The Disney Frontier Blog

Slate.com has a great piece on Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibiles and Ratatouille. Mr. Bird obviously has very strong ethics and passion for what he believes in. Don’t forget to launch the slide show which has video clips from some of his past work.

Brad Bird, Ratatouille, and the art of directing animation. - By Josh Levin - Slate Magazine

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]

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]

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

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.

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