Honoring the animated form In addition to a series of classic shorts featuring Wallace and Gromit and many others, several of the picks for the festival are unquestionable classics, from the heights of traditional animation to technological marvels. Disney’s entries include films from both of the studio’s golden ages. Pinocchio represents Walt Disney at the height of his powers, endlessly creative and willing to go the distance into truly hellish visions. Beauty and the Beast, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (1991) during the studio’s great modern revival, is a pitch-perfect rendition of the classic fairy tale and well deserving of its Best Picture nomination. Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Spirited Away, plunges into a strange world, frightening and magical all at once. The Iron Giant is warm, sweet, funny and absolutely heartbreaking. That it was dumped into box offices and quickly forgotten is a crime. Director Brad Bird and voice actor Vin Diesel pay tribute to 1950s sci-fi and horror films, nuclear paranoia and, at last, Superman, in a film that can truly be described as perfect. John Lasseter and the crew at Pixar animation had been experimenting with computer-animated shorts for a decade, but nonetheless it was a grand surprise when they sprung Toy Story onto the world in 1995. With a boost from classic vocal performances by Tim Allen and Tom Hanks, they created a fresh, engaging world unto itself. Their films just seem to keep getting better and better, but even so, the original Toy Story stands alone. —Paul F. P. Pogue