Last year, Mondo put together a fun little event for the 2012 Academy Awards:  a few days prior to that Oscar Sunday, Mondo announced that a series of brand-new posters (all of which were based on that year’s Oscar-nominated films) would be dropping throughout the Academy’s broadcast.  Everyone dug the idea, the whole thing went off without a hitch, and—most importantly—waiting on a drop gave all of us something to focus on whenever watching the Oscars became too much to bear.

And so, when the Mondo guys announced they’d be doing it all over again in 2013, we were pumped (as were many of you).  But once that excitement died down, we were left wondering which of 2012’s Oscar-nominated films would get the Mondo treatment…and which of the rumors we’d been hearing would turn out to be true.  Answers to those questions (and many more) await you after the jump, folks.

During the Academy Awards broadcast last year, the good folks at Mondo dropped a few gorgeous prints from films that were nominated.  They’re doing the same thing this year, and today they’ve unveiled the first three posters in their second annual Oscar series: Laurent Durieux’s The Master, Olly Moss’ Les Miserables, and DKNG’s ParaNorman.  All three posters are unsurprisingly excellent, but I’m absolutely mesmerized by Durieux’s entrancing print for The Master.  It’s a stunning piece of work, and I’m sure many of you will be angling to nab a copy during Sunday’s ceremony.

Mondo says that many more posters will be unveiled during the awards show broadcast, when said prints will also go on sale.  Hit the jump to preview these first three prints, and start preparing to do some very fast typing on Sunday night.  As always, follow @MondoNews for the on-sale announcements.

On the red carpet at the VES Awards, I managed to get a few minutes with President & CEO of LAIKA Travis Knight.  While some studio heads only decide which films to make, Knight also still works as an animator and had a hand in crafting a few key scenes in ParaNorman.  During the interview we talked about the reaction to the film by audiences, the process of making the movie, how much the structure of the story changed during production, the latest camera technology, and Laika’s plan to eventually release one film a year.  Hit the jump for the interview.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

The Visual Effects Society has announced the nominees for the upcoming 11th Annual VES Awards.  This year’s major players include Life of Pi, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Prometheus, The Avengers, and Battleship, all of which landed nominations for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture.  The VES Awards also recognize visual effects work in more dramatic fare, singling out the impressive effects of films like Flight and The Impossible.  Duking it out for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature will be the ridiculously impressive Richard Parker in Life of Pi, Hulk in The Avengers, and Gollum and Goblin King in The Hobbit.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominees.  The 11th Annual VES Awards will take place on February 5th.

The nominations for the 2013 Producers Guild Awards have been announced.  The PGA’s are a fairly reliable predictor of the Academy Awards, as last year all but two eventual Best Picture nominees (The Tree of Life and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) were PGA nominees.  This year’s contenders include expected fare like Argo, Les Miserables, and Lincoln, indies such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom, and critical favorite Zero Dark Thirty.  The PGA’s are also fond of singling out one “popular” choice, and in this year’s case that film looks to be the excellent Skyfall

In addition to the feature films, the PGAs also announced the nominees in television.  Drama series nominees include the usual suspects like Homeland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones, while the comedy category is filled out by 30 Rock, Louie, Modern Family, and for some reason The Big Bang Theory.  Notably absent is HBO’s Girls and NBC’s brilliant Parks and Recreation.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of film and television nominees.  The 24th Annual PGA Awards will be held on January 26th.

It became clear around September that putting together a Top 10 list this year was going to be incredibly difficult.  We’ve been provided with an embarrassment of riches throughout the year, and so the prospect of whittling it down to a list of my ten favorites proved daunting.  2012 seems destined to go down in history as “one of those years” like 1999, 1994, or 1977, where a large number of the year’s offerings will stand the test of time.  Though this list expresses what films I connected with most out of the past 12 months, there are at least 10 or 15 other movies that I also really enjoyed waiting just outside the wings.  If forced to pick my ten favorites from 2012, though, this is what I’ve come up with.  Hit the jump to take a look.

In past years for my “Best of” list, I’ve been able to provide fun categories like “Best Kill” and “Best Quotes”, but sadly, that won’t be happening this year.  I keep notes throughout the year, but in July, my hard drive crashed, and because I am a foolish person, I didn’t back up the notes to a separate drive.  However, I do have enough information to do the traditional categories as well as Breakthrough Performance, “A Very Good Year”, Best Villain, Best Surprises, Biggest Disappointments, and a new category, “Best Movie You Probably Missed This Year.”  One final note: unlike previous years, the film had to come out in 2012; festival-only flicks don’t count, so that’s why there’s no love for The Place Beyond the Pines on this year’s list.

