Animated dinks and plaudits among Academy Award (r) nominees:

Nominated in the Animated Feature category:
* Brother Bear
* Finding Nemo
* The Triplets of Belleville

Dinked in the Animated Feature category:
* Tokyo Godfathers

Nominated in the Animated Short category:
* Boundin'
* Destino
* Gone Nutty
* Harvey Krumpet
* Nibbles

Dinked in the Animated Short category:
* The nine shorts that make up The Animatrix

Other nods and dinks:
* Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, featuring the incredible work of WETA Workshop in concert with Andy Serkis with the animated character Gollum, dominated Oscar (r) nominations with 11
* Thomas Newman, the nephew of Randy Newman, the son of Alfred Newman and scion of the Newman film composing dynasty, got a nod for his score for Finding Nemo
* The title song of The Triplets of Belleville is in the running for Best Original Song
* There were no nominations for Kill Bill Vol. I, which featured animation by Sunrise Studio, the studio which also gave the world Cowboy Bebop

Why do I consider Tokyo Godfathers and The Animatrix to have been dinked? Well, there was definitely "room for one more" in the Animated Feature category. Tokyo Godfathers was almost universally critically acclaimed, although it didn't get much play in theatres. At least one of the shorts that make up The Animatrix, "The Final Flight Of The Osiris" would have qualified for consideration as Best Animated Short, and deserved to be in the running. Basically, the take-home message here is that even though Spirited Away/Sen To Chihiro is an Oscar (r) winner, Anime has yet to completely register in the minds of Academy members. It's a shame, too...Japan is where all the action's at in animation right now. Too bad.