Tag: Pixar

Finding Dory

FINDING_DORY_PosterDoes Pixar have a sequel problem? I doubt it. We can debate the quality of “Cars 2” and “Monsters University,” but “Finding Dory” succeeds because it takes one of the more iconic and unique characters within the Pixar canon and gives her meaningful depth and a story of her own. To me, that’s not Pixar trying to cash in on a few more toys.

“I’m Dory, and I have short term memory loss.” When Dory says this to open “Finding Dory,” she’s just a toddler, a tiny blue bubble of joy with bulging purple eyes that make up almost her entire body. But to hear her say it now, we realize that every quirky and bizarre thing Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) said in 2003’s “Finding Nemo” was actually something far more serious. Dory has a mental illness, and she’s lost. She’s always been lost. As a child, she got separated from her parents and spent her teenage years swimming and searching, asking for help to anyone who would listen, until increasingly, she forgot who or what she was looking for, only that they were missing. Then she bumps into Marlin (Albert Brooks), and the events of “Finding Nemo” take place, interrupting her search for her family until a new memory triggers her old quest. Continue reading “Finding Dory”

Inside Out

Pete Docter’s creative Pixar classic helps explain the complex workings of our mind to kids and adults alike.

inside-out-posterAs adults, we use stories to explain to our kids how the world works. We have fables that teach kids etiquette, or why the planets revolve around the sun, or why we celebrate holidays. Pixar has managed an incredible feat (and it’s hardly the first time) by creating an entire ecosystem of ideas, mechanics and colors to help explain the most complicated aspects of our minds.

“Inside Out” is a movie about emotions and filled with them, but it’s really a portrait for who we are and how we function. Across their 15 films, Pixar has made a good handful of sheer classics, and “Inside Out” is among them. But Pete Docter’s film is groundbreaking because it may be the first to reach us on such an intimate, fundamental level.

What goes on inside your head? That’s the first question “Inside Out” asks and it’s a question that starts at birth. Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is born, and with her first waking thought is Joy (Amy Poehler). Joy is a bright yellow sprite with short blue hair and eyes as big as her heart. She presses a button inside baby Riley’s mind and makes her smile. As Riley grows, more emotions emerge to work together and compete for control of Riley’s central control panel. First is Sadness (Phyllis Smith), a round blue ball of depression who literally brings down anything she touches. Fear (Bill Hader) is a skinny purple bug dressed in plaid helping Riley avoid tripping on cables or getting into trouble. Disgust (Mindy Kaling) is a stylish green drama queen averse to broccoli. And last is Anger (Lewis Black, naturally), a short red hot head in business casual attire who loves traffic, talking back to dad and complaining about San Francisco pizza.

For each memory and moment in Riley’s life, a colored ball coded to each emotion is created with a brief video clip memory, stored in “headquarters” during the day and then shuttled off to a massive array of shelves signifying long term memory. There, little sanitation workers dispose of phone numbers, U.S. presidents and more to make way for newer memories. Meanwhile, a small collection of “core memories” defines the islands of personality that make up Riley (if psychologists have said that our traits are in some way “connected”, Pixar has animated that idea literally). When Sadness accidentally turns one of Joy’s core memories blue, the two scramble to fix it and end up separated from headquarters and the ability to make Riley happy or sad. It all coincides with Riley’s disappointing move away from Minnesota to California and gradually leaves her interests, personalities and feelings crumbling away.

The factory-like mechanics of “Inside Out” are not unlike the Scream factory Docter envisioned in “Monster’s Inc.”, in which our emotions and how we process them keep the world moving. But Docter and co-director Ronaldo del Carmen have fun with every interaction and every moment of a human’s life. Not one line or image passes in front of Riley’s eyes that does not dictate a quick-witted reaction from one of our five little balls of emotions. It’s a movie that literally makes good on the expression that someone’s emotions have taken over. In a dinner table conversation between Riley and her parents, her father’s own team of workers launch into a war room, and putting his foot down has all the gravity of turning two keys to launch a nuclear sub.

InsideOutAnger

And yet thematically, “Inside Out” feels closest to “Toy Story”. The anthropomorphic emotions have given their lives to making Riley happy and creating memories that shape who she is, and as she grows into becoming a teenager, her moods and her need for memories that made her a joyful kid are no longer needed. Joy and Sadness come across Bing Bong (Richard Kind), Riley’s discarded imaginary friend now wandering the far reaches of her mind hoping to one day be remembered.

