Pixar...

[jakobnicholas]

(Perhaps all future Pixar info can go here)

 

 

- Pixar this week is showing brand new animated shorts involving Mater from Cars on the Toon Disney channel. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at 6:56 ET, 5:56 CT, 6:56 PT. They're tall tales stories from Mater and involve him in Looney Tunes-like scenarios. I saw "Mater the Greater" last night, and it's quality is as good as all Pixar efforts. And it was quite funny.

 

For those who don't get Toon Disney, all three of these "Cars Toons" will be shown through the day this coming Saturday, November 1st on the Disney Channel. And then -- starting on Tuesday, December 23rd -- "Rescue Squad Mater," "Mater the Greater" and "El Materdor" will be shown on ABC Family as part of that network's annual "25 Days of Christmas" programming event.

 

Here's a link that shows 1-minute portions of the shorts:

 

http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2008/10/...iew-videos.html

 

 

 

- Wall*E is out on DVD Nov. 18, featuring a short called Burn*E (he's one of the cleaning robots on board the big spaceship)

[SarahC]

i am so excited for the Wall-e DVD. seriously!!

[Mrs. Peel]

I'm excited for the Cars shorts! Thanks for the heads up!

[Lammycat]

Ditto on the head's up. Thanks. My kids are psyched.

[jakobnicholas]

Pixar's next film is called Up (http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/up/), and I found the following blurb at slashFilm.com:

 

 

 

Monday night Disney held a test screening for Pixar

[jakobnicholas]

Newest "Up" trailer:

 

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/up/

[yermom]

Looks cute. I'll have to show the trailer to my daughter now.

[Sir Stewart]

Newest "Up" trailer:

 

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/up/

 

Wow, this might be totally awesome. (Big surprise)

[caliber66]

I saw Wall E on the plane this morning somewhere over the midwest. It was cute.

[kimcatch22]

Awesome!! And I spied a ball from Toy Story in the little girl's room!

[jakobnicholas]

Wall-E is out today on DVD. For me, definitely one the best movies of 2008...a great love story.

 

 

It comes with a new 7-minute animated short called "Burn-E". (Burn-E is the robot that got locked out of the spaceship.)

 

I'm curious what others think of the new short....I think it's quite hysterical.

[jakobnicholas]

John Lasseter, Pixar creator and head of Disney animation, was asked by rottentomatoes.com to list his 5 favorite films of all time. I find it interesting because I think Lasseter has a great eye and feel for what makes a good movie.

 

Here's his list:

 

1.Dumbo

Dumbo is my favorite movie of all time. A remarkable motion picture. Just over 60 minutes, it's so tight in terms of storytelling. It's like [snaps fingers]. When you have kids and you watch Dumbo, it really nails you because there's that "Baby Mine" sequence. I like [Dumbo] because it's the most cartoony of Disney features. I like it because the main character doesn't talk. Such a wonderful film. It is very funny. Great music. It also really moves you. It has a really huge heart. Walt Disney always said that for every laugh, there should be a tear. I live by that.

 

2. Star Wars

Probably everybody has that on their list. [star Wars] came out and I just finished my sophomore year at CalArts. The May of '77, saw it opening weekend at the Chinese Theatre. It worked in so many ways, but one of the things personally [that] was so inspiring [was] how it entertained an audience to a new level. I was there with a packed audience. I waited six hours. Towards the climax, when Luke is in the X-Wing and he's going down the trench, I was just shaking I was so excited. And I'd never seen an audience so excited. First of all, it was everybody, from kids to adults, teenagers. Everybody was going crazy for this film. The quality of the storytelling, where it's one foot in sort of the past and one foot in the future, I was so impressed by that. I came out and said, "That's what I want to do with animation." Many of my friends left animation [because of Star Wars] and went to actual special effects. At that time, animation was thought of just for kids. I saw this and said, "No, no, I want to entertain audiences." That's all I think about when I make my movies.

 

3.Sullivan's Travels

I saw this for the first time at CalArts and since then I've become a big fan of all Preston Sturges films. Again, I had already chosen what I wanted to do for a living but this] story touched me so deeply.

