The year kicked off in February with Laika's first feature film Coraline. It did well at the box-office, got great reviews, and got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
In March, DreamWorks released Monsters vs. Aliens, their first movie to be released in stereoscopic 3D. It paid homage to several classic monster B-movies from the 50s and 60s.
May saw the release of another Titan AE-esque film, Battle For Terra. It also bared resemblance to James Cameron's Avatar, which wouldn't premiere for seven months. Surprisingly, the film managed to win the Heartland Award for Truly Moving Picture.
Also released in May was Pixar's 10th feature film, Up, which was also released in stereoscopic 3D. The film did very well at the box-office, received critical acclaim, and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Up also got the Oscar nomination for Best Picture, the first animated feature to do so since Beauty and the Beast.
July saw the release of Blue Sky's fifth feature film, Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. While it may seem like another run-off-the-mill cash-grabbing sequel, I'll tell you one thing: It's better than Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost.
Also in July, the Irish-produced Secret of Kells was shown at the New York International Children's Film Festival. The film somehow got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, snubbing Ponyo that year. 'Kells' would have a wide release in the US in February 2010.
August saw the US release of Ponyo, Miyazaki's most kid-friendly movie since My Neighbor Totoro. It is loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, as well as Yuriko Ohmura's Elta the Frog.
In September, Tim Burton, with the help of Shane Acker, made his first CGI movie simply called 9. It was a rather dark film about a group of leather dolls, who are the last traces of mankind, which have to stop machines from killing them.
Also released in September was Sony Pictures Animation's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. While it has its fans, I personally think the character designs are kind of ugly.
October saw the release of Astro Boy, based on the beloved anime character from the 60s created by Osamu Tezuka.
There were three animated movies released in November. The first was Robert Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol, which stuck faithfully to its original source material.
The second was Planet 51, which is about a human that crash-lands on a planet inhabited by Shrek-like aliens. The film got rather negative reviews.
The third was the far superior stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the children's book of the same name by Roald Dahl. It was the first animated feature from cult live-action film director Wes Anderson. Fantastic Mr. Fox got really good reviews when it premiered, and even got the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but lost to Up.
And finally, in December, Disney made their triumphant return to hand-drawn animation with The Princess and the Frog. While it was overshadowed by James Cameron's Avatar, the film got the Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. Well, that's all I have to say for this weeks Animated Movie Throughout the Years! Tune in next
week when we talk about animated movies from 2010, in which the toys came back to town with Toy Story 3 and raked in a billion dollars at the box-office, Disney released their 50th animated movie with a retelling about a princess who had long hair, DreamWorks made dragons fly with How To Train Your Dragon, and Illumination made their feature film debut with Despicable Me.
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