Countdown to Oscar Night: Best Animated Feature Film

Nominees:
Brave
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph

For the past fifteen years or so this has been a pretty easy category to predict.  Most of the time, you just go with the Pixar movie, and while Brave is a beautiful fable, it was certainly not up to the standards set by the best animation studio in history.  Still, as Pixar had a small decline in quality, the other studios are most certainly catching up.  Save for the Ice Age and Madagascar franchises, animation studios have gotten rid of the idea that they can churn out these movies without regard to quality because kids will eat up anything.  Frankenweenie and ParaNorman are certainly more adult/teen oriented films, but something about both of the films seemed to lack the heart necessary to tell their stories.  Pirates was a fun little story with more inside jokes than an evolutionary biologist or Victorian historian can handle.  It's a close call between the last two, but Ralph just barely avoids becoming a direct Iron Giant clone, and maintains enough of its wonder to be the best of the year.

My Ballot:
Wreck-It Ralph
Brave
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
ParaNorman
Frankenweenie

My Pick to Win:
Wreck-It Ralph

Shoulda Been Here:
The Secret World of Arrietty