Let’s Watch and Talk About the Annie Awards Together
The rest of America can have their Super Bowl tomorrow, but the animation world’s big night is TONIGHT. Slap on your cleanest pair of underwear or panties, wedge that huge tub of ice cream inbetween your legs, and settle in to watch the livestream of the 41st annual Annie Awards from the solitary comfort of your couch. The video below will begin live from Los Angeles at 7pm PT/10pm ET.
It’s almost a given that Disney’s Frozen will take home the main feature film award. The only question is how many total awards it will win out of its 10 nominations. The Annies also honor TV shows, video games, and shorts so there will be plenty of winners. Here’s the complete list of 2014 nominees.
Voice actor (and Seinfeld’s Puddy) Patrick Warburton will host the ceremony. Disney Imagineer Alice Davis will be presented with a June Foray award, and Dragonframe stop-motion software will be given the Ub Iwerks Award. The Winsor McCay lifetime achievement recipients this year are Katsuhiro Otomo, Phil Tippett, and Steven Spielberg. (Spielberg has already informed the awards show that he doesn’t plan to attend the ceremony. For the record, ASIFA-Hollywood now considers him to be more of an animation legend than Winsor McCay-less 100-year-old Don Lusk who worked in animation continuously for sixty years, including on 13 Disney features produced under Walt’s personal supervision.)
If you’ve ever watched a livestream of the Annies, you know that a significant part of its charm stems from ASIFA-Hollywood’s sheer incompetence at staging an awards show. Missed presenter cues, malfunctioning technical equipment, awkward pauses in the middle of the ceremony, and groan-inducing jokes by D-list celebrities are par for the course. Often imperfect and frequently embarrassing, the Annies are tolerated—even welcomed—because they give animation artists (except Don Lusk) a moment in the spotlight, and that’s a nice thing.
Also, if you plan to comment on Twitter, tag your thoughts with #Annies and we’ll retweet the best ideas on Cartoon Brew’s Twitter account. Let’s talk Annies!
