Today's the Big Day...

With the Oscars just a couple of hours away, I thought it was a good time to have a look back at all the accolades that have been awarded to Pixar's thirteenth feature film, Brave, this awards season. The film is nominated for Best Animated Feature tonight, although it's got some pretty intense competition, including Disney's astounding Wreck-It Ralph, directed by Rich Moore.

Brave took home the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature earlier in the season, beating out Wreck-It Ralph, Frankenweenie, Rise of the Guardians, and Hotel Transylvania. Heaven knows why Hotel T was nominated and Laika's fantastic stop-motion flick ParaNorman wasn't. Last year was the first time that a Pixar film didn't win the BAF prize at the Globes, with Cars 2 having been beat by The Adventures of Tintin.

Pixar's 13th was also nominated for a grand total of 8 Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature, although that award ended up going to Wreck-It Ralph. On the up side, the film was awarded honors for Production Design in an Animated Feature Production and Editorial in an Animated Feature Production, so Pixar did not go home empty handed that night.

At the BAFTAs, Brave once again took home a Best Animated Feature award, beating Frankenweenie and ParaNorman.

Brave has also claimed several other prizes, including honors for Outstanding Animation, Outstanding Animated Character, Outstanding Created Environment and Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation from the Visual Effects Society. Merida, Queen Elinor and the pesky Witch also granted the film an award for Best Animated Females from the Women Film Critics Circle.

Other awards the film has won include:

• Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing from the Cinema Audio Society
• Best Edited Animated Feature Film from the American Cinema Editors
• Best Animated Female (Merida, voiced by Kelly Macdonald) from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists

Pixar's had quite the award season this year, and I'd be very pleased to see Brave win the studio a 7th Oscar for Best Animated Feature tonight. But even if it doesn't win, that won't change the fact that Pixar produced a beautiful film, with wonderful characters, gorgeous music, breathtaking visuals, and an amazing story, so I give my sincere congratulations to the talented crew behind Brave.

John Lasseter Makes Appearence In Disney's 'Wreck-It Ralph'

Disney's upcoming computer-animated feature film Wreck-It Ralph has been creating quite a buzz on the web lately. Though it is not a Pixar film, I am quite excited to see it as the plot intrigues me and from what I have seen it looks like it is going to be an absolutely marvelous film.

Some concept art for the film has been put up on display at Disney's Hollywood Studios (replacing the Brave exhibit that had been there previously) and among the artwork you'll see a familiar face.

Let's see...short brown hair, rounded glasses, Hawaiian shirt. This is without a doubt a cartoon version of Pixar and Disney Animation Chief Creative Officer, John Lasseter. Here the Hawaiian shirt-wearing Pixar honcho appears to be designed similarly to the Nicelanders; the inhabitants of the arcade game that the film's protagonist, Wreck-It Ralph, is the villain of. Ever since Lasseter took his current position as CCO at both Pixar and Disney animation studios in 2006, things at Disney Animation definitely seem to be going uphill with films such as Tangled and Winnie the Pooh, so including him in Wreck-It Ralph is likely a sort of homage, and similar to how a car named John Lassetire appeared in Cars 2.

Of course, this is only concept art and we can't be 100% sure that the Nicelander version of John will appear in the finished film, but I'd say there's a good chance that he will.

Wreck-It Ralph hits theaters November 2, and this is one movie I wouldn't dare miss!

(via The Pixar Times)