Happy Feet Dances Off with Oscar By: Ryan Ball There was no checkered flag for Disney and Pixar this year as Cars was upset by Warner Bros.’ Happy Feet, which snagged the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Sunday night at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. Many expected the night to be a victory lap for director John Lasseter's Cars, which has had a successful awards season run that resulted in top toon awards at the Golden Globes, the Annies and the People’s Choice Awards, among others. Disney fared better on the visual effects side as Industrial Light & Magic as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest plundered Oscar gold for visual effects. Torill Kove, Director of Oscar-Winning Short The Danish Poet Norwegian born animator Torill Kove had her first date with Oscar in 1999, when her short My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts landed a well-deserved nomination. The talented artist just received her first Oscar this year thanks to her well-received 2D animated short The Danish Poet, which was produced with support from the National Film Board of Canada. Narrated by Liv Ullmann, this cleanly drawn gem looks at how circumstance and happy accidents determine the love affair between a poet and a Norwegian farm maiden. We caught up with Kove, who answered our questions from her More... As a testament to how important animation has become in Hollywood, the Oscar broadcast started off with an animated segment that featured a group of penguin characters from Happy Feet sending Mumbles off to Tinsel Town for the big night. In his travels to sunny California, Mumbles even came across Lightning McQueen, the Owen Wilson character from Cars. Directed by George Miller (Babe: Pig in the City), Happy Feet ended a winning streak for Disney and Pixar, who took Best Animated Feature for its last two releases, 2003’s Finding Nemo and 2004’s The Incredibles. Mumbles and his arctic pals also won over Sony’s Monster House from first-time feature director Gil Kenan. Accepting the award, Miller remarked, “I asked my kids what should I say and they said to thank all the men for wearing penguin suits.” He added, “They gave me a lucky coin and a lucky penguin, but my real good luck was to work with hundreds and hundreds of great people.” Pixar also came up empty-handed in the category Best Animated Short, which went to Norweigen filmmaker Torill Kove’s The Danish Poet (National Film Board of Canada). In addition to beating Lifted from Pixar and director Gary Rydstrom, Danish Poet bested Roger Allers’ The Little MatchGirl (Disney) Geza M. Toth’s Maestro and Chris Renaud and Mike Thermeier’s No Time for Nuts (Blue Sky). Accepting the award, Kove commented, “I want to thank the Academy for continuing to support this animated short category, it means a lot to us.” She went on to thank the thank National Film Board of Canada and all those in Norway who supported the film. There was little doubt that the hugely successful Pirates sequel would lay waste to the competition, especially after team at ILM got the nod from their peers by sweeping the recent Visual Effects Society Awards. The swashbuckling adventure, which features a healthy helping of impressive CG animation, won over the Warner Bros. releases Poseidon and Superman Returns. Accepting the award for Dead Man’s Chest were John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall. Director Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, which features visual effects by CafeFX, was favored to win Best Foreign Language Film but ended up losing to the German entry The Lives of Others. Labyrinth did, however, walk away with wins a number of categories, including make-up, art direction/set design and cinematography. For a complete list of this year’s Academy Award winners, visit www.oscars.org.