We are down to the nitty gritty; the Annies announced their nominees last month, nominations for the Ursa Majors have opened, and yesterday morning the nominees for the Academy Awards were announced.

The Annies announced their nominees earlier this month, so for once that award will be first up in the rundown. The last month has also been full to the brim with critic’s awards, which can influence the Academy.

It will be a five-nominee year for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. 18 films were sent in for a chance at nomination for the award, and all were accepted. The motion-capture debate seems to have been for naught; all three films under question were accepted, though only one is a contender.

This is an opinion column, but this month I’m using that tag a bit more than usual, as I discuss the Academy’s bias against animated movies.

I’ll then tell you what’s wrong, not with the Ursa Majors, but with me covering them.

Lastly, I might actually have something to say about the Annies. Maybe.

I wasn’t as proactive as I thought I would be, and I’m pretty sure I missed a couple posted during the first of September, so apologies there. Otherwise, here was last month’s Newsbytes.

September is an important month for next year’s awards. Major film festivals earlier in the month (which didn’t feature anything remotely furry, so this is their last mention), plus the beginning of screenings of studio hopefuls and even the first precursor award make September the unofficial beginning of “awards season” for movies.

Meanwhile, back in the furry fandom, a major player has had a setback, completely changing my Ursa Major predictions.

There are three big movie awards furries should be watching, or, at the very least, have somebody watching for them: the Oscars, the Annies and the Ursa Majors.

This year looks to be interesting in all three awards. With Pixar flopping and all sorts of new rules, the Best Animated Feature Oscar may be a surprise this year. The flop also affects the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. Finally, the fandom’s own Ursa Majors’s Best Anthropomorphic Movie will see something entirely new; a movie made by the fandom.

Though it led the race at the box office this weekend, Cars 2 has become Pixar’s first critical failure after over a decade of critically acclaimed films.

This dismal showing with critics, plus new rules for the Academy Award for Best Picture, may have opened up the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for furry movies, with Rango and Kung Fu Panda 2 both currently top (if early) contenders for the title.

Heidi the cross-eyed Virginia Opossum, resident of Leipzig Zoo in Germany, is to predict the winners of the 83rd Academy Awards.

After being found as an orphan, Heidi was raised in a North Carolina wildlife sanctuary, before being rehomed at Denmark's Odense Zoo and, later, Leipzig Zoo. She became an international sensation last December, after photographs of her cock-eyed visage were published in the German newspaper Bild. The images went viral, and led to a hit song ("Opossum Heidi Schielt" or "Opossum Heidi Peers"), Heidi's own Facebook account, and an upcoming line of plush toys.