Tag: Pixar

Pixar! What are you doing? This seems highly unusual!

They had Inside Out come out earlier in the year. The year being 2015. But this is another Pixar movie, The Good Dinosaur, coming out in the same year. Don’t they know that this will mean they are competing against themselves for animated film awards?

Oh well, that is because this Pixar film was supposed to come out in 2013. But delays occurred. Serious delays that pushed it back a year, and then another. The whole story had to be redone from what they initially thought about, as there were apparent serious problems with the script. Not only that, but the entire voice cast, except for Frances McDormand was replaced earlier this year. Some crazy shit went down into getting this film out.

Either way, this is the first time that Pixar has released two films in the same year. The next time they do this is in 2017, with the release of Coco and Cars 3. That year, however, they won’t be competing against themselves since they know that there is no way Cars 3 will win anything.

Oh no, there are 3 T-Rexs here. This just make me think of how bad Cars 3 will be, noo!

What if the asteroid that hit the earth 65 million years ago didn’t happen? Well, then the dinosaurs wouldn’t have been wiped out. And lots of other things would have happened, like we would never have had the rise of mammals, humans probably wouldn’t exist, and no one would be able to make lame Nickelback jokes anymore. But let’s ignore the many things that would change, assume they stay the same, but also dinosaurs still exist.

That way we can meet Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) and Momma (Frances McDormand), some sort of “long neck” dinosaur species (Apatosaurus). They have three eggs and they are about to hatch! We have little Libby (Maleah Nipay-Padilla, who I assume does the voice the whole time, not just the baby. Shitty IMDB stuff going on), strong Buck (Marcus Scribenr), and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), the runt. Having kids is great, because they work a farm, and now they can expand their corn farm and get even more corn food to survive winters and have a wonderful home!

Let’s just say, eventually, some tragedies occur, due to the very explicit foreshadowing, so next thing we know, Arlo is far from home and on his own! Well, there is also this random human toddler, Spot (Jack Bright). See his name? He is basically a really smart dog.

They have to get back to the farm before it is too late. Before what is too late? Well, basically death. This area has a bit of volcanism, large bugs, scary winged dinosaurs, scary big mouthed dinosaurs, scary cryptic dinosaurs, and giant ass storms that make shit flood and get all sorts of scary. SCARY!

Also featuring the voices of Peter Sohn, Steve Zahn, A.J. Buckley, Anna Paquin, and of course, Sam Elliott.

Sam Elliot plays the whisper of the wind on the grass. Or at least that is how smooth his voice is in my mind.

Cutting to the chase, The Good Dinosaur is a very safe movie from the Pixar perspective. It was just a journey film between two unlikely entities. A buddy road trip movie. Sure they had their differences, but working together, their strengths were doubled and their weaknesses were, lets say cut down a small bit.

Early in the film was a bit dull, and I was worried it would finish with an average rating. Then we started to meet a few characters. The triceratops scene and the bad fruit scene were basically back to back and had me in stitches. Then we had the scary flying things (I don’t know if they were pterodactyls, so I won’t call them that). They were cool. But the T-Rex’s were just cowboys and a bit boring at that. Elliot voice be damned.

The Good Dinosaur had a few touching moments, but only made me barely cry just once. I was never able to connect to it emotionally like I could Inside Out. And hey, there was a death scene, and it was intense as fuck. About the same level of intensity as when Mufasa kicked the bucket in that one movie.

I was weary of the animation style, with cartoony dinosaurs/people and hyper realistic backgrounds, but it was amazing to watch it on the screen.

Again, The Good Dinosaur has some amazingly funny parts. The animation was great, but the story overall was very plain, not very original. Given their production problems, it is clear they just really wanted to do some dinosaur film. Through all the rewrites the film probably gradually became simpler and simpler, until we got the mostly unoriginal story line. It’s a shame, but at least we have Inside Out.

As this is my intro, instead of talking about Inside Out (and how sad I was there was no 2014 installment), I will just talk about the intro to Inside Out, a short called Lava.

Lava is about love, volcanoes, and tectonic shifts with hot spots. HOT SPOTS.

Obviously some liberties are taken, but it tells a wonderful love story, to great ukulele music, featuring real Hawaiians, and it will win Best Animated Short this year. You are hearing it first. It is better than Frozen Fever. It is better than Feast and Paperman.

It united all of my emotions into the orgasm phase of existence.

