The Disney Frontier Blog

I was able to catch Ratatouille Sunday afternoon. I was all ready to write a review of it when I read John’s review and felt he captured it perfectly. So instead of gushing about how good the story and characters were, I’ve decided to gush about the technology.

I remember walking away from A Bug’s Life in 1998, excited for a career in 3D animation. At that time, I couldn’t think of a cooler field that was on the verge of explosion. Pixar was doing things with 3D that blew every one else out of the water. But after seeing how bad the lab computers were at rendering 3D at my university, I changed fields. If the school couldn’t afford machines to train on, how was I ever going to.

Since my inspired moment after A Bug’s Life, things have only gotten better at Pixar. They went from toys to bugs to fish honing their 3D skills. Everyone knew that doing humans would be challenging and the few in Nemo were less than realistic. Then came the Incredibiles. Finally, believable human characters - still a little comic like, but that fit the story.

I won’t say the humans in Ratatouille are perfect. Skinner - the chef that takes over for Gusteau - is more than comical. But there are a few shots, like when they show the back of Colette’s head - that look so real. It makes me wonder if they will get to a point where their CGI will be indistinguishable from live action.

It looks like the next Pixar movie, Wall-E, may be less human oriented, but Up in 2009 will be about a seventysomething guy. I can’t wait to see what else is improved by then.

Brad Bird gives the introduction to a 9 minute preview of Ratatouille (it’s currently on the homepage but is likely to move later). This is reminiscent of the Cinderella 3 DVD preview. I wonder if this is going to be a regular marketing strategy for new films or maybe Disney is worried that Ratatouille isn’t going to be the hit they hoped?

As for the actual preview, I’m not sure. Pixar has made us love toys, fish, and cars. They’ll now have to convince us to love a Rat especially around food. I have faith in Pixar and it looks like this movie will glorify cooking - which would be awesome. I can’t think of any better activity than cooking with my kids.

[via Mousekingdom Blog]

The popular Pixar blog, Luxo, has posted a link to a very fun interactive advent calendar hosted off the Disney UK site. An advent calendar is one where you open a door a day until Christmas and behind each door is a little piece of candy, usually chocolate. This one has a sound bite from a Cars character behind each door.

If you haven’t read The Long Tail, you should. It’s a fascinating book on what I believe will dictate the future of economics especially on the Internet. Author Chris Anderson had a chance to sit down with a friend at Pixar and found an interesting fact. He found out that in 1995 it took two hours to render a frame from the movie Toy Story. Read his post to find out how long it took to render a frame from Cars.

[via The Disney Blog]

This is the movie poster for the new Pixar film Ratatouille. Ain’t it Cool News has a review of the new film (which does contain spoilers - read at your own risk).

[review via The Disney Blog]
[poster via Luxo]

Continuing on the impromptu Cars theme, here is a photo of a four door Holden decked out as Lighting. Apparently it is part of a DVD promotion going on in Australia. Read more here.

[via Naik's News]

Technorati Tags: Cars, Disney, Pixar

Lifted is a new Pixar Short set to debut in October. SlashFilm has the insight.

Luxo is pointing to Route 66 which is pointing to Tom Cochrane’s website which has his original video for the song, “Life is a Highway.” I’m ashamed to admit that I really liked the song back when it first came out. I’m glad its semi-cool now.

Via Vox Daily: “The voice cast was just announced recently, and the cast includes the voice talents of Patton Oswalt, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm and John Ratzenberger.”

Read more here

Disneygeek has some pictures posted from this last weekend of the Cars Meet and Greet in Disney’s California Adventure. I’m not sure how long they are going to have the Cars there but I would love to see them in person - the trip is in December and I am crossing my fingers they will still be there.

I should add that they made actual cars from the characters Lighting McQueen and Tow Mater. I believe in one of the video podcasts that Pixar put out about Cars before the movie was released, they showed the process of turning these characters into cars. If you have a chance, check it out.

The Disney Blog pointed me over to the Upcoming Pixar blog which has three videos, One is a pardy of the Pixar logo, two are interview type shows featuring John Lasseter.

I took the family to Cars on Saturday and it will be is another hit for Pixar. The movie is 1 hour and 57 minutes. The actual storyline is fairly common: a self absorbed star gets shown the virtues of caring about others and reforms by the end of the movie - timeless and consistently good. But add that storyline to the Pixar magic - especially Pixar magic directed by John Lasseter himself - and you have a block buster.

All the characters were great with the exception of Bonnie Hunt - the voice of Sally the Porche. She did a fabulous job there and I have no complaints with her voice acting. Its basically the simple fact that I knew who was doing the voice and I couldn’t picture her as a young sexy actresses to play opposite of Owen Wilson. The last role I knew her from is the mom from cheaper by the dozen.

I can’t wait to see it again. I can’t remember a Pixar movie that I saw in the theater that didn’t have me jazzed when I was leaving. This is no exception. Its too bad we will have to wait so long before it is out on DVD.

Technorati : Cars, Disney, Pixar

OK, maybe its not the real Radiator Springs, but this site does show a lot of the inspiration around the new Pixar movie that was released today. Makes ya want to take a drive down Route 66!

Technorati : Cars, Disney, Pixar

The new new Pixar flic Ratatouille (rat - a - tooie) will be about…you guessed it, Rats. There is a trailer up at apples website. Obviously this movies is a ways out (release date is Summer 2007) so the trailer is just an early teaser. It is directed by Brad Bird who directed The Incredibiles. Its interesting to note its still branded Disney and Pixar. I wonder if they will continue this approach or eventually kill the Pixar name.

Technorati : Brad Bird, Pixar, Ratatouille

Description via iTunes: “Footage from Dan Scanlon’s film 66. CARS story artists stop for dinner and Jonas Rivera attempts to eat a 72-ounce steak and shrimp.”

As part of the research for the movie Cars, Pixar employees drove parts of Route 66. This is a neat little story of one experience along the way.

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