Often without much exposition, Docter helps convey through colors and cleverly constructed puns (the arrival of a “train of thought”) and analogies the inner workings of the mind from dreams, the subconscious and abstract thought. There’s an incredible sequence that plays with the film’s animation worthy of one of Pixar’s daring animated shorts, in which abstract ideas transform Joy and Sadness into surreal, cubist shapes and eventually two-dimensional drawings. The sequence works as a goofy action set piece, but kids and adults alike can understand the external real world implications these actions have on Riley’s mind.

Some of Docter’s most poignant ideas are perhaps a bit more common than the film’s ingenuity and perceived originality give it credit for: sadness as much as happiness shape who we are and what we remember, and as we grow, even our emotions grow more complex. But it’s not the surface level emotions and ideas that make “Inside Out” such an incredible tearjerker. It’s the complete package of vivacious animation, exuberant humor and sheer imagination that help us better understand these feelings and make this film so human both inside and out.

4 stars

Brave

The first big selling point of “Brave” was that it was the first Pixar film to feature a female lead. The second was that it was not “Cars 2.”

But “Brave” is sadly disappointing in both of those respects. It falls short of creating an original and authoritative female character that can go in the canon of Disney Princesses, and it is so madcap and silly that it becomes exhausting.

Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is not the only movie princess who has been poised with the task of accepting an arranged marriage. She’s a plucky young tomboy with wild red hair and a sharp eye with her bow and arrow, and yet her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), demands that she become prim and proper such that she can select a husband from the kingdom’s three clans.

All three princes are embarrassing dopes, so Merida defies her mother by besting the three of them at archery and then enlisting the help of a witch to change her mother’s mind about the necessity of marriage. This unfortunately, in the witch’s terms, means transforming Elinor into a bear.

Yes, a bear, and the bear gets awfully tiring when the bear starts doing things a bear cannot do, like pantomime or wear a tiara and clothes. Cartoon bears have been known to do things bears cannot do before, but less so in Pixar films. Usually when Pixar creates a maelstrom of action, they do so with the intent to provide beauty or enlightenment, as in the colorful bits in “Ratatouille” and “WALL-E” or even early on in “Brave” as Merida gallops through the forest doing target practice to the tune of an elegant song by Julie Fowlis.

Rather, much of the action in “Brave” is chaotic and clumsy, such as when a horde of Scottish soldiers chase a shadow through the halls of the castle. It goes on endlessly in the third act, as is customary of most films today for children or otherwise.

Merida is too safe and familiar to spark a revolution for women. The more interesting is Elinor, who is full of resolve and conviction as well as motherly tradition, but she doesn’t get to do much talking when she becomes the aforementioned bear. That silence on her part paves the way for more comic relief bombast from the men, who are all one-dimensional. The King in particular is so cartoonishly massive that it’s impossible to take him seriously.

Granted, “Brave” is plain gorgeous. Pixar has never rendered landscapes this beautiful before, or with as much detail. The detail and realism of Merida’s red curls alone must’ve cost a fortune in CGI development.

But just as pretty is “La Luna,” the Oscar nominated Pixar short just before “Brave,” which gives a lesson of individuality through a lovely and original story about a boy, his father and his grandfather doing an odd job on the moon. It does so without words or action and leaves a warm, gooey feeling that comes as a welcome surprise to the noisy action of “Brave.”

So I guess to use a silly analogy, as Pixar aimed their bow and arrow, they hit the close target with the safe and formulaic film that is “Brave.” They should’ve however shot for the moon.

2 1/2 stars

2012 Oscar Nominated Shorts

The shorts categories at the Oscars are always the most boring part of the endlessly long ceremony, unless you can crack jokes at how the “God of Love” director probably got a B on his student film, didn’t get a haircut and then won a friggin’ Oscar for it.

But it’s not just for the reason that you typically can’t see the films. It’s for the reason that, even if you did track down the films, why when you could only watch them on a junky 360i YouTube screen, would you even want to watch them?

Seeing the Oscar Nominated Shorts in a theater, with an audience, all in a row, you can begin to sense their quality, charm and ingenuity.

Animated

Watching the five animated shorts, I was struck by how clever, artistic, original and purely cinematic they all were.

Only one of the five has dialogue, and only two of the five are entirely computer generated.

