I just finished live-blogging the Oscars.  My brain hurts.  It wasn’t a very good show, and it was a ceremony unworthy of all the great films we saw in 2012.  Briefly, the prognosticators were correct and Argo took Best Picture.  Ang Lee won his third Oscar and his second Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, a film that also took home awards for Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Visual Effects.  In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln, Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook, Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained, and Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of winners.

I adore animation, and it bums me out that most animated features are so formulaic and safe.  I understand that they have to be widely-appealing due to the high production costs, but it keeps the animated form mostly constrained to family films.  The Oscar-nominated animated shorts allow us to have a peek at an animated world that can break boundaries, and show us the potential of the medium when it doesn’t have to appeal to all ages.  Unfortunately, most of these nominees are fairly safe, although it seems like they were all required to avoid dialogue.  The majority of the shorts are still entertaining, but there’s a runaway winner in the pack.

Hit the jump for my reviews of the 2012 Oscar-nominated animated short films: Paperman, Fresh Guacamole, Head over Heels, Adam and Dog, and Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”.

The best animated film I saw this year wasn’t feature length.  It was John Kahrs‘ short film, Paperman.  The short follows the story of a lonely young man in New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office, and sets out to get her attention.  Using a revolutionary technique of blending 2D and 3D, Paperman isn’t only gorgeous, but it’s also hopelessly romantic.  I felt bad for Wreck-It Ralph since it had to follow this short.  Disney has now posted Paperman online, and while it’s only 2D, you need to take the 6 minutes and 34 seconds to watch it right now.  It will make your day.

Hit the jump to watch Paperman, which is nominated for Best Animated Short Film.

The black-and-white short Paperman, running with the new Disney animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, follows the story of a lonely young man in New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office, and sets out to get her attention.

At the press day for Wreck-It Ralph, Paperman director John Kahrs (animation supervisor for Tangled, and an animator on Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Monsters Inc.) talked about how the idea for this short came about, why he decided not to include any dialogue, using a blend of 2D and CG to execute his vision, the biggest challenge in doing a short versus a full-length feature, and his favorite short.  He also talked about the difference between Disney and Pixar animation, what he’s working on now, and whether or not Disney is looking to animate any Marvel properties.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Last week, we reported the line-up for the 2012 New York Film Festival, which included Life of Pi, Amour, and Flight.  Today, they’ve added some more noteworthy movies including Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy and The Shining documentary Room 237 (click here for my review of Room 237).  They’ve also added some special screenings including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a 25th Anniversary showing of The Princess Bride, and a must-see showing of the new, 8K restoration of David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia.  The Lawrence restoration will be available nationwide on October 4th.

Hit the jump to check out the additions to the line-up.  The 2012 New York Film Festival runs from September 28 – October 14th.

Earlier this week Collider was invited to visit Disney’s animation studios to check out almost half-an-hour of footage from its upcoming video game riff, Wreck-It Ralph and chat with the film’s director  Chris Moore and several of the animators.  During the visit, we saw how the film moved from concept to screen and got a peek inside the technical challenges involved in bringing the Ralph’s five wildly different worlds to pixelated life. Hit the jump to find out about Paperman, the innovative new short that will be paired with Ralph, and the top 25 things to know about the feature.