My Personal Opinion...

I do think Cars could have been better at grabbing me from the beginning, but really - in my world, Happy Feet has no place in Academy lore. When I saw it, in glorious IMAX, I sat with my mouth open, amazed at its expressionless superficiality, its bland songs, its talentless voice direction and its illogical story. I smiled at a single joke - the seagull speaking of "alien abduction." At least Cars had me FEELING something for the characters, and it explored the warmth, charm and humor that was drilled into us by Frank and Ollie - values that I found sadly lacking in this overproduced piece of motion capture that doesn't even begin to do justice to the art of tapdancing... It seems that the MoCap-CG crowd in general does not want to learn from the past - and quality and entertainment suffer. Oh, well...

[Floyd Norman summed it up brilliantly on Cartoon Brew:
Frank Thomas made ‘em dance with only a pencil and paper.
Now, that’s impressive!]

I have not seen the Norwegian film The Danish Poet. I really liked The Little Match Girl, but as it was the only short I have seen, I cannot really say anything about this category...