'Toy Story 4' and 'Hair Love' Win Animated Oscars
Animation has had a pretty unpredictable Awards season this year. Frozen 2, once considered the one to beat this year, has been largely shut out. Missing Link took the Golden Globe and Klaus won the BAFTA and swept the board at the Annies. So in that regard, the eventual victory of Pixar's Toy Story 4 - which has had a relatively quiet awards season- may be considered something of a surprise. However, to anyone familiar with the Academy's voting record in the Best Animated Feature category, it was the most predictable result of the night.
Netflix's Klaus may have seemed to be the film with the most momentum going in. But Disney films (either Walt Disney Animation Studios or Pixar) have won the category 13 times in the 17 years the category has been running, including 8 times in the past decade. As the Hollywood Reporter's notorious anonymous ballots have shown us time and time again, much of the Academy does not respect animation and many voters won't even watch all the nominees. Sadly, anyone who felt last year's victory for Into The Spider-Verse changed anything may be deluding themselves.
Toy Story 4 was nominated alongside Klaus, Missing Link, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and I Lost My Body. Neither Toy Story or Frozen 2 took home the award for Best Original Song.
If Pixar's victory was predictable, the same can't be said about the Best Animated Short category. Pixar's Kitbull lost out, alongside international shorts Sister, Daughter and Memorable. The Oscar went to Hair Love, from Matthew Cherry, Everett Downing Jr and Bruce Wright, the first ever African-American directors to win the category.
We've followed the course of this independently produced short, from its origins as a Kickstarter, through to it being picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Animation. The Oscar win feels like a fairy-tale ending for the whole story.
The Special Effects category went to First World War Drama 1917, beating more obviously effects-heavy competition The Irishman and Disney's The Lion King, Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker.
See the full list of winners here.
