Progress City, U.S.A.

Well, the big day is here and WALL-E is opening on thousands of screens across the country. There’s little I can say here to meaningfully elaborate on the excitement over the new Pixar feature or to underscore the breathless reviews the film has been getting. Adding to the excitement is the fact that we’ll be getting our first real look at the long in gestation Walt Disney Animation Studios film Bolt (unless you watch it online now). Wrap it all up with a new Pixar animated short, Presto, and we’re good to go.

And if that wasn’t enough, ladies and gentlemen, the fine folks at 2719 Hyperion and Imaginerding are holding an inaugural North Carolina Disney Blog conclave to view the film tomorrow, June 28th, in High Point, N.C. I’ve often been bewildered by the sheer density of Disney bloggers in North Carolina, as we seem to threaten California and Florida in the rankings of per capita number of Disney blogs. Between barbeque, college basketball, and Disney blogging, we’ve got it covered. So it’s only fitting that great minds meet and enjoy a little Pixar excellence in the process.

See you at the theatre…

Seriously. I’m so freaking excited about this.

…or at least last weekend.

Due to a bit of uncharacteristic good luck, a trip back home last weekend led to a brush with Pixar. I had already decided to drive over to Winston-Salem when my BFF swingin’ Teddi Barra rang me up with the news that Pixar staffer David Park would be a featured speaker at the Reynolda Film Festival. Park was the Art Department Coordinator for Ratatouille and is currently the Animation Department Coordinator for WALL-E. Needless to say, I was in.

After getting up early on Saturday, we met up and headed over to Wake Forest for the festival. While sadly I don’t have any good documentation of the presentation, as it didn’t seem savvy to be snapping tons of pictures in a dark auditorium, I thought that I’d bring it all up here in case you, dear reader, ever have a chance to attend one of these talks. If you have the chance, be sure and go - it’s well worth it.

Park led off with a discussion of Pixar itself - its campus and its culture. His presentation provided us with a brief history of the company’s creation and culminated with an audiovisual tour of its Emoryville, California, campus. Both the technical and artistic halves of the company were discussed, with accompanying pictures and anecdotes from Park’s own experience. Needless to say, Pixar is an amazing place and I will shamelessly solicit tour offers from any of my readers from the pixar.com domain. The tour of Pixar segued into a discussion of their core values which are well known amongst fans - the focus on story which is achieved through a constant, iterative process of collaboration.

To illustrate the process, Park walked us through the production of Ratatouille from its original concept to final rendering. While the actual animation process is not a mystery to any avid fan, it’s still fascinating to watch it play out from an insider’s perspective. Throughout the presentation, Park peppered his speech with little facts and stories from production that gave an insight that was missing in the film’s bare-bones DVD.

All in all, the presentation didn’t contain any earth-shattering revelations, but it was full of great art that I had never seen, and nice slice-of-life peeks into Pixar headquarters. It was highly enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone, regardless of their animation I.Q. One interesting tidbit: considering Pixar’s history of focusing on a new technological innovation in each new film, my companion Teddi asked Park what breakthroughs the company was introducing in WALL-E. Hedging a bit due to his NDA, Park said that all he could tell us was to watch how the camera moved. So - camera moves! Be prepared. I asked him what Pixar’s specific production contribution would be to its upcoming live-action co-productions (thinking of 1906 and hoping to get him to say something about John Carter of Mars), but Park said that it was too far out to know for sure about those issues.

So there you go, kids - my brush with Pixar. If their traveling roadshow ever comes to your town, be sure and catch it. I’ll now be quitting my job, packing my hobo sack and catching a boxcar to Emoryville. They can only pass me, sitting on the sidewalk outside the front gate, for so many days before someone lets me in, right?

John Lasseter and Disney Studios chief Dick Cook set animation fandom aflame yesterday when they hosted a presentation in New York City to detail the next five years of animated films from Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. The press conference was unusually detailed for the typically secretive world of animation - Cook pointed out that it was the first strictly animation-related presentation from Disney in more than a decade.

