...this morning at work.  Ratatouille, as you probably heard, took home the award for Best Animated Picture,* which occassioned a bit of inter-office debate.  I recreate some of the commentary here:

Luis (animator): Yeah, it was good, but I just don't think it was their best.
Jeff (animator): Really?  I thought it was awesome.
Kat (i.e., me): Seriously.  It's a work of certifiable genius.  Definitely their best.
Luis: Naw, Monsters Inc. is their best.  Still, I'm glad it won.
Shell (modeller, texture artist): I thought Surf's Up should've won, honestly.
Kat (in frank and open disbelief): Really?
Shell: Don't get me wrong, Ratatouille was good, but it didn't really break any new ground.  It felt sort of ... safe, compared to their other pictures?
Kat (sputtering): But ... but it's about art, and the artist's relationship to the art--it has a wonderful story, and it says true and useful and universal things!  It has themes!
Shell (a bit tetchy this morning, honestly): Yeah, I understand what the story's about.  But Surf's Up broke new ground, and was more ... helpful to the genre, I think.**
Kat (also a bit tetchy this morning, honestly): Hmph.  Well, I think you're wrong.
Shell: And I think you're wrong.
Kat (trying very hard to be less tetchy): Well, at least we agree about that!

So what do you think, readers?  I fully grant that Surf's Up was technically astonishing, did some amazing things with water effects and making 3D animation seem natural (although I thought the world realized in Ratatouille was more beautiful and more appealing; I tear up every time, at the shot where Remy is looking out over the lights of Paris), and it was an agreeable little movie with an amusing story (if you haven't seen it, in fact, I recommend it), but it didn't transcend, you know?  It climbed no mountains, ascended to no new and dazzling heights.  The story of Ratatouille, and, more, the way in which the story was told, was new, it was inspiring, it was beautiful--it was more than an agreeable little movie with an amusing story; it was--and it is--art.

So, which deserves the award?***  The film that is cute and enjoyable enough, though (arguably) technically superior, or the film that is beautifully crafted and realized, one that you can watch over and over again without getting tired of?****


*yay!^

**Gah! Animation is not a genre!  It's a medium!  Fantasy, sci-fi, true crime: those are genres!

***Clearly the Oscar-winner-choosing-committee knows what they think already.  :D

****Clearly, I know what I think already too.  XD

Also, isn't the craft of telling a story also a technical (though not a technological) issue?  Just wondering.

^and yet, it should've taken home Best Picture, period.  Bah.