The DVD for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Bolt arrives today, and included you’ll find a bonus short staring Rhino, the scene-stealing hamster voiced by Mark Walton, a story artist at Disney. The 4:30 minute film, titled Super Rhino, was directed by Nathan Greno, who recently took on the directing responsibilities on Disney’s upcoming Rapunzel, along with Byron Howard. Read a recenty interview with both Greno and Walton over at movieweb.com. Here’s a minute from Super Rhino.

The nominations for the 81st Academy Awards have been announced, and today we’ll take a look at the 2 animation categories…

Animated Short Film

Five films were nominated, most notably Oktapodi – as it’s a student film. Few (if any) student-produced films have been nominated in this category. Pretty impressive. Here’s our five contenders.

Lavatory — Lovestory

A Russian film by director Konstantin Bronzit about a bathroom attendant searching frantically for her secret admirer in a love story that can’t be stalled. Here’s the 10-minute film in its entirety.

Oktapodi

A 2:30 minute graduation film by six students at Gobelins in France. Oktapodi follows two octopuses who help each other escape from the grasps of a stubborn restaurant cook. The directing team was comprised of Julien Bocabeille, François-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi. Here’s the film in it’s entirety:

Disney’s 48th animated feature, Bolt, opens today in 3,651 theaters across the US, and the critics think you should check this one out. The CGI family film from Walt Disney Animation Studios is currently scoring an 85% at RottenTomatoes.com (which would place it in the top 50 animated films all-time), but healthy competition from red-hot Twilight and hold-overs Madagascar 2 and Quantum of Solace may put a choker-chain on Bolt’s box office bark. Below, LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan weighs in on this 96-minute film, which was co-directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard.