Pixar’s made movies for over two decades, and by now I’m really start to sea the difference between their older material and their new material. Continue reading
Tagged with pixar …
“‘Onward’: Pixar Takes A Step Backward In A Film Rife With Fantasy Clichés”
Onward, but not upward, or forward, just mostly backward. Continue reading
Why ‘Coco’ Feels Like an Act of Defiance
There is a part of me that loves Coco, the new Pixar film, for Coco, and a part of me that loves it for essentially being a big ol’ “eff you” to our president and his openly xenophobic, anti-immigrant ideology, which isn’t really an “ideology,” because let’s face it, Donald is not an ideological kind of … Continue reading
Stay Frosty Oscars: My Half-Assed Academy Awards Predictions
Fair warning: I really didn’t want to write this piece, and I’m doing it out of misguided obligation. Maybe I’m whining, but cut me some slack; I’ve already written about the #OscarsSoWhite fracas, and also contributed a handful of yadda yaddas to Paste Magazine’s annual Oscar preview (though I spend most of my yaddas turning my nose up at the … Continue reading
Review: The Good Dinosaur, 2015, dir. Peter Sohn
“When Pixar first arrived with 1995’s Toy Story, they fell into a steady release routine and reliably output a movie every one to three years. 2006 began the eight-year streak in which the animation giant dropped a new title every summer, all the way up to 2013’s Monsters University, which came out amid peak Pixar … Continue reading
INSIDE OUT & Pixar’s Philosophy of Melancholy
“Pixar’s Inside Out feels like a miracle for two reasons: deprivation and reclamation. Last year marked the first since 2005 that the studio failed to bless pop culture with new material. Leading up to that gap in their slate, though, Pixar’s status as an animation giant started a perilous downward spiral thanks to a surge … Continue reading
Review: Inside Out, 2015, dir. Peter Docter
The speed and immediacy of access we all enjoy courtesy of the Internet tends to breed knee-jerk thoughtlessness. As a result, we live in a non-complex world where a single strike against an established entity in the entertainment industry – a movie, a television show, a celebrity – is enough to declare it substantially bankrupt. Years … Continue reading
Review: Brave, 2012, dir. Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman
It’s no secret that I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Brave since 2009 (back when it still bore the superior title of The Bear and the Bow); it hits theaters today, and it turns out there’s bad news and good news. The bad news about Brave is that it’s lesser Pixar. The good news is that lesser Pixar is still magical, transporting, and beautiful. Continue reading
Happy Tartan Day, From Pixar!
Brave is still a couple of months away yet, but that just means it’s getting to that time where Pixar really ramps up its marketing for its latest film. By now you’ve all likely seen the trailers, the most recent of which prominently display the great King Fergus (Billy Connolly) in all his glory, including his … Continue reading
15 Films ACVF Is Excited About In 2012
In my book, 2011 has been a great year for movies. Good stuff has abounded throughout this particular revolution of the planet, both on the side of light lifting– Limitless, Paul, Cedar Rapids, Captain America— and in the realms of more substantial material, such as Drive, Weekend, The Tree of Life, and Win Win. Even … Continue reading
Princesses and Arrows: Pixar’s “Brave” Trailer
I always knew I’d end up revisiting the essay I wrote on Pixar and gender roles in 2009; it was always a matter of time. Their projected 2012 release, at the time titled The Bear and the Bow before the lauded studio cut the name down to Brave for those of us who appreciate brevity, caused something of … Continue reading
The Sky is Falling: Cars 2 and the Pixar Backlash
What happens when Pixar– animation giant, champions of quality kids’ movies, purveyors of heartfelt entertainment– releases a sequel to a film other than Toy Story? Apparently, and depending on who you talk to, an outcry across the Internet. Virtual rioting. Armageddon. Ragnarok. Götterdämmerung. Forty years of darkness, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and … Continue reading
The Cinematic Decade: My Top 25 of the 2000s (pt. 3)
Third verse, same as the first, Jackie is a punk, Judy is a runt. Entries 15-11, let’s go: 15. Up: The aughts have been pretty good years for Pixar– the studio has put out seven films in ten years, and of those films only one has displayed a poverty of creativity and wit (Cars), while … Continue reading
Gender In Pixar
Pixar’s 2009 3D animated feature, the truly excellent Up, follows an old man’s bid to see out his deceased wife’s wish of living atop a hidden valley located somewhere in South America; accompanying him on his journey is a Wilderness Scout seven decades his junior. Eventually, they meet a talking dog, a highly intelligent and … Continue reading
Up, 2009, dir. Pete Docter
I should note that the following kind of maybe sort of verges on vaguely spoiler-ish territory, so read with caution. Up is a movie loaded with impressive accomplishment from the first frame to the last. Perhaps it’s most noteworthy effect is making an hour and a half long film feel like a two hour movie … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 