 

Here's a guy who makes comedies during the Depression and he's so isolated in Hollywood that he sets out to learn what's going on with people. He becomes a hobo. And he ends up way in the South and is put into this work prison. And everyone in Hollywood believes that he's dead, that a hobo stole his coat and was killed by a train. And so he's there and [he can't] get word back that he's still alive. It's a horrible situation. For Christmas Eve, at the depth of his misery, a black church in the segregated South invites all the prisoners out. And they sit there and what they watch is a Pluto cartoon. It's the famous scene of Pluto getting the flypaper stuck on him and he can't get it off. And [the audience] starts howling with laughter. Howling with laughter. People who you wouldn't think would still have laughter in their bodies. And Sullivan came out of this and gets back to Hollywood and everyone's like, "Oh, you had this horrible situation, you must make a great drama." And he goes, "No, I'm going to make a comedy. Because that's what the world needs."

 

4. Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

This is between Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Hmm, I'm going to go with Mr. Deeds. Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur. It's just an amazing film. It's very funny. Longfellow Deeds is the main character, Gary Cooper plays him and he's so appealing. I think it's the definition of appeal.

 

So Longfellow Deeds is this guy who lives in this tiny town, he's makes a living writing greeting cards. Just a sweet guy. There's a distant relative who's this gigantic millionaire. Has a huge fortune. So this industrialist dies in New York City and they trace [him] down, he's the only heir to this huge fortune. So they bring him to New York and now he runs this company. [but] this really ace reporter for the local paper wants to get the dirt on him, and [she's played by] Jean Arthur. So she waits for him to come out and she acts like she's starving, like she's a homeless woman during the Depression. So he picks her up and feeds her some food and they start doing things together. And he absolutely falls in love with her. But, so, there's all this dirt that's coming out in the newspapers and they don't know how it's happening. But the scene...it starts very funny, but, again, it's that heart, it's balancing humor and heart that Frank Capra did so well, the scene in which he finds out the woman he's fallen in love with is actually the one who's doing all the dirt is one of the most emotional scenes in the film. And it's so underplayed. So beautifully underplayed. He gets behind this column but you know he's crying. And he can't bear anyone to see him. It's so incredibly moving and touching.

 

5. The General

I'm going to choose Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr. It was either Steamboat Bill Jr. or The General. You know, let me change it to The General. Love the train. Anyways, Steamboat Bill Jr.-slash-The General. It's about Buster Keaton. He was one of the great inspirations in my career, my life, in studying his works. He's like a human cartoon character. But, more importantly, he developed character and personality. These films are so appealing because of the personality of the characters he created. His comic timing is staggering.

[jakobnicholas]

Wow!

 

From Variety.com:

 

 

Disney/Pixar’s robot love story "Wall-E" was named best picture of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. on Tuesday, marking the first time in the org’s 33-year history that an animated film has taken the top prize.

[jakobnicholas]

Pixar's next movie, Up, has a brand new trailer:

 

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/up.html?showVideo=1

[jakobnicholas]

Up will open this year's Cannes Film Festival on May 13...the first time ever it will be opened by an animated movie. Up opens nationwide in late June.

 

 

 

Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 will be out in 3D in October. You'll be able to see both movies for one price. And before the movies, we'll get to see the first trailer for Toy Story 3, which opens in June 2010.

[Lammycat]

Looks like yet another winner from Pixar. I'm looking forward to it. The new Toy Story, too.

[Mrs. Peel]

Pixar's next movie, Up, has a brand new trailer:

 

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/up.html?showVideo=1

 

 

Didn't see this before....it looks fantastic!

[OOO]

I really hope they can keep their awesome movie streak going until I have young children, since that would make going to the movies much more enjoyable.

[Moss]

Saw the trailer for "Up" in 3D this weekend (at monsters and aliens). It was stunning. Really feels like you are flying around in that house. Plus you get to sit there looking like Elvis Costello in those nifty glasses.

[Jesusetc84]

Pixar's name is really a promise of quality. Every movie they've put out has been excellent.

 

Wall-E is possibly my favorite movie of all-time, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend.

[Central Scrutinizer]

Pixar's name is really a promise of quality. Every movie they've put out has been excellent.

 

Wall-E is possibly my favorite movie of all-time, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend.

My father (82) and I have talked about it, as a "shared experience" -- he watching Snow White and the wonder of this new animation, the color and story, and me sitting in a theater (admittedly older than his experience) and watching the wonder of Toy Story, the color and story. Two pivotal times in art, and for the kids in all of us.

