davextreme: pixar

Ratatouille’s up to 95/100 on Metacritic now, which is exactly right. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s damn close. I’d rank it below Finding Nemo, my favorite Pixar movie, and about even with The Incredibles.

It’s a bit of a shame, really, that Pixar isn’t putting more weight behind this one. I’ve seen some advertising, but not much. It’s coming out right before Transformers, which will probably hurt its box office earnings. Cars got a lot more press, but I guess the subject matter speaks to lots more people than a movie about fine food, despite that Cars had a terribly flat, predictable story. I guess it’s hard to compete with Shrek, with its stars and its franchise power, but the effort that Pixar put into the storytelling of Ratatouille is as palatable as the food its characters produce.

Anyway, I recommend this one. One small thing: for some reason I can suspend disbelief that all these French characters are speaking English (and of course that rats are speaking in the first place), but it bothers me that onscreen, diagetic written material isn’t in French. What’s wrong with me?

29 June 2007

Ratatouille (2007): Reviews

From early reviews it's at a 94. That'll come down, but it looks like Pixar has another winner here.

16 June 2007

Apple - Trailers - WALL•E

Teaser for Pixar’s next movie (after Ratatouille), due out summer 2008.

13 June 2007

A Rat With a Whisk and a Dream - New York Times

Piece about animating all the food in Pixar’s new film. Interesting that they ran into uncanny valley problems.

13 June 2006

Computer-made cartoons might be nearing a creative crash

The question is, when they start flopping, will the studios think it’s because they’re computer animated, or because they’re bad movies?

08 June 2006

Cars

Katherine and I saw a sneak preview of Cars last night and, well, it’s no Nemo. The film is beautiful — as visually stunning as you’d expect from any Pixar picture, and there are lots of cute little moments, but overall the story fails to deliver much of anything very compelling.

I didn’t like this film. That’s not to necessarily say that I didn’t enjoy watching it, but it seems like Pixar put a lot of love into making the characters come alive, making the settings look great, and putting together cute little vignettes, but they forgot to write a compelling script. So much so that it seems like they just threw in an off the rack formula for a story that could fit into any movie whatsoever. Main Character is a hothead. He meets other people who teach him that there’s more to life than winning a race. There’s a sad part where you think maybe he didn’t learn the lesson, and he abandons them. Then you realize he did learn the lesson, and at the end maybe he wins the big race or maybe he doesn’t, depending on if the writers want to go Casey at the Bat or not. The story is just so telegraphed it annoyed me. “Oh, that guy’s going to end up being part of his pit crew.” “Oh, that one will end up teaching him a lesson about racing.” Sure, it’s a movie for kids, so I’m not looking for narrative complexity, but Pixar’s always been a great studio because they’re able to just make good old movies that happen to be suitable for kids.

Watching it, I wondered if maybe I just don’t dig cars enough to like it, while if the movie were about say, superheroes, I would have loved every minute. It’s possible that someone with a great love of cars and racing would find more enjoyment in the movie, and it’s not even like the story of The Incredibles was that original, either, but it just seemed like a more complete movie to me. Also, the Larry the Cable Guy character (“Mater”) just didn’t work for me, but that might be a cultural thing as well. To me, he was a generic slow-witted hick, but maybe fans of the White Trash Comedy Tour are getting something I missed.

And then there’s the message. Roger Ebert says:

The message in Cars is simplicity itself: Life was better in the old days, when it revolved around small towns where everybody knew each other, and around small highways like Route 66, where you made new friends, sometimes even between Flagstaff and Winona. This older America has long been much-beloved by Hollywood, and apparently it survives in Radiator Springs as sort of a time capsule.

Watching the movie, my feeling was, “so you let a new highway get built, and didn’t bother to build a connecting road and put up some signs?” I’m sure that there are many real life towns that had lots of trouble when they were bypassed by interstates, but that’s not the same as society passing them by. I’m just tired of the idea that with progress must always come the loss of community. From a business point of view, all the characters really are just sitting in the middle of nowhere, in a town that’s literally not even on the map, hoping someone will stop by and shop in their stores. It makes them seem stupid instead of making them seem like the victims of modern life.

I could go on, but I’ll just watch the Ratatouille trailer and look forward to next summer.

Edit: I should add that the short before the feature, One Man Band, is great, as are all of Pixar’s shorts.

Edit 2: iTunes link to One Man Band.

23 March 2006

JimHillMedia.com-"Cars" officially rolled out at Tuesday ... (3/16/2006)

JimHillMedia.com-“Cars” officially rolled out at Tuesday … (3/16/2006)

Review of Pixar’s Cars, from the first preview screening.

26 January 2006

Toy Story 3 Cancelled - ComingSoon.net

Oh what wonderful news. I’ve always thought that lesser-known straight to video sequels were part of Disney’s secret shame. Good to see Pixar has its integrity pants on.