Word: pixar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...summer weekend, a movie usually needs a star name or an action-film punch, or it needs to be a sequel to or the remake of a blockbuster. Except, that is, for new Pixar releases. Rising on the propulsion of a brand name known for quality entertainment, the studio's 10th animated feature, Up, surpassed most predictions by earning $68.2 million this weekend, according to official projections. Buoyed by higher ticket prices in theaters showing the 3-D version and rhapsodic reviews that tallied a 98% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Up scored the strongest Pixar opening since The Incredibles...
...main character in Up, has a gruff side that can't match Bale's, at least as expressed in Bale's obscene, YouTubed rant on the set of Terminator Salvation. But he wasn't the lead in last year's top-grossing film, The Dark Knight, either. That's Pixar for you. Unlike its rival, DreamWorks, the studio doesn't sell its movies with star voices. And the films' plots? At a typical Hollywood pitch meeting, the story of a rat let loose in a French restaurant (Ratatouille, 2007) or a lonely robot trash collector (last year's WALL...
...Except for The Incredibles, Brad Bird's obligatorily cartoony vision of a superhero family, Up is the first Pixar feature in which the main characters are humans. Up isn't realistic either. It revels in a minimum of dialogue, deft comic underplaying and a style the Pixar people call simplexity, a character design that stresses circles and cubes. (Carl looks like a trash-compacted Spencer Tracy in his later years.) "We tried to push caricature," Docter says, "and the language of shapes - to make these drawings an expression of the characters. Carl wants to stay enclosed...
...Every Pixar production involves some 300 artists, but the actors come first; they have to, because the dialogue is recorded to guide the animators. Asner, 79, who used his slow burn brilliantly on the great Mary Tyler Moore '70s sitcom, had the gruffness and deadpan comic timing to bring Carl to vocal life. As Docter recalls, "When we first met Ed and showed him a small sculpture we'd made of Carl, he said [growling], 'I don't look anything like that.' And we thought, O.K., this is gonna be perfect." Docter and Peterson then tailored the dialogue...
...probably won't have to do it with the movie's viewers either; they'll be tickled and touched without prodding. Extending the patented Pixar mix of humor and heart, Up is the studio's most deeply emotional and affecting work. Docter says he had a ball digging fresh ground, finding "this nice new road that we got to go out and drive on." The story of a septuagenarian grouch who uses his cane, hearing aid and dentures to thwart all evildoers; a buddy movie whose pals are separated by 70 years; a love story that transcends the grave...