The longlist of films eligible for the 2012 Best Animated Short Oscar was announced earlier this month by The Academy - and in among the 45 shorts that will eventually be whittled down to a handful of nominees (via a shortlist), I'm delighted to see that The Monster of Nix has made it. Along with, bizarrely, two different films about hamsters.

The Monster of Nix turned up at the 2011 London Film Festival in one of the International Animation Panoramas. It's got Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits both on vocals. And it really is quite staggeringly unique, both in terms of visuals and story. It stuck with me for weeks afterwards. Here's the first trailer:

And here's the main song from the Monster of Nix soundtrack, Lost in the Woods:

Can you name another film that includes the sentence "What good is a rolling nudist giant"? I'll be seriously rooting for this one next year (even over Pixar's effort) - presuming it makes it through to the next stage.

Read on for a full list of all 45 nominees (warning: contains The Smurfs) - or check out our Monster of Nix review instead. 

A tale of pirates, ham, beards and Queen Victoria, Aardman's supremely daft adaptation of Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists continues to look funnier by the minute. Especially the part where The Pirate Captain's biscuit falls in his tea.

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists is out in UK cinemas in March next year. The only way it could look better? If we had another one of Aardman's Pirates! trailer song to singalong with.

Director: Tomas Lunak
Cast: Miroslav Krobot, Marie Ludvíková, Karel Roden, Leoš Noha, Alois Švehlík
Showtimes

In 1989, in an isolated train station near the Czech-Polish border, Alois Nebel (Krobot) is haunted by events from his childhood at the end of WWII. At the same time, a mysterious loner appears in his village. He has an old photograph. And presumably wants something to do with revenge - what that is, though, is never clear.

Every once in a while, we all get cravings for a panorama of international animation, but just when you think a programme to facilitate this need doesn't exist, up pops the London Film Festival’s International Animation Panorama Programme 1.

Something quite different to the rest of the LFF line-up (it doesn’t have Michael Fassbender in it, for one thing), this collection of five short animated films promises cute tales, intriguing observations and funny skits, with an eclectic range of style.

Some are stronger than others - it's worth going on Sunday just to see The Monster of Nix, which features both Tom Waits and Terry Gilliam - but at a mere 73 minutes in total, this anthology (picked by Jayne Pilling) is a pleasant way to escape from the usual festival fare for an hour.

Here are a few thoughts on each:

Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin
Certificate: PG

From the director of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (hurrah!) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (erm, perhaps not), Rango is an animated oddity. The trailers were cryptic to say the least - hello, clockwork fish - but Gore Verbinski's latest effort is an excellent existential Western. Sadly, there aren't more wind-up fish.

Director: Stephane Aubier
Cast: Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Jeanne Balibar, Bruce Ellison
Certificate: PG
Trailer

One upon a time there was a Cowboy, an Indian and a Horse. They lived together in A Town Called Panic and were all made of plastic. Then, one day along came a crazy Belgian who started moving them about and taking funny pictures. The result is one of the craziest films you've ever seen.

Doug Sweetland, the director of animated short Presto, has signed with Sony to make his feature debut.

The Oscar-nominated animator, whose tale of a hungry rabbit and a magical hat charmed everyone with a heart or brain before Pixar's WALL-E, will direct The Familiars. A tale of three young wizards who get kidnapped by an evil queen, it's based on the book by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson.

Sweetland has worked at Pixar for the last 16 years, so it's great to see him finally stepping out into his own full-length project. Especially one that involves a cat, a blue jay and a tree frog as magical familiars. And Sam Raimi as an exec producer.

Guillermo Del Toro will team with DreamWorks Animation to make Trollhunters, his first animated feature.

Written and directed by Del Toro, it's an adaptation of his own yet-to-be-published book. It's a fairy tale for kids that's designed to be scary - something different, then, for the warped helmer who has a taste for fantasy horror.

The Pan's Labyrinth director has also sounds up for several DreamWorks projects, from Kung Fu Panda 2: The Kaboom of Doom to Puss in Boots. They join his epic list of films on the go, which includes At the Mountains of Madness as well as Midnight Delivery. He told Heat Vision how he plans to juggle them all:

"Well, I don't work on them at the same time. Midnight Delivery, I wrote 11 years ago. The fact that they are happening now is flattering and great, but it doesn't mean I'm writing seven screenplays at one time."

As for Trollhunters, he added: "I wanted very much to develop a story that could be written for kids but dealt with a genre that was scary. It essentially combines fairy tales with modern times and is about how difficult it is to be a kid. Normally, kids are idealized in animated films. But the growing pains, married with the notion that there is a world right next to us that is completely plagued by creatures of ancient lore, it's thematically fitting with the rest of my stuff."

Expect this one in a few years. After he's written the script. And finished the billion other projects he's working on.

If you were one of those Brits who saw Team America and thought "we could do that", then your wish has come true with this first sighting of the poster for Jackboots on Whitehall (which appeared exclusively over at Empire).

Directed by Edward and Rory McHenry, Jackboots is a WWII-set comedy that tells the (ahem) true events of how the Nazis reached Hadrian's wall - all through the magical realism of stop-motion plastic puppets.

From Winston Churchill wielding an assault rifle to Swastikas plastering The Houses of Parliament, Jackboots on Whitehall is a demented take on our country's history. To help keep things accurate and British, the voice cast includes Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Timothy Spall, Dominic West and Tom Wilkinson.

Oh, and Alan Cumming totally plays Hitler.

Jackboots on Whitehall hits cinemas on Friday 8th October. Read on for the brilliant trailer.

You're most likely aware of who/what Megamind is, but in case you're not up to speed on Dreamworks' new animation, this new trailer will help.

An alien orphan sent to Earth when his planet is destroyed, Metro Man (Brad Pitt) is a happy, healthy flying person. Raised by a rich family, he soon grows up to become the superhero protector of Metro City.

Megamind (Will Ferrell), on the other hand, crash lands in a prison. Raised by inmates and sporting a massive blue forehead, he soon turns to the evil life of all-powerful supervillain. But then, when he finally incapacitates Metro Man and destroys his powers, Megamind finds victory to be, well, kind of lonely.

Enter reporter Roxanne (Tina Fey), who tags along when the city falls under attack from new villain Titan (Jonah Hill), leaving Megamind to try and save the day.

Sporting tight-fitting spandex and a sidekick voiced by David Cross (he actually speaks in this trailer), Megamind is shaping up to be an amusing animated outing - the invisible car gag alone is pretty decent.

Megamind takes over cinemas on Friday 3rd December. The trailer's online over at Apple - we should have it for you soon.