 

Wall-E is a great story, and continues to nudge their reputation another notch. But the art world turned a little faster on the day Toy Story was released.

 

I saw Up trailer before the 3D version of Coraline. I like the step to 3D, I think Pixar will use the format responsibly.

 

Up to me seems like just a delightful trifle. Nothing heavy, just fun. Uplifting.

[jakobnicholas]

Wall-E is a great story, and continues to nudge their reputation another notch.

 

Up to me seems like just a delightful trifle. Nothing heavy, just fun. Uplifting.

 

 

 

The first 40 minutes of Wall-E is unbelievable. I'd put those minutes with just about any 40 minutes of any movie ever. The rest of the movie is also very good, but the "silent" first 3rd is just jaw-droppingly great for so many reasons.

 

 

I've read that Up gets visual inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, among others. That's exciting to hear. Early in movie, viewers will be introduced to 78 year old Carl Fredrickson and learn who he is and why he's living by himself. I hear it's very poignant.

[Mrs. Peel]

Did you go through all of the other sections of the official website? There are some pretty great things on there. The featurette in the Videos section explains how they designed the movie to get the biggest bang out of the latest 3-D technology. I can't wait for this movie!!

 

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/

[Central Scrutinizer]

Did you go through all of the other sections of the official website? There are some pretty great things on there. The featurette in the Videos section explains how they designed the movie to get the biggest bang out of the latest 3-D technology. I can't wait for this movie!!

 

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/

Ever time I see that main character I think Spencer Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to dinner."

[jakobnicholas]

Up will be the opening movie of Cannes. It will be shown sometime today/tonight.

 

Roger Ebert has seen the 2D version and writes it about it on his blog (apparently he hates 3D, and digresses a little bit about the topic). I lightly skimmed his review, as not to spoil any of the movie. But his and other early reviews (Time magazine's Richard Corliss has a review also) are glowing to say the least.

 

Here's a few things Ebert says about the film (I edited out things that might be major spoilers...there are minor spoilers ahead):

 

Back to the "true" film, the 2D version of "Up." Find a theater showing it, save yourself some money, and have a terrific visual experience. This is a story as tickling to the imagination as the magical animated films of my childhood, when I naively thought that because their colors were brighter, their character outlines more defined and their plots simpler, they were actually more realistic than regular films.

 

"Up" begins with a romance as sweet and lovely as any I can recall in feature animation. Two children named Carl and Ellie meet and discover they share the same dream of someday being daring explorers. In newsreels, they see the exploits of a daring adventurer named Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who uses his gigantic airship to explore a lost world on a plateau in Venezuela and bring back the bones of fantastic creatures previously unknown to man. When his discoveries were accused of being faked, he flies off enraged to South America again, vowing to bring back living creatures to prove his claims.

 

Nothing is heard from him for years. Ellie and Carl (Edward Asner) grow up, have a courtship, marry, buy a ramshackle house and turn it into their dream home, are happy together, and grow old. This process is silent except for music (Ellie doesn't even have a voice credit). It's shown by Docter in a lovely sequence, without dialogue, that deals with the life experience in a way that is almost never found in family animation.

 

The adventures on the jungle plateau are satisfying in a Mummy/Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones sort of way. But they aren't the whole point of the film. This isn't a movie like "Monsters vs. Aliens," that's mostly just frenetic action. There are stakes here, and personalities involved, and two old men battling for meaning in their lives. And a kid who, for once, isn't smarter than all the adults. And a loyal dog. And an animal sidekick. And always that house and its balloons.

 

I haven't spoken to Pete Docter since we met on a Disney cruise ship, where he was maybe getting inspiration for the airship interior. I know some things about his work. He likes for his films to contain some sorts of life lessons. Like Walt Disney, he doesn't mind if sometimes they're scary. In WALL-E, he incorporated a pointed critique of consumer excess. In "Up," his whole film is an oblique rebuke to those who think action heroes have to be young.

 

Is this a daring choice for the opening night at Cannes? Not if you've seen it. Is it a significant choice? Yes, conferring the festival's august prestige upon animation. Will it be a great experience for the 2,246 members of the audience? Yes, except for that damned 3D.