Fine, fine, back to the movie. Inside Out is really about a girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), growing up and trying to find her place in the world. She has a loving mother (Diane Lane) and father (Kyle MacLachlan), and enjoys the long winters in Minnesota where she can play the greatest sport ever made: Hockey. But all of that is about to come to a comical screeching halt, when suddenly they are moving to San Francisco for some “work reason” that is stressful and new and different.

To find out what is really going on inside Riley’s head, we have to go inside her head. Heyy brain stuff! That is where her emotions live! Right when she popped out of the womb and opened her eyes, she giggled and laughed, because Joy (Amy Poehler) was her only worker. It was almost instantly followed by gloomy as fuck Sadness (Phyllis Smith). As she got older, she gained more emotions, including Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).

Together, working in harmony, they can make a fully functional girl. An honest girl, with friends, and family, and hockey, and a goofy side, all making up her core memories. They also work on putting her memories into long term and bring back appropriate memories when appropriate.

But with a half cross country move to a smaller house, no friends, no frozen lakes for hockey, whats a girl to do? Well, apparently have her emotions go all crazy and bad things start happening to her right when she needs them to work together the most. Of course!

And where the heck is her old imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind)? He is important, damn it!

“Bing Bong is dead now, sweetie, so eat your imitation Chinese food please.”

Did I mention how good Lava was? Five out of four stars. I want to buy a Blu-Ray with it on it, just so I can get a digital copy and watch it with ease wherever I go.

The good news is, Inside Out was also awesome! Given its subject matter, it should come to no surprise that my emotions were all over the place. Thankfully Anger didn’t really show up, but maybe I did have a little bit of Disgust and some Fear. But hey, the Sadness came into full fruition too. I cried three times during this screening. Once for Lava, twice for this movie. Using literal emotions, it did a fantastic job of controlling my own emotions to make it an overall wild ride.

The film starts out cute, gets happy, stays happy, then gets into the sadness/fear territory, but by the end, it returns you back to the cute/aww feels by the end. A perfect journey, basically. The voice actors did a wonderful job, Lewis Black and Mindy Kaling in particular felt perfect for their roles. And of course Phyllis Smith, a wonderful choice for Sadness, who I assume they also based her design around.

The “hero” of our story in young Riley is a nice change of pace. She is a normal girl and one that most people can probably relate to. Not to mention she plays Hockey, which I must again note plays a significant role in this film. Hockey is slowly creeping its way more and more into mainstream, and I thank Pixar for doing something different.

Last but not least, this movie is for everybody. There are plenty of jokes and fun parts for the kids, but also of course a lot of higher concepts for the adults out there. When dealing with the brain, you should be prepared to use yours, for at least a little bit.

Frozen, not to be confused with the survivor horror movie of the same name, is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios film since Wreck-It Ralph. You know, because Planes was made by a lesser Disney studio, not their main one.

It is also based on “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson, which explains why they gave they call this movie that over in Europe. Anderson is kind of a big deal over in Europe. I have only heard bits and pieces of “The Snow Queen,” so this film will be a complete surprise story wise for me!

LOOK. TWO WOMEN. TWO DISNEY PRINCESSES. SUCH MADNESS!

Frozen is about two sisters, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell), both princesses in their castle home. However, the sisters are quite different. Elsa, the eldest, was born with magical powers: the ability to make ice and snow from her hands! Anna is completely ordinary in the magic regard, but she has a big heart. Unfortunately, after an accident, Elsa is forced to remain hidden from the rest of the world, for they will not be able to understand her powers. This means she also is kept as a secret from her sister.

Years later, Elsa is set to officially become the Queen, meaning the Castle is opening its doors for one day only. Surely nothing can go amiss in a single, nice summer day?

Well, her secret rears its ugly head and she accidentally sets the city in eternal winter! During her escape to live in the mountains alone, she also accidentally traps all of the visiting ships in the fjord (first time used that word in a review) It is up to Anna to save her! And Hans (Santino Fontana), a prince she just met and totally got engaged to in a day, and Kristof (Jonathan Groff), an ice maker who lives alone with his reindeer Sven. And Olaf (Josh Gad). A magical snowman. Don’t worry about him.

There are also trolls! And an evil Duke (Alan Tudyk), which would be the third villain played/voiced in a row for Tudyk, after Wreck-It Ralph and 42.

I wonder if he is going to warm her icy heart with a cool island song?

It turns out that Frozen is basically a full-fledged musical! Hooray! It features eight unique songs (although the length of a couple are pretty short) and one amazing reprise of a song. Of course, like all Disney movies with singing, most of them are in the first half, with the second half left to just plot development and action.