I asked myself why Pixar or DreamWorks don’t make films that experiment with animation styles considering how artistic something in two dimensions can actually be. That was until I actually saw the Pixar short, “La Luna.”

La Luna

Pixar has outdone themselves. They make gorgeous films that everyone can agree are gorgeous, and the story of a boy out with his father and grandfather on a boat is cute and affecting in a less exploitative way than fellow nominee “The Fantastic Flying Books.” The family job is to climb up to the moon and sweep some shimmering stars around to form the curvature of the moon each night. Coupled with astonishing images, “La Luna” is a film that encourages exploration, hard work, family ties and individuality, which is likely a lot more than you can say about “Cars 2.” This is the short that should win, and maybe it still has a fighting chance. It would be the first time in 11 years to win since 2001’s “For the Birds.”

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

This film has been cleaning up animation awards left and right, it’s got a cool looking interactive iPad app to go along with it and it’s got the pedigree of children’s author and illustrator William Joyce to boot. And as lovely, colorful and sweetly saccharine this story about the joy of reading is, the whole film feels like a PSA for reading. It not so subtly illustrates that to read brings books alive, brings color into the world and grows old with you. It’s a message that parents and children will eat up, and so will the Academy. It’s my pick to win.

Dimanche (Sunday)

“Dimanche” is a darkly funny and yet inventively irreverent story of a boy who flattens coins on train tracks. It’s underscored in notoriously simple and exaggerated black and white, pencil drawn, cel animation. In this way, director Patrick Doyon creates a morbidly bleak world where all the adults are monstrous vultures like the obtuse crows crouching over the town’s train tracks. It’s got an almost twisted ending that might keep it away from Academy voters however.

A Morning Stroll

Why did the chicken cross the road? To experiment with animation styles of course. Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe’s film is about shapes, times and perspectives all illustrated through one odd short story of a chicken walking down the street, pecking on a door and disappearing inside. In 1959, the animation is one-dimensional. In modern day, it’s in color and 2D, and the CGI image of 3D 2059 is too hilariously gruesome and disturbing to spoil here. Watching that ending, I’d be shocked to see if it really is Oscar bait. But let me just say this: I want the Zombie Breakdance app.

Wild Life

“Wild Life” comes from former nominees Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby, and although it’s set in Canada, it’s a lush, colorful Western. The images are constantly moving oil paintings with a lovingly intimate look. Its initially cute and folksy dialogue evolves into something with actual pathos that is lacking in the other whimsical shorts.

Also packaged with the Oscar nominated shorts were four others that made the short list, “The Hybrid Union,” “Nullarbor,” “Amazonia” and the absolutely drop dead hilarious, viral video worthy “Skylight.” That’s the one you should really try and find on YouTube. Continue reading “2012 Oscar Nominated Shorts”

Steve Jobs’ influence on the movies

The iPod. The Mac. The iPhone. The iPad. The Apple TV.

Steve Jobs did it all, and with his passing Wednesday at the all too young age of 56 after what now makes sense as an abrupt departure from his CEO job at Apple, he changed technology, home computing, telecommunications and music.

But lesser known is his major hand in pioneering the 21st Century in film.

In 1986, Jobs bought and formed Pixar out of The Graphics Group from Lucasfilm, and with his encouragement and insight turned Pixar into the innovative minds and kings that now rule over animation and digital film.

Jobs was an executive producer on 1995’s “Toy Story,” the first fully digital film ever made and arguably one of the most influential films of the last century of movie making.

Pixar has thanked him on 10 of their features and shorts (he was given “very very special thanks” on Pixar’s first short “Tin Toy” from 1988), and now they thank him one last time.

“He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined.” This was a statement by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, who began Pixar along with Jobs. The full statement by the current Pixar execs as reported by the Huffington Post can be found here.

And this is true of everything Jobs did. The Washington Post said in a video dedicated to him and a Tweet, “Steve Jobs knew what we wanted before we knew it ourselves.”

He knew what the potential of digital film could be, he knew what the potential of digital music could be, and he knew what the potential of a digital world could be.

Could we say that the thriving instant streaming services that Netflix, Hulu and even iTunes offer would still be possible were it not for the pioneering Jobs had in radicalizing the music industry?

We know Steve Jobs changed the world, but we only now realize how widespread his impact truly was.

Image courtesy of The Huffington Post