The Best Animated Feature category at every year's Academy Awards is generally guaranteed to go to the latest release from powerhouse Pixar Animation Studios, but in 2011, Pixar released its first critically derided feature, Cars 2. Though the film performed well commercially and ensures that the Cars merchandising juggernaut will live on, its perhaps over-the-top critical evisceration means that it's not nominated.
Two DreamWorks features, the sequel Kung-Fu Panda and the spin-off Puss in Boots, are nominated alongside Rango, but Verbinski's film was more well-received and is more distinctive both visually and as a narrative. That leaves two other nominees, the ridiculously well-reviewed but little seen A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita (coming from France and Spain, respectively).
So this one-week rerelease is a show of confidence by Paramount and an attempt to get a bit more momentum behind the presumptive winner. Even if it doesn't win, Rango is a remarkable accomplishment for Industrial Light and Magic, the eminent visual effects company that made its first foray into feature animation with the film and raised the bar on animated visuals in the process.
Anyways, here are the salient bits of the press release from Paramount:
HOLLYWOOD, CA (January 24, 2012) – The now Academy Award®-nominated Rango, from director Gore Verbinski and starring the voice of Johnny Depp, saddles up for a one week limited engagement at the ArcLight Hollywood beginning this Friday, January 27th. The original animated comedy-adventure from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies a Blind Wing/GK Films Production that takes moviegoers for a hilarious and heartfelt walk in the Wild West, was this morning nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Animated Feature Film.
Rango is the winner of the National Board of Review and Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Animated Feature, while top critics’ groups around the country have declared Rango the Best Animated Film of 2011, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington D.C.
As mentioned, the film marked the fourth collaboration between Johnny Depp, who voiced the titular chameleon, and Gore Verbinski, who directed the first three films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. After months of surprisingly public haggling over the would-be blockbuster's budget, Verbinski and Depp are now in New Mexico in production on The Lone Ranger. That live-action western adventure stars Armie Hammer as the masked avenger and Depp as his Native American sidekick Tonto. That one's not due until the summer of 2013, but in the meantime, the Oscars go down on February 26th.