In all, ten new theatrical releases were announced. Scheduled to arrive in theaters twice annually, the slate includes four films from WDAS and six features from Pixar. Aside from 2011, when Pixar will release two films, Pixar films will arrive during the summer and Disney Animation productions during the holidays. In addition to the new films, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 will be re-released in 3-D. Also announced were four direct-to-video Tinkerbell films - one each for the next four years - from the overhauled DisneyToon Studios. The theatrical slate, in brief:

2008

WALL*E - Pixar Animation Studios, June 27th, 2008 - Directed by Finding Nemo’s Andrew Stanton, WALL*E is the last robot on Earth when he suddenly falls in love and goes on an adventure to save the world.

Bolt - Walt Disney Animation Studios, November 26th, 2008 - Directed by Chris Williams & Byron Howard and released in 3-D, Bolt follows a canine television star on a cross-country adventure where his on-camera superpowers neglect to translate into the real world.

2009

Up - Pixar Animation Studios, May 29th, 2009 - Also released in 3-D and directed by Pete Docter, Up is about an elderly man who is beginning to think that life has passed him by when he embarks on a perilous journey with an eight year old Wilderness Explorer.

Toy Story in 3-D - Pixar Animation Studios, October 2nd, 2009 - The original John Lasseter film has been converted to 3-D for its re-release.

The Princess and the Frog - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Christmas 2009 - The only traditionally animated feature on this list, and directed by Disney vets Ron Clements and John Musker, Princess reimagines the classic fairy tale in jazz-age New Orleans and features Disney’s first African-American princess.

2010

Toy Story 2 in 3-D - Pixar Animation Studios, February 12th, 2010 - John Lasseter’s first sequel has also been converted to 3-D for its re-release.

Toy Story 3 - Pixar Animation Studios, June 18th, 2010 - Produced in 3-D and directed by Lee Unkrich, the second Toy Story sequel follows the toys as Andy prepares to leave for college.

Rapunzel - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Christmas 2010 - Another 3-D release, this re-telling of the well-known fairy tale is directed by renowned Disney animator Glen Keane and Dean Wellins.

2011

newt - Pixar Animation Studios, Summer 2011 - First-time director Gary Rydstrom, previously a sound designer for Pixar and Lucasfilm, will bring us this 3-D film about two endangered newts who are brought together by scientists to repopulate their species - only they can’t stand each other.

The Bear and the Bow - Pixar Animation Studios, Holiday 2011 - Brenda Chapman becomes Pixar’s first female director with this Scottish tale of magic and fantasy. Produced in 3-D, the film tells of Merida, a Scottish princess who defies her parents and in turn endangers her father’s kingdom.

2012

Cars 2 - Pixar Animation Studios, Summer 2012 - Though long rumored, this film is perhaps the most surprising on the list. Pixar producer Brad Lewis will direct this 3-D sequel, in which our automotive protagonists embark on an adventure overseas.

King of the Elves - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Holiday 2012 - Surprising many, this film had been rumored since Disney optioned the Philip K. Dick story upon which it will be based. Directed by Aaron Blaise & Robert Walker, and produced in 3-D, this odd fantasy tale concerns “an average man living in the Mississippi Delta, whose reluctant actions to help a desperate band of elves leads them to name him their new king.”

We’ll be describing these films in greater detail in upcoming posts, but I have a few thoughts. First, I can’t help but notice that there is unfortunately only one traditionally animated film on the list. It had previously been hinted that Disney had another 2-D project in the works, but as this schedule is fairly crowded I can’t imagine it surfacing before 2013. That’s a long time to wait for some old-school animation, folks!

The release pattern is also interesting. Pixar gets what is assumed to be the plum summer timeslots, not to mention two releases in 2011. It’s also worth noting that all the Pixar films have single directors while all Disney films have two; while this is typical of traditional animation, does it indicate that Lasseter doesn’t yet have faith in Disney directors to have a singular artistic vision?

