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Ponyo, Astro Boy Submitted for Oscar Nominations (Updated)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that a record 20 films have been submitted for possible Oscar nominations in the Best Animated Feature category of the 82nd Academy Awards. Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Ponyo anime film and David Bowers and Imagi's computer-animated adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy manga are among the submitted films:

• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
• Astro Boy
• Battle for Terra
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Coraline
• Disney's A Christmas Carol
• The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• Mary and Max
• The Missing Lynx
• Monsters vs. Aliens
• 9
• Planet 51
• Ponyo
• The Princess and the Frog
• The Secret of Kells
• Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
• A Town Called Panic
• Up

The academy will announce its official slate of nominees on February 2. The academy allows up to five nominations in this category if 16 or more films are submitted and accepted; if only nine to 15 films are accepted, the academy will allow only a maximum of three nominations. Seven of the submitted films still need to run in Los Angeles County for at least one week to qualify for acceptance in the category. All of the films still need to be examined by the academy's Animated Feature Film Award Screening Committee to determine if they meet other qualifications.

Funimation confirmed last month that Hideaki Anno and Khara's Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Jo) anime film is not eligible for this year's Oscars since it opened in Japan on September 1, 2007. The third section of the Academy Award Rules states that a foreign film is eligible for this year's awards if it was first exhibited outside the U.S. after January 1, 2008.

Last year, Mamoru Oshii and Production I.G's The Sky Crawlers and Masahiro Ando and BONES' Sword of the Stranger were among the 14 films submitted for the same category; both were eventually accepted in the category but were not nominated.

The first and only time that five animated features were nominated in the eight-year-old category was in 2002, when Miyazaki's Spirited Away was submitted among 17 candidates. Spirited Away eventually became the only Japanese animated feature to win an Oscar. Kunio Katō's "La Maison en Petits Cubes" won in the Best Animated Short Film category at the 81st Annual Academy Awards in February.

Source: The Wrap via Rope of Silicon

Update: More backround information added.

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