Word: rat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Remy, a common rat with a gourmet's soul, has made his way to the kitchen of the once-great Paris restaurant Gusteau's. Here, the new Pixar movie Ratatouille tells us, he will be able to create superb dishes--if only he can find a human ally. His desperate choice: a callow scullery lad named Linguini. Remy, in the logic of animated features, understands the boy's words, but Linguini can't speak rat; so the two communicate through Remy's nods and brow furrowings. Somehow, the kid gets the message. "I can't cook ..." Linguini says...
...fantasy world where animals can talk, how do they talk? That's the secret of character animation. Even though it's a completely unbelievable thing, people invest in it," he says. "If we do our job on this one, audiences will empathize with, and invest in, a rat." That's because the creative children at Pixar's Lego- like headquarters in the San Francisco suburb of Emeryville realize that movies, and especially cartoons, are not just talking pictures. They are motion and emotion pictures. And if you don't have heart...
There's plenty of both in this rat-out-of-sewer story, which hits U.S. theaters June 29. For Remy (brightly voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt) is your basic outsider. Even with his family, he felt like a connoisseur among food philistines. They are tough and oafish, satisfied with garbage; he's a devotee of the late, famed chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and his mantra, "Anyone can cook." Having lost track of his teeming brood, he arrives at Gusteau's old restaurant, now run by the conniving Skinner (Ian Holm). But Remy's culinary imagination, put into effect by Linguini...
...Ratatouille began with a premise of the movie's original director, Jan Pinkava. "When I heard this idea about a rat that wants to be a fine chef," Lasseter says, "I thought, 'Wow, this is the most extreme fish-out-of-water story I've ever heard.' Following one's creative passion against everyone telling you, 'No, you can't do this'--that was such an amazing idea...
Wrenching decisions are what Pixarians have to make, just as the exigencies of the market are what they try to ignore. The title, for one thing: it's pronounced rat-a-tooey and refers to a Mediterranean vegetable stew, which not everyone will know or, knowing, will care about. And then ... well ... rats. They are typically figures of fear and loathing, and the Bird team hasn't prettied them up. Though Remy's coat has a lovely bluish sheen, and he often walks on his two hind paws, he is recognizably a rat, much closer to his species than...