You know, seeing the nominees for best animated film, just about any of those would be fine. David Denby is right to point out that the golden age we have been living in for animated films since Pixar showed up is better than the official golden age of animation from the Disney era. It's an opinion open to passionate dispute, of course, but if we're not in a golden age of animation this is a pretty astonishing "silver age" just on the basis of Pixar and Miyazaki alone.
Throw in Nick Park's work with Wallace and Gromit and Henry Selick's stop-motion animation, too; throw in Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's mammoth run on the DC cartoon universe; and toss in stuff like Persepolis and the sheer range of style and content in animation in the last fifteen years is a marvel to behold. My nieces and nephew are growing up with a much wider range of quality cartoons than I had access to when I was their age. Most of the cartoons thirty-somethings in my generation lavish their nostalgia on were actually pretty lame. The cartoons that started coming out when I was in high school and college, on the other hand, were often very solid. Maybe we're not back at the level of Bugs Bunny if you insist on that being the high water mark for short serialized animation, but the story-telling is more varied and substantial.
Up seems likely to win but even though I liked the film I kinda want Coraline to get some love. Henry Selick is easy to over look if you're just focusing on Pixar. Sure, he did Monkeybone but everyone's bound to make some clunkers or slip up. Nightmare Before Christmas is still a great cartoon and most folks in animation aren't going to be Hayao Miyazaki or Brad Bird.
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