I was also a bit worried that this movie would tease us like Disney did with Enchanted, by casting Menzel but not letting her actually sing a song. Thankfully, she got a solid 2ish songs overall (one full one, and two shared ones). Bell is given most of the singing work, and she really knocks it out of the park with her voice.

I was amazed at the world that was created for this movie, which showcased the beautiful snowy (and summery) landscapes that Finland/Norway had to offer. The ice effects from the Queen were gorgeous and really popped from the screen, but not in a gimmicky way.

Story wise, I don’t think this has actually anything to do with “The Snow Queen” tale that it is based on, so it is practically a new story that will seem fresh to audiences.

Frozen did have some annoyances. While watching, more and more characters seemed to be added to the adventure, knowing at least a few of them served just as a way to sell toys, but that is the way Disney works. The animation style for the human characters felt a bit off from the rest of animations in that everyone looked like a literal doll character. It was like an improved version of the style used in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse. Yes, I have seen an episode or two of that show for comparison sake.

Overall, I really enjoyed every other aspect of the story than the few parts I listed above. It does a great job of avoiding cliches. The film surprised me over and over as I couldn’t tell where the story was taking me.

Plus, this film isn’t about some man coming to save the day, it is about sisterly love in the face of adversary. Okay, well, I guess there are some male heroes still, but that is beside the point.

Frozen is the last animated movie of the year (unless you actually include Walking With Dinosaurs) and a must watch for people who enjoy happiness.

Hey now. Cars is pretty old. 2006? Yes, it goes way outside of my range of movies I normally review. But because Cars 2 comes out soon and I am reviewing it, I figure I might as well throw up the first one as well (since I just saw it). Also because it is old, I can do a more satirical review of it. Boom boom.

To start, this movie is about cars. The main character, voiced by Owen Wilson, is a race car. Yes, in this car-world, there are no humans. All the cars are alive. If they crash, they can get repaired. But that is about it. No where in this movie is there a dead car. They also have lots of roads and towns where they sell car things.
The movie goes back and forth with gas. It seems to both me something to drink when they are thirsty, and like actual gas, they just need it to run. Hmmm.

What is also weird about this world is that cars on their own pretty much make a NASCAR like event. Which, if you compare everything they do to humans (which I will), is kind of weird. It’d be like having 3 hour races for humans, where they’d just keep running, and taking food/drink beaks. Massages probably in the pit stop.

Owen Wilson is terrrrrrribad in this movie. So bad.

But he is so hot right now.

He has about two emotions, which I am realizing is true with his real movies. He always seems to speak in a calm relaxed way. Even his anxious or afraid voice he just seems to not be aware of the severity of the situation, just coasting by everything. And that is how the car talked. Despite being lost in California or somewhere, and in jail, and working hard labor in a town, he just never seems to really be too upset. In the ending of the movie, when he makes his race, and all of his new friends show up to be his pit crew, he says something like “Hey, you guys came.”

Now read that in the most laid back way possible. That is how it was said. Like, he seemed almost indifferent. He was just stating a fact, wasn’t happy or excited. Just eh.

But let us get to the most important point of the movie. This movie teaches kids something very very bad.

What you will do for the rest of your life is determined when you are born. (I would also like to note that they never go into cars being born. There is no car factory that they speak of, where, I assume, either machines or cars make more cars. Can you imagine a baby making factory for humans? Kind of creepy. Kind of Matrix-y). Now at these car factories, if they make you a tank, guess what, you will be fighting in wars I assume. If they make you into a cop car, you are sure as heck going to be a cop when you are older.

If you are a race car, you are probably going to do races. You can even gain money and get more upgrades and be a better race car (one with lights. He doesn’t have any in the movie, because, race cars don’t do things beside race and there are lights in the arena). But wait! The girl car gave up her life to help the town! Yes. A more well off car can decide to not live up to its potential and do what you wan’t, but just like real life, someone who was born (or CREATED) as a lesser or specific vehicle can only do that. All the pit crews are fork lifts. Fork lifts can only do pit crew like things. It becomes even more fucked up if you remember they were created. Someone decided to give life to an individual, specifically with specialized abilities to limit their life and force them down a specific path.

What the fuck.

Outside of the car factories there may as well be this guy just standing there.

“You’re all doooomed. Doomed I say. Doooomed. You’re allll doooomed.”

Its an okay movie, with bad messages for the youth. I’d rather live in a world (well, one with Humans) where I can make my own destiny thank you very much.