Editor’s note: Welcome to the eighth of a 33-part series dissecting the 82nd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Sam Turner of This Time It Will Be Different.

The Oscar for Best Animated Short Film can be an odd one. You would perhaps be forgiven for thinking that award winners would reflect changing times, trends and technologies in the animation genre; a natural evolutionary step-change from the hand-drawn charms of Flowers And Trees, the first winner in 1923, to a Pixar computer generated marvel in 2010. However, even though it is often marginalised, announced with little fanfare alongside the technical awards, The Academy likes to keep its audience guessing in this category just as much as in any other.

Last year the award went to La Maison En Petit Cubes, a rather rough-round-the-edges Japanese hand-drawn short which beat the silken CGI lines of British entry This Way Up and the charming mad-cap stupidity of Oktapodi, also a CGI entry. Two years before that, The Danish Poet, another very sparse hand-drawn animation, dethroned the mighty Pixar’s Lifted, capping a double slap in the face for the Disney-owned studio, as Happy Feet triumphed in the longer category over Cars.

Already, prior to the ceremony, this year has been no different. A couple of months back a long list of ten films were announced for the consideration of Academy voters. Now at shortlist stage, we’ve already lost five and who fell at the first hurdle? That’s right, Pixar. Gone too is Australian animation The Cat Piano, a film which featured the voice over talents of Nick Cave, as well as Cordell Barker’s entry, Runaway, a film which looked to have all the trappings of ‘typical’ academy success.

And so we’re now down to the following five. Covering different styles, themes, countries and messages it’s difficult to predict what The Academy will do. The smart money would be on three-time award winner Nick Park, an apparent Academy favourite whose Wallace And Gromit animations last won in 1995. But then again… the smart money every other year, would have got you nowhere.

French Roast - Fabrice Joubert

CGI but in a unique, almost grubby, incarnation, we follow one man’s day in a coffee shop as he continues to order drinks, ashamed that he has forgotten his wallet and is unable to pay. Charming, morally aware, visually interesting and with a great side character in the OCD-affected beggar, this is my favourite of the bunch.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty - Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell

Granny O’Grimm reads fairy tales to her granddaughter to send her to sleep. Shame though that in Granny’s old-age and cynical hands, all is not as it seems. A great perversion of the Sleeping Beauty tale this has had brilliant campaigning and promotion from Brown Bag films and features a fantastic character to front the campaign.

The Lady and The Reaper (La Dama y la muerte) - Javier Recio Garcia

A beautiful, surreal, darkly-comic tale of the battle for an old lady’s soul between death and the doctor trying to save her. Thankfully this has now finally become available to watch online and it doesn’t disappoint. Not dissimilar to last year’s This Way Up, this is highly entertaining.

Logorama - Nicolas Schmerkin

With the full film still not publicly available this looks like an outstandingly clever idea but one which will need a strong narrative to tie all its smarts together.

A Matter of Loaf and Death - Nick Park

Clocking in at only just shy of half an hour, the latest entry in the Wallace and Gromit series is way ahead of the other entries on length but not necessarily on story. Borrowing heavily from previous adventures, this nonetheless displays the charm, wit and slapstick silliness which the series is famed for.

[Editor’s note: many of the films have longer write-ups, along with links to their official websites and picture previews over at the thistimeitwillbedifferent website.]

I was notified earlier this morning by Sam Turner at thistimeitwillbedifferent that UK film magazine Total Film published an article today called 600 Movie Blogs You Might Have Missed, a fairly definitive list of many movie blogs that are active in and around the movie blogging community.

Not surprisingly, members of the LAMB are heavily involved. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to scan more than a couple names on the 10-page list without coming across one; by my totally unofficial count, I’d say that there are at least 300 LAMBs making up the list, some of which are even lucky enough to get their site banners included as part of a gallery.

I got in touch with the author (Dan Goodswen) to thank him for the list and make him aware of the LAMB (if he wasn’t already, which he was), and he had this to say:

I had an intern helping with research for the article and she found the LAMB pretty early on - in all our research you were the only site with a comprehensive list of blogs, so we found it extremely useful, and are endebted to you for our 600 blogs feature.

My intention with the list was to create a one stop shop for the cream of movie blogs out there (I was aiming for 1000), but we quickly realised this would be near impossible, with the vast amount of blogs out there and the frequency of blogs closing and opening. Making a 100% accurate list was just too ambitious, so i capped the list at 600, and let my intern of the hook (she was a babbling, incoherent mess by that point). So the feature is something of a success, in drawing attention to all these great blogs, but unfortunately there were many I didn’t find - hopefully i can do a follow up feature down the line, 400 More Movie Blogs You Might Have Missed or something.

If you wish to help Dan and TotalFilm out, there’s a comments section at the bottom of the post where users are posting their “forgotten” sites; if you don’t see yours on the list, go ahead and register and add it to the comments.

Thanks to TotalFilm for spotlighting so many hard-working bloggers out there, and to Sam for alerting me to this quickly.

URL: http://thistimeitwillbedifferent.blogspot.com/
Site Name: thistimeitwillbedifferent
Categories: Reviews, Editorials
Rating: I suspect I’m in PG-13 territory: no nudity, occasional use of language (normally when quoting)

What is the main focus of your site?
The site has always been a way to keep my writing active and up to date more than anything else. Unsurprisingly (seeing as you are getting this e-mail) it is largely movie based (UK movies where possible) but sometimes creeps into other territories (see ‘about‘ page). I’m also willing to open it up to others who want their editorial blog pieces published there (not reviews).

What are your blogging goals, personally and/or professionally? In other words, what, if anything, are you trying to get out your blog?
As I say, my blog is largely there so my writing skills, such as they are, don’t diminish over time (sadly, an inevitability). Equally though, it provides a good reference site on the odd occasion opportunities to freelance as a copywriter come my way and recently a PR company has been in touch asking me to review films they promote - I’m always open to that sort of opportunity (isn’t everyone?). I like starting a healthy debate and I’m always happy to have one so long as it is respectful and intelligent as opposed to offensive and mindless!

Do you prefer an interactive community for your blog or are you the teacher and your readers the students?
I very much enjoy getting responses to my blog but equally enjoy reading others. I’m all for opinions (see above)! I’ll frequently search the blogs of reviewers’ I respect to see their opinion on films I am about to or have just watched.

How long have you been movie blogging for, and how frequent do you post updates to your site?
My blog has been active since January 2008. I am currently trying to update 3 times a week although, admittedly, depending on (paid) workload this does fluctuate over time.

Name up to three of your favorite movies (and no more).
Difficult, maybe you could define ‘favourite’?! Just kidding, I’ll go for All The President’s Men, Seven and maybe… The Hustler.

How did you hear about the LAMB?
Through Ryan’s (Univarn) blog.

Any additional comments, or give yourself an interview question that’s not listed above.
None.