A little story at The Hollywood Reporter about the contenders for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Academy Awards.

Vote for Fantastic Mr. Fox in Moviefone’s Oscar poll!

From Fox Searchlight:

FANTASTIC MR. FOX director/co-writer/producer Wes Anderson sat down with Fox Searchlight’s own lovely Stephanie Allen, the basis of a video series in which Wes discusses various aspects of how FANTASTIC MR. FOX came to fruition. And the film’s now been nominated for two Academy Awards! Watch all eight videos here.

Wes On Author Roald Dahld (1/8)

More after the break…
Wes on the Characters and Actors (2/8)

Wes on What Makes Mr. Fox Fantastic (3/8)

Wes on the Film’s Art Direction (4/8)

Wes on the Music of Mr. Fox (5/8)

Wes on the Special Effects (6/8)

Wes on Directing Animation (7/8)

Wes on His Style and Artistic Vision (8/8)

(the Wes parody is third)

(not-so) Bonus: a harsh take on Salinger — and Wes

Our favorite Wes parody is still the McCain ad.

via /Film, Yankee Racer Magnus Rushlee

This morning it was announced that Fantastic Mr. Fox received two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Animated Feature and another for Best Original Score. This is the second nomination Wes has received, after receiving a Best Original Screenplay nomination with Owen Wilson in 2002. But what are Fantastic Mr. Fox’s chances come Oscar time? We’ll take a look at that and get Wes’ reaction to the nominations after the break.

Along with Fantastic Mr. Fox, four films were nominated for Best Animated Feature, including Coraline directed by Wes’ The Life Aquatic collaborator Henry Selick, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Ireland’s The Secret of Kells, and Pixar’s Up. As we predicted, Up received a nomination in this category and a nomination for Best Picture. Assuming that Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up are the front-runners in the category (which we can), what this could mean for Fantastic Mr. Fox is a chance to win.

Voters for the Best Animated Feature category, unlike the Best Picture category, are required to see all five nominees.  This means that voters will definitely have to see Up, and what could happen is that those voters to decide to vote for Up in the Best Picture category and go with Fantastic  Mr. Fox in the Animated category.

Finally, AwardsDaily has a round-up of a lot of nominee reactions given to the media, and here’s Wes’.

I am very honored to have received an Oscar nomination for Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Roald Dahl’s classic story has been one of my favorite books since I first learned to read, and it was an amazing experience to work with my many, many very skilled collaborators and bring it to life as a stop-motion film! I would like to congratulate Alexandre Desplat, who wrote our wonderful score, for his nomination as well. – Wes Anderson, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Animated Feature

Let’s hope Wes wins, because hes’ getting pretty good at acceptance speeches.

Here’s Wes’ acceptance speech as Weasel from Fantastic Mr. Fox at the recent National Board of Review awards ceremony. It is awesome.

After you watch the high quality version above, you can watch a video from the event embedded after the jump to see how it played in the room.

 
If the video goes down, here are two reports on the evening from The New York Times.

In addition to the Golden Globe nomination, yesterday Fantastic Mr. Fox picked up two screenwriting awards from west coast critics associations. Wes and Noah won the Best Adapted Screenplay for the film and it was also named the runner-up for Best Animated Film from the San Diego Film Critics Society. Similarly, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle awarded Fantastic Mr. Fox their prize for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Update: Also recieved another Best Animated Film, this one from the Toronto Film Critics Association, a nomination in the same category from the Chicago Film Critics, and another Best Animated Film and Best Screenplay win from the Utah Film Critics Association. In addition, Best Family Film and Best Animated Film from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society and the latter from The Sattelite Awards.