Family, broad audience films at forefront of this year's Oscars race

Finally, the Best Animated Feature category, which is typically a haven for family films at the Oscars, made history of its own with more than half of the nominations going to stop-motion features for the first time ever. Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie,” Laika’s “ParaNorman” and Aardman Animations’ “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” will all compete for the rare privilege of being only the second stop-motion feature ever to win an Oscar (the first being Aardman’s “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” in 2005). The other nominees in the category are Pixar’s “Brave” and Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph.”

For a complete list of nominees for this year’s Academy Awards, which will be held on Feb. 24, visit the official Oscars website at http://oscar.go.com/nominees.

A Utah Valley native and devoted cinephile, Jeff Peterson is studying humanities and history at Brigham Young University.