The List of Potential Best Animated Feature Nominees

In 1992, Beauty and the Beast was an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. Some people were upset that an animated movie could be eligible for movie's highest honor, when they really should've protested that The Prince of God Damn Tides was nominated that same year. Talk about taking a spot from a deserving movie (Fisher King, Cape Fear, Boyz N The Hood...).

Anyway, a few years later, there was an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which would solve everything, right? Maybe. Probably. It seems that every year an animated film still gets pushed for Best Picture, though, and that's their right. Best Picture means exactly that.But I suppose the Academy does need to honor animated films on their own, especially because they make the industry so much money. To that end, here are the fourteen movies submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Best Animated Feature award:- Bolt
- Delgo
- Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
- Dragon Hunters
- Fly Me to the Moon
- Igor
- Kung Fu Panda
- Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
- $9.99
- The Sky Crawlers
- Sword of the Stranger
- The Tale of Despereaux
- WALL-E
- Waltz with Bashir

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Fearless Forecast: 'Leatherheads' By a Nose

In terms of box office, I'm not expecting great things out of Leatherheads, the heavily-marketed George Clooney period comedy about the beginnings of pro football.

Point in fact: As much as George Clooney is a mega-watt star in terms of recognition, his movies don't usually make a lot of money. The Ocean's franchise has done very well and his Oscar-nominated films have been modest successes, but I think the only standalone $100 million George Clooney movie is The Perfect Storm, unless you're counting Batman and Robin. He's not, so you shouldn't.

Leatherheads should still win the weekend, his first non-Ocean's venture to do so in eight years, but I think it will be a close duel with the family-friendly Nim's Island. The Jodie Foster-Abigail Breslin-Gerard Butler movie will do well on its premise alone, but it has been a surprisingly lackluster season for kid movies, so don't expect this one to set the box office ablaze, either.

The only other notable new releases are The Ruins (young adult horror: Blah) and the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert film, Shine a Light. Both should figure into the top ten, but won't be major players.

The Top Five:

1 - Leatherheads ($16 million)
2 - Nim's Island ($15.2 million)
3 - 21 ($14 million)
4 - Horton Hears a Who ($10 million)
5 - The Ruins ($8 million)