Enrico Casarosa, director of Pixar's short film La Luna, published a customized holiday greeting on behalf of him and the La Luna crew on his website's blog yesterday. As a tribute to the film's location, part of his greeting is in Italian. Because "la luna" means "the moon" in both Italian and Spanish, many have supposed that the film is set in a Spanish-speaking region. But the addition of "Buon Natale" to the greeting has made it clear that it is, in fact, based in Italy.

Here is Casarosa's Christmas greeting:

Buon Natale, Merry Christmas to you all from the La luna crew! I can't wait for you to see our little movie in the new year!

Enrico Casarosa

Thanks Pixar Blog (German)

Pixar has begun its campaign to get La Luna selected as winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. Enrico Casarosa's short was just recently announced as a short list contender for the Oscar. Final nominees will be announced on January 24th.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time Disney/Pixar has invested in print ads for one of Pixar's short films. In the past, they've only advertised for their feature films. The Cars 2 "for your consideration" ads made their debut at the end of November. With such stiff competition for Cars 2 at the Oscars this year, maybe Pixar is trying to generate a bit more momentum for the awards they are more likely to win.

Thanks Dutch Pixar

Correction: Turns out I was mistaken. Enrico Casarosa himself offered correction. He can recall at least two other shorts getting the "for your consideration" treatment: Day & Night and Partly Cloudy. I jumped to conclusions when I was unable to find any info/articles about them.