopefully) opinion about a film, but in the end, it is their opinion. I also didn’t see many new movies in 2008, so I can’t tell you whether or not Wall-E is the best film of the year. I haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda, so I can’t draw any comparisons there.
All I can say is that Wall-E, for me, wasn’t was good as I had hoped it would be.
O come on”Wall•E” was a better movie then “Kung Fu Panda.” This is sad. :-(
Wall-E was probably in the top three of all Pixar movies and I think the scenes after Earth are just as good as before. Lots of heart and laughs during the whole second half. Wall-E is probably one of the best single characters they have ever created. To get no awards from an animated focused organization makes no sense, other than the fact that there is some jealousy in the industry and they feel it necessary to ground Pixar, but they sure did pick the wrong movie to make their point. I’m not so sure Wall-E is a shoe in for the Oscar now, what a joke!!
This is riduculous. Now, Don’t get me wrong, Kung Fu Panda was by far the best thing Dreamworks has ever done, but it in now way deserved to Beat Wall-E. I agree with Matt a hundred percent, Katzenberg totally bought that. I mean, some I can believe, like maybe score and voice actor, but Sound design? Best film? No way in Heck. It’s a joke.
While I’m not a huge conspiracy theory fan…voting for this award IS open to the public, as long as they join the Animated Film Society…so maybe the Kung Fu Panda fans just ponied up more than the Wall-E fans?
It is kind of an interesting situation…but knowing what I do now about how the voting process works makes me wonder about the credibility of the award (not saying that just because of this…in another hobby I enjoy, one of the major awards has been found out to be prone to ballot box stuffing, and even downright bribery…and has all but destroyed its cred within most of the hobby)