Word: toying
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...Kilmer, in black sweats and no shoes, sits in a darkened sound studio. On the other side of the glass, Jeffrey Katzenberg watches nervously, clutching a toy red-and-yellow football. Today Kilmer is recording the voice of Moses, and Katzenberg is unflaggingly attentive as the famously temperamental actor dubs dialogue for the most personal high-stakes film that Katzenberg--former chairman of the Disney studio and a founder of DreamWorks SKG--has ever been involved in making, the eagerly anticipated animated epic The Prince of Egypt. Kilmer is not in the upbeat mood that the scene requires. He started...
Boasts Steve Jobs, Pixar's CEO and Lasseter's understandably proud boss: "John Lasseter is the closest thing we have to Walt Disney today." Could be. Toy Story, Lasseter's first computer-animated feature, released in 1995, has reaped an estimated $1 billion for Pixar and its production-partner Disney in box-office, video and licensing revenues. But more important, Disney is betting that its heroes Buzz and Woody will endure for generations of kids to come. Says Peter Schneider, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation: "Look at Walt Disney's legacy: he told great stories, with great characters...
...glasses, he looks like the overgrown kid he is at heart. He's just silly enough to ride a motorized hot dog to a Hollywood premiere. His offices at Pixar's animation studios in Point Richmond, outside San Francisco, are host to a veritable convention of Buzz and Woody toys: Mech Warrior Buzz, Space Sheriff Woody, Space Claw Buzz, Snake Whippin' Woody. They're not just props: Lasseter checks each toy tied in to Pixar's films. "He plays as hard as he works," laughs Lasseter's co-director, Andrew Stanton...
...collaborative as animated movies are (some 60 animators worked on A Bug's Life, for instance), Stanton says it is Lasseter's sensibility that pervades both Toy Story and A Bug's Life. "He truly gets it. He has both the kid's perspective and the filmmaker's perspective. The childlike charm and the maturity, that's John." The payoff is that animation, long considered a kiddie medium, is attracting adults. Some 35% of the Bug's Life audience on the Friday after Thanksgiving were teens or adults--without kids...
...story, as many know, opens as everyone in a sweet little Victorian-era town is getting ready for Christmas. Clara (Marie Ceranowicz) and Fritz (Hobraiam Suarez) and their parents host an enormous and delightful party, where the mysterious Dr. Drosselmeyer (Laszlo Berdo) gives Clara a Nutcracker toy that Fritz promptly breaks. (It is interesting to note that in this year's production, Fritz does not get spanked or punished in any way by his parents.) Drosselmeyer, however, takes pity on poor Clara--at midnight, he transforms the living room into a massive battlefield where the Nutcracker, brought to glorious life...