The Squeakuel? Really?

So, it's starting to get closer to Oscar bait season again, and as that time gets closer, some interesting news pops up about this year's nominees for Best Animated Picture, courtesy of Variety! and SlashFilm.com's writer Russ Fischer:

Variety has the list of submitted films, which goes as follows:

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Astro Boy
Battle for Terra
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Disney’s A Christmas Carol
The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Mary and Max
The Missing Lynx
Monsters vs. Aliens
9
Planet 51
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
A Town Called Panic
Up

You can read more about it right here at SlashFilm.

Anyone who's seen my previous rant about the Oscars has a pretty good idea of how I feel about this, but despite how political all of this feels I got a few thoughts about it.

I hope that if anything comes out of this, we get a release of The Secret Of Kells here in the states, because it looks really good. It might end up getting the Persepolis treatment in the eyes of the Academy though, which doesn't really fare well for it unfortunately.

Also, I have no idea what Tinkerbell or the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie are even doing there. Luckily, it doesn't seem like that will make much of a difference anyway.

Most people would think Up! is most likely to take this one, but I don't know, there seems to be a lot of decent competition listed here as well. I guess we'll have to see what comes up.