Hit the jump to check out my miscellaneous “Best of 2012″ picks.  Be sure to keep checking back this week as we’ll be running Top 10 lists from Adam, Dave, and me.

The amount of behind-the-scenes work that went into creating ParaNorman should be worth an award by itself. New featurettes for the Chris Butler and Sam Fell film are reminding the academy voters that the animated feature is the “most ambitious stop-motion film ever made.” Using cutting-edge technology in the form of fully-articulated puppets and 3D printing, just to name a few, the creative army behind ParaNorman is still a devoted group of craftspeople at their core. Even for those of you who enjoyed the film, these featurettes reveal a lot of hidden details in certain scenes and will give you a whole new appreciation for the work that went into bringing ParaNorman to the screen.

Featuring the voices of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Anna Kendrick, John Goodman, Leslie Mann and Tucker Albrizzi, ParaNorman is now available on DVD/Blu-ray. Hit the jump to check out the featurette.

A staple of every awards season is the multitude of roundtable interviews and discussions that pop up featuring said season’s top contenders.  We’ve already shared an hourlong interview with some of the Best Director contenders like Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, and Tom Hooper, but today a roundtable of a different sort popped online.  The LA Times put together their first ever animation roundtable as they gathered the following directors for a 60-minute discussion: Mark Andrews (Brave), Peter Ramsey (Rise of the Guardians), Chris Butler (ParaNorman), Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph), and Genndy Tartakovsky (Hotel Transylvania).

The resulting video is an absolutely fascinating and candid discussion between the filmmakers about the evolution of animated films, a possible renaissance of 2D animation and who’s to blame for 3D animation dominating the marketplace, breaking down social barriers and the stigma of animated movies being exclusively for kids, and more.  It’s a wonderful discussion and is well worth your time.  Hit the jump to watch.

The Annie Awards, which honor achievement in animation, have announced their best picture nominees for 2012.  According to THR, most wide-release animated films made the cut including Brave, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, ParaNorman, Rise of the Guardians, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and Wreck-It-Ralph.  The only independent animated movie to pick up a nomination was The Rabbi’s Cat.  With this many nominees, to lose out on a nomination is a basically slap in the face, so tough luck to The Lorax (which deserves a face-slap), Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, and Ice Age: Continental Drift.

Keep in mind that for the best picture category, a film has to be feature length.  Otherwise, Paperman would smoke all these flicks.

Here’s the thing about ParaNorman: it’s not the family romp it claims to be. The ads push the child hero, and the kid-friendly animation, peppered with the expected amount of grown-up in-jokes. They’re not lying, but at the same time, they miss film’s overall tone: dark, creepy, and often quite sad. That’s actually a good thing – it helps make ParaNorman one of the more original animated features in recent years – but it might catch newcomers by surprise. Hit the jump for my full review of the Blu-ray.

This week on Blu-ray a number of 2012 titles hit home video in the absence of older films.  Briefly:

• The Apparition (Blu-ray+DVD+UltraViolet Digital Copy Combo Pack) – $19.99 (33% off)
• Lawless [Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy] – $22.99 (43% off)
• Luck: The Complete First Season [Blu-ray] – $50.99 (36% off)
• Men in Black 3 (Two Disc Combo: Blu-ray / DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy) – $19.99 (51% off)
• ParaNorman (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $27.99 (44% off)
• Sparkle (+UltraViolet Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] – $19.96 (45% off)
• Step Up Revolution [Blu-ray + 3D Blu-ray + Digital Copy] – $19.99 (50% off)

Hit the jump for all the details.

We’re continuing on with our weeklong preview of the upcoming 85th Academy Awards, and after running down both acting categories it’s time to take look at some of the other races.  Today we’ll be looking at the Best Animated Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay categories in depth, and I’ll also make some way-too-early quick picks in the technical categories.  The fun begins after the jump.

With the number of Academy screenings picking up and the holiday season fast approaching, we’re starting to get into the thick of awards season.  A full list of the animated films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar consideration has now been unveiled, and it looks like we’ll see 21 films vie for the coveted trophy.  The films include the big studio releases like Brave, Frankenweenie, and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, as well as Studio Ghibli’s From Up on Poppy Hill and the adult-oriented A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

It’s been a strong year for animated features, and Pixar is in no way a lock to take home the trophy for Brave given the film’s fairly lukewarm reception. It’s probably safe to assume that Brave will be still be nominated, and I’d venture to say ParaNorman and the upcoming Wreck-It Ralph and Rise of the Guardians are also pretty good bets as well.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of animated films under Academy consideration, and be sure to leave your thoughts on the Best Animated Feature race in the comments.  Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards will be announced on January 10th.