Pixar's Up is the class act in animation for 2009.

No doubt it will lead the Oscar race in its genre, with a strong push from Coraline and Disney's retro-classic, The Princess and the Frog.

But there are other contenders, including the charming cartoon, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Because it is as far from Up, Coraline and Princess as mainstream animation gets, Meatballs demonstrates this is a richly productive time for this century-old art form, which ranges from old-school stop-motion and hand-drawn cel animation to cutting-edge digital.

Meatballs, which debuted on DVD and Blu-ray this week, comes on the heels of the post-apocalyptic thriller 9 (which is Oscar-eligible) and the debut of the latest Family Guy satire of Star Wars, Something, Something, Something, Dark Side (which is not).

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller adapt Judi and Ron Barrett's whimsical children's book into a fantastical cartoon tale with great characters, a sense of community, a strong moral through-line and the don't-mess-with-Mother-Nature perspective. Bill Hader, as hapless inventor Flint Lockwood, and Anna Faris, as rookie weather girl Sam Sparks, lead the voice cast.

Meatballs is funny, sweet and wonky. On DVD, it is available in a single-disc edition or the two-disc Super-Sized Edition with a banquet of extras. You meet the eccentric Lord and Miller, who demonstrate how to "cook up" an animation that Hader insists has "the highest calorie intake of any movie ever made!"

One unusual twist is that the Super-Sized Edition offers the movie either in 1.78:1 widescreen or 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. The second ratio (my preference) produces black bars top and bottom but shows more of the panoramic artwork that makes Meatballs a showpiece.

The Blu-ray is a combo pack with Blu-ray, standard DVD and digital copy. It expands the extras on the Super-Sized DVD. One Blu-ray exclusive is the silly (but fun) Splat Button, which lets viewers throw digital food at the screen.

9

Not to be confused with the musical Nine or the sci-fi thriller District 9. This 9 is the visually dynamic animation from American Shake Acker.

Enabled by producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmanbetov, Acker adapted his Oscar-nominated short film 9 into a feature.

It is the story of nine creatures that look like mechanized sock puppets but, unknowingly, harbour the only remaining sparks of humanity after an apocalyptic war between man and machines.

The storytelling gets muddled, and bogged down in action, but the imaginative characters and early 20th-century world that Acker creates absolutely dazzles. The film is available in a single-disc DVD with good extras that provide insights into Acker's filmmaking, along with his student thesis short. The Blu-ray expands those extras as Acker leads a detailed tour of his production.

Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side

With tongues-in-cheeks and feet-in-backsides, the Family Guy guys gleefully send up The Empire Strikes Back. Following in the jetstream of Blue Harvest, the new Something, Something, Something, Dark Side features Peter as Han Solo, Lois as Leia, Stewie as Darth Vader and so on. It's funny, rude and profane and runs 54 minutes. This is for adults and youths, not little kids.

But the satire is Star Wars friendly, because you only hurt the ones you love. Dark Side is available in a single-disc DVD with extras or two-disc Blu-ray with the same extras plus a digital copy. Extras include a badly filmed but interesting read-through of the next instalment, Episode VI: We Have a Bad Feeling About This.