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even Fibal Fantasy didn't make it. WTF?

Although it doesn't directly mention the Best Animated feature category, there's a good piece by New York Post columnist John Podhoretz at National Review Online on just how insignificant the Oscars have become in recent years, and how the movies that tend to be nominated are the ones backed by large "For Your Consideration" campaigns.

http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/podhoretz/podhoretz021602.shtml

Quote:

Excerpt: The awards-season success of In the Bedroom points up the way in which nominations are financially manipulated. Miramax's marketing savvy got that little movie about parents reacting to a son's involvement in a murder six Oscar nominations, including Sissy Spacek's likely Best Actress trophy. But another rapturously reviewed movie on almost exactly the same subject called The Deep End garnered nothing, not even a Best Actress nod for Tilda Swinton, who plays the tormented-mother part taken by Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom.

Why? The Deep End was released by Paramount Classics, which simply didn't have the resources to mount a campaign for the movie. The same thing happened to what was probably the best-reviewed movie of last year — Memento, another indie release that would have been nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor if it had been a Miramax movie. It wasn't, so it had to settle for a screenplay nomination.

(Not that anyone at National Review would care about the Best Animated Feature category, except, maybe Online editor Jonah Goldberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has never said that he likes anime, but I know he likes the Simpsons and sci-fi/fantasy type films and TV shows, so it's not entirely out of the question.)