Troublesome to me is the fact that after WALL*E, all but the traditionally animated Princess are going to be released in “Disney Digital 3-D.” While Disney has been pushing this technology hard since Chicken Little in 2005 as a way to motivate families to choose theatrical releases over home video, I continue to worry that it will remain a gimmick and a fad while neglecting to service the story of the films whatsoever. It was an innovation driven by marketers rather than filmmakers, and despite Lasseter’s enthusiasm for the process I hope that traditional standard releases continue. Maybe I’m a fuddy-duddy (and at such an early age, too), but I’d rather enjoy the art of the animation without having to deal with all the artifacts of the 3-D process (not to mention that I don’t want to wear the sodding glasses either!).

Another interesting aspect of the announcement is how it fleshes out long-circulating rumors, such as the hints that Rydstrom and Chapman were going to be assigned features and the odd mention in one news article mentioning a new Scottish princess in the Disney pantheon. Yet it also brings up questions - where is John Carter of Mars? And while Brad Bird’s Pixar-produced live action 1906 isn’t mentioned, where the frak is Incredibles 2? Such a project has long been denied, but it’s widely asserted among fans that The Incredibles is far more worthy of a sequel than Cars. While Cars 2 is obviously timed to coincide with the opening of the new Carsland at California Adventure in 2011, and inspired by the huge marketing windfall that has followed the original film, one would hope that Pixar isn’t starting to pump out sequels just because of merchandising opportunities. Who cares? I just want Incredibles 2.

In any case, it’s a bold plan and shows the real confidence Disney now has in animation. This is a very ambitious slate, unmatched since the heyday of the 1990’s animation boom. Let’s hope they can just keep all those balls in the air this time around. The best news is that Disney and Pixar have a great mix of seasoned talent and new directors all working on a fairly unique series of concepts with the committed, hands-off support of management. Even the DisneyToons studio has abandoned the unwanted direct-to-video sequel market, with Cook promising more films on the way but only spinoffs or original concepts. It’s an exciting time, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store.

Well it seems that all sorts of shenanigans are afoot today. When it rains it pours, I suppose. The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Brad “Three for Three” Bird has signed to direct 1906, the long-rumored project that will mark Pixar’s first venture in the world of live action filmmaking.

The film, based on the 2005 novel by James Dalessandro, will be co-produced by Disney/Pixar and Warner Brothers. Bird will re-write the screenplay, the current draft of which was written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator and - uh oh - Star Trek: Nemesis. Just kidding, John - I blame Berman for that one). Says the Reporter:

The story centers on a college student who begins to investigate the murder of his father, uncovering a web of deceit that has left the city vulnerable to the sort of fire that breaks out when the Great Earthquake of 1906 hits San Francisco.

Bird had previously explained the draw of the story to the Reporter:

“At the time, Chinatown was coexisting with the Barbary Coast, which was like the Wild Wild West, and at the same time Nob Hill had the upper class. It was a time between two centuries. You had horses and cars existing simultaneously. It’s just a volatile mix of things and then you throw in an earthquake. I mean, come on, if that doesn’t buy popcorn …”

The project has been an open secret for quite some time, as Bird had been working on it for a few years before he was asked to take over the director’s chair on Ratatouille. After that Oscar-winning diversion, he has returned to work on what will be his first live-action film. We’ve not spoken much about it here, as details were vague on where exactly Bird would be making the film. This confusion was due to the fact that the book’s rights were owned by Warner Brothers; the solution, apparently, has been to make the film an odd Disney-Pixar-Warners co-production. This is especially ironic considering it was Warners that practically buried Bird’s brilliant The Iron Giant, thus depriving audiences of a chance to see one of the best animated films ever made.

It’s unknown where the film will be shot and what each studio’s contribution will be; it had been speculated previously that the film would be used to set up a live action division at Pixar that will also be necessary for Andrew Stanton’s John Carter of Mars.

In any case, this is the second exciting bit of news from Disney today and it’s great that Bird is finally getting a crack at live action. Bird is a true lover of film, and has often spoken about how unnecessary lines of demarcation have been drawn between the animation and live action communities. He has expressed a desire to move between types of media as the story demands, and it looks as if he’ll be getting a chance to do just that. It’s another big step for a brilliant director who is fighting the good fight to destroy artistic stereotypes and to allow a wider range of storytelling styles and themes in animation and film.