After last month’s setback wherein I failed to predict the Academy would prefer a not very good movie over a movie that Skrillex contributed to the soundtrack (obvious in hindsight), I feel a little better this month when the Ursa Major nominees matched my predicted list perfectly for the second year in a row. A little better, because, seriously, what else were we going to nominate?

There are two kinds of movie reviewers; those that see the traditional end of year top ten list as a chore, and those like me who see it as a perk. Anyway, here’s ten movies from 2012 that I liked.

Here’s what’s coming up in February next year, for those of you who buy comic books. For those of you who don’t, I guess you can skip this one.

This is a close year, ladies and gentleman. This year we are going to have to wait until November to know which movie will take the crown for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, as compared to the last five years, where it was Pixar/Pixar/Pixar/Pixar/the movie that came out in the spring. You could call it by February each of those years and not look completely stupid. Not so, this year.

The Cartoon Brew website announces that the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts Gallery is presenting an exhibit, “DreamWorlds: Behind the Scenes, Production Art from DreamWorks Animation” from July 30 through September 7.

DreamWorks’ works include more than just anthropomorphic animals, of course (Prince of Egypt, anyone?), but there has been SO MUCH anthropomorphization in its 24 features!

The exhibition includes more than one hundred digital prints and approximately thirty traditional paintings and drawings on paper; two miniature sets; three character maquettes; two set pieces – an 8′ high Kung Fu Panda “Po” statue and the new Rise of the Guardians standee; and three media stations displaying animation tests, stereo footage, and the Rise of the Guardians trailer. There will also be a contemporary animation work station on display, with demonstrations given by current Hench-DADA students.

Alright, my first time at bat as an Ursa Major movie pundit worked out, as Kung Fu Panda 2's win put me at three for three predicting the movie awards I set out to predict. Read on for my reaction to the awards and my first guess at next year’s nominees and winner.

I was in a bad mood all day when I went to see this movie. A real bad mood.

I was looking forward to seeing it, however, because I decided it would cheer me up. I wasn't expecting it to be great and cheer me up; I expected it to be bad, and then I would get to take out all my frustrations on it in my review.

Essentially, if this movie was not the second coming of Furry Jesus, I was going to rip it a new orifice which I would then proceed to assuage my rage.

Can I even write that?

Anyway, you read the headline; this movie cheered me right up in the way I did not expect it to. By not sucking. Also, by not only not sucking, but by really not sucking a lot.

In the interests of reporting all things anthropomorphic on Flayrah, it is my sad duty to report that the Cartoon Brew website has just announced the existence of two new CGI animated anthropomorphic films. (Notice that I did not say ‘theatrical’.)

One is Life’s a Jungle: Africa’s Most Wanted, a cheap, direct-to-video rip-off of DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar franchise from Canadian distributor Phase 4 Films, just in time to take advantage of all the publicity for Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.

How bad can it be? Cartoon Brew posts its trailer so you can see for yourself. If this gets onto this year’s Ursa Major Award final ballot, I will personally destroy the ALAA.

The other is Buz-e-Chini, Afghanistan’s first CGI animated film, about goats facing up to a fierce wolf. It is in Hazaragi, a language I confess I never heard of before.

I can't believe that nobody has posted this here yet! Coming June 8.

The Annies are done and the Oscars were last Sunday. Rango inevitably won Best Animated Feature, so there is really not much reason to go on about it. Meanwhile, the Ursa Major nominees will be announced next month, so guess what next month’s column will be about.

For now, however, we might as well begin the process all over again; that’s right, I’m going to call next year’s Oscars and Annies right now!

I mean, everyone knows it’s going to be Brave, anyway.

The BBC reports from the forests of Daraina, Madagascar, where wildlife researchers believe they've found a new species of fork-marked lemur.

The lemur has a distinctive structure beneath its tongue, which Dr. Russ Mittermeier suggested might be used to capture nectar.

The discovery may save the lemur's habitat from the axe.

The Mayor of London has called for a focus on pest control after a reported fox attack in the London borough of Hackney left twin nine-month girls hospitalized.

According to urban wildlife expert John Bryant, such attacks are extremely rare, and a recent poll by the University of Bristol found 65.7% households in favour of urban foxes, which number around 33,000 in the UK (as compared to 225,000 adult rurual foxes).

No such luck for the Alaotra Grebe, recently reported extinct by conservation experts. The birds – which made their homes on Lake Alaotra in Madagascar – are believed to be victims of a combination of poaching, the introduction of carnivorous fish and other invasive species, and the use of monofilament nylon gill-nets for fishing.

Isolated Madagascar, with it's 100 or so species of weird and wonderful mammals, may have only aquired them after seperating from the main land. New research points to the four groups of mammals on the island coming from four individual ancestors that floated over on rafts of plantation. Both the carnivores and the lemurs are not primitive enough to justify assuming they seperated with the island, over 80 million years ago, and both groups point to one ancestor each. The genetic research that has been conducted on them hasn't been conducted on the other two mammalian groups, tenrecs and rodents, but scientist believe they probably arrived the same way, and Madagascar started off as a lone refuge of reptiles and birds.