Word: pixar
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...their movies with others in the same genre, bracketology and tea leaves. In other words, they guess. Sometimes they guess wrong. On the first Sunday of June last year, Warner Bros. announced that its new comedy The Hangover had taken in $43.3 million, which made it second to Pixar's animated feature Up, at $44.2 million. The final count showed that The Hangover had surged on Sunday to earn $1.6 million more than predicted, which made it that weekend's champ by $840,000. Why, then, do studios race to provide guesstimates when the weekend isn't over? Because there...
...Nine years ago, when the award for Best Animated Feature was established, DreamWorks got the first one, for Shrek. Since then, Katzenberg's products have been shut out (the studio distributed one Oscar winner, Nick Park's veddy English Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), while Pixar has taken five: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL•E and Up. This year, DreamWorks' perky Monsters vs Aliens was not even one of the five finalists. "Each year I do one DreamWorks project," actor Jack Black told the crowd at the 2009 ceremony, "then I take all the money...
That was also the case 60, 70 years ago, when Disney shorts had a monopoly on the Oscars, while the funnier, livelier cartoons from Warner Bros. - which today are treasured - were ignored. In that sense, Pixar's features are closer to the old, elevated Disney style, while DreamWorks' films are flat-out cartoons, proud to carry on the fast, cavorting Warner tradition...
...studios also favor different kinds of stories. Pixar makes movies about couples - guy-guy in Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, Ratatouille and Up, and guy-gal in Finding Nemo and WALL•E - who overcome initial antagonism and find a shared need. To wit, buddy stories and love stories. DreamWorks does workplace comedies about groups, in Shark Tale, Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs Aliens, both Madagascar movies and the later Shreks. (See the new toys of Toy Story 3 at Techland.com...
...studios' preferred plots reflect their means of creation. Pixar writer-directors, working in a San Francisco suburb far from the seat of industry power, get lots of staff support but pursue their visions more or less on their own. DreamWorks movies, made mostly in the Hollywood suburb of Glendale, are team efforts. A Pixar film may have one writer besides the director; it's total auteur handicraft. Most DreamWorks movies credit two directors and several writers, and play like the spiffiest vaudeville. The DreamWorkers aren't in the masterpiece business; they just want to provide an expert good time...