Progress City, U.S.A.

Despite all appearances, we haven’t packed up and moved out of town. Things have been pretty hectic in that pesky “real world” ; I don’t know how you crazy kids keep it up with your blogging and hula hoops and dungarees and what-not with your twenty-two skiddo and Stutz Bearcats and the sock hops and such…

Anyway, I wanted to drop in to offer congratulations to Brad Bird and company for Ratatouille’s Academy Award win last night. The film, nominated for five awards, won the Oscar for Best Animated Picture of the year. Frankly, I’m bewildered as to how it didn’t win for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, and I’m terribly disappointed that the brilliant Michael Giacchino didn’t win for Best Score. Still, Best Animated Film isn’t chump change and we wish Bird and co. the absolute best on his next project, 1906. See some of Bird’s Oscar comments here.

There’s been a great deal of news lately about various upcoming Disney and Pixar productions, what with this year’s release of WALL-E inching closer and the first hard news starting to leak out about Up and Toy Story 3. Rather than crank out a couple of posts a day with each small story - other sites are bound to have them up quicker anyway - they’re collected here en masse in case you’ve missed anything. I’ve also included a few stories concerning Ratatouille and its director Brad Bird, as they begin to reap the fruits of the end-of-year awards season.

Ratatouille

Aside from its Oscar nominations and other awards, Ratatouille has collected the Golden Tomato for best-reviewed wide release of the year from critic metasite Rotten Tomatoes. Director Brad Bird spoke to the website about the award and the film’s critical reception. Other honors the film has earned include an award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Animated Picture and nominations for awards from the Art Directors Guild for production design, the BAFTAs for Best Animated Film, the Producers Guild of America, and the American Cinema Editors for Best Editing (Darren Holmes).

In a series of interviews, Bird has spoken about his influences and demanded respect for animation writers, as well as describing the process behind the writing of Ratatouille’s screenplay.

Finally, as a neat little extra, Pixar artists have created a Little Golden Book featuring art from the short Your Friend, The Rat. The short, which premiered with the DVD release of Ratatouille, was directed by Pixar story man Jim Capobiano, who highlighted the creation of the film on his blog. The book features actual production art from the film and is available at Amazon.

WALL-E

Buzz for WALL-E continues to build as more information leaks out from the film. Musician Peter Gabriel has revealed on his website that he is writing music for the picture, while new images have been posted on /film and the Disney Reporter (shown here). I’ll speculate that the other robot in the stylized drawing is EVE, the futuristic robot with whom WALL-E falls in love. She can also be seen on the recently-revealed cover of The Art of WALL-E, shown below and available for pre-order at Amazon.

More merchandise is on the way; a few screenshots have been released for the tie-in videogame under development at THQ. The fan community has gotten in on the act, with a group dedicated to building their own real-world replicas of the titular robot. We’ve even seen the first WALL-E case mod.

Expect interest in the film to expand after its upcoming Super Bowl ad.

Up

Upcoming Pixar linked to the above image, as seen in the Disney animation exhibit at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s the first piece of character art released from the film depicting the protagonist, who has been described as a senior citizen who “travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon.” Reports say that the story is loosely modeled on the tale of Don Quixote, perhaps indicating that the hero is more imaginative than actually daring. Personally, the above picture strongly reminds me of Spencer Tracy in his later roles, such as Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? or Inherit the Wind.

Toy Story 3

Possibly the biggest story to come from this update is that not only will Toy Story 3 be produced in 3-D for its 2010 release, but it will be preceded to theaters by 3-D re-releases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. John Lasseter, Pixar co-head honcho and director of the first two films, will oversee their conversion to 3-D from the original data elements. Toy Story 3 is being directed by Lee Unkrich.

As the Variety article linked above points out, Disney is increasingly using 3-D technology to draw viewers to cinemas. What remains to be seen is whether this will prove a viable artistic tool or just another cyclical trend such as when 3-D surged in the 1950s and the late 1970s and early 1980s. Will the technology add anything besides gee-whiz factor to the new film, and especially the already existing films, or will it just be a gimmick? It’s estimated that the number of 3-D capable theaters nationwide will be in the thousands by the time of the film’s release; while I trust Pixar not to pull a Fozzie Bear (”cheap 3-D tricks?!”), it will be interesting to see how this plays out. The release schedule:

- Toy Story - October 2, 2009
- Toy Story 2 - February 12, 2010
- Toy Story 3 - June 18, 2010

This morning, the AMPAS announced this year’s Academy Award nominees. Ratatouille walked away with five nominations, including Best Animated Feature. Its competition in this category will be Sony’s Surf’s Up and Persepolis, the latter of which is considered to be Ratatouille’s strongest competitor. Many (including myself) have argued that Pixar’s film was worthy of inclusion in the Best Picture category, but the Academy’s bias against animated fare continues unabated. Sadly, the Best Animated Feature category looks to be a permanent ghetto for animated films and will prevent any animation, regardless of quality, from consideration for Best Picture.

On the positive side, the film did receive a nomination for Best Original Screenplay - a rarity for animated films. This looks to be the official “Makeup Prize to Brad Bird for Otherwise Ignoring His Brilliant Film Award”, as he was previously nominated for Best Screenplay for The Incredibles in 2005.

Congratulations are in order for Brad Bird and his team on the film, who have knocked another one out of the park despite the constant nattering of nabobs. Also worthy of congratulations are Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, who had three songs from Enchanted nominated for Best Original Song.

Ratatouille Nominations:

- Best Animated Feature Film of the Year - Brad Bird
- Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) - Michael Giacchino
- Achievement in Sound Editing - Randy Thom and Michael Silvers
- Achievement in Sound Mixing - Randy Thom, Michael Semanick and Doc Kane
- Original Screenplay - Screenplay by Brad Bird; Story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird

Enchanted Nominations:

- “Happy Working Song” - Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
- “So Close” - Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
- “That’s How You Know” - Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz

Like most of the civilized world, you might have missed that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association released the list of this year’s Golden Globe winners today. Unable to produce their usual televised ceremony due to actors’ unwillingness to cross the WGA picket lines, the awards were announced during a press conference.

The point of all this is that Ratatouille was awarded Best Animated Film of the year, besting Bee Movie (oy) and The Simpsons Movie. It’s just the most prominent in a series of awards for the best-reviewed movie of the year. Not bad for such a massive disappointment, eh JHM? Next up, Oscar… If there were any justice the film would be nominated for Best Picture but no doubt it will be relegated to the ghetto of Best Animated Picture. Nevertheless, the recognition is welcome and congratulations are in order for Brad Bird and crew.

This Tuesday, Ratatouille (subtitled for the lawyers out there: “A Disney-Pixar Presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios Film”) comes to home video. Since the movie came out this summer, more press has been devoted to the performance of the film at the box office and how it reflected on the Disney-Pixar merger than was written about the movie itself. This is a shame, as the movie itself is fantastic. While it certainly received a lot of love from critical circles, a typically clueless performance from Disney’s PR machine contributed to the film never reaching the level of awareness it deserved; Remy wound up getting lost in the flood of other, more crudely conceived ‘funny talking animal’ films that have come out in recent years.

Thankfully, good word of mouth kept the film going at the box office and it is currently expected to break Pixar records overseas. The little film with a troubled development process found its audience and, as of this writing at least, is my favorite of Pixar’s films.

Sadly, the impending DVD release follows recent trends by presenting discs short on extras. Pixar discs used to be the gold standard in the early days of DVD; these “super genius” editions presented hours of background material on each film’s development process. Starting with Cars, however, Pixar DVDs have become mostly featureless affairs. A recent column on Jim Hill Media speculates on the reasons for this, and while two-disc premium priced ‘Special Editions’ of these titles may be coming out in two to three years, for now we’re stuck with the bare bones versions.

Thankfully, we’re not completely left out in the cold. The crown jewel of the DVD is the new 11 minute short “Your Friend the Rat”. The short, directed by Jim Capobianco, is not only the longest in Pixar history, but as can be seen in these stills is the first to incorporate traditional 2-D animation, live action, and stop-motion animation. The film features rat protangonists Remy and Emile as they indoctrinate viewers into the world of the rat so as to improve inter-species relationships. According to Sci Fi Wire, Capobianco cites the work of Ward Kimball as well as midcentury educational films as influences on the short.

In other Ratatouille news, director Brad Bird has spoken to Sci Fi Wire about his pleasure with the film’s performance and the benefits of viewing it in the home theater. He also tells Movieweb about the creