The 84th Academy Awards are only two weeks away and the buzz is certainly in the air in Austin theaters. On screens this week, you can check out a past winner of Best Animated Feature as wells as films up for Foreign Language Film, Writing (Original Screenplay) and Documentary Feature awards in this year's race.

This Weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse

Beginning this weekend, the Alamo Drafthouse will be hosting a Studio Ghibli Retrospective. Recently, new prints of 15 of the Japanese animation powerhouse's films were struck and have been playing to audiences in NY and LA. Now, Austin has its chance to see some of these pristine 35mm prints (all in original Japanese language with subtitles), with the first being the 2003 Best Animated Feature Academy Award winner Spirited Away.

Ostensibly there is a plot concerning a young girl who must find her parents in the spirit realm after they are turned into pigs. The movie really is a dumping ground for studio head Hayao Miyazaki's unrelentingly magical imagination. The result is an otherworldly experience, filled with wild characters and familiar threads from other works of vast imagination mixed together into an adventure unlike anything else. This is a movie that demands a big screen presentation and, thankfully, this is your chance to see it the right way.

This Weekend at Regal Arbor Cinemas

From Iran comes A Separation, a film nominated this year for two Oscars in the categories of Foreign Language Film and Writing (Original Screenplay). The film begins with divorce proceedings; Simin wants to leave Tehran so that her daughter, Termeh, can receive a better education — but her husband, Nader, wants to stay to take care of his father who has Alzheimer's. When they do separate, Termeh stays with her father, who hires a woman (defying her husband's strict adherence to Muslim law) to take care of his father.

Through a series of misunderstandings, there are eventually murder charges added to the stakes at hand. Traversing the tenuous relationship between law and religion in a country where religion dominates each decision, A Separation has been praised for its even-handedness and universally human view of the experiences of its characters. (A Separation also opens Friday at Violet Crown Cinema.)

This Weekend at Violet Crown Cinema

Another Oscar contender (this time for Documentary Feature), Pina, opens Friday at the Violet Crown. The film is a tribute to legendary dance choreographer Pina Bausch, whose "dance theater" techniques revolutionized the art form. What was to be a guided tour through her work changed completely when Bausch died just before production in 2009. Instead, Pina is a stirring memorial to the woman and her work, with dance routines performed by and intercut with testimonials from her ensemble members as well as excerpts from her greatest works. Combined with archival footage of the woman herself and dazzling 3D photography, it is a documentary as artistic as it is informative.

Beyond the Weekend

There's even more Oscar content to be found at Alamo South Lamar which is hosting the nominated shorts packages. You can see both the live action shorts and the animated shorts at multiple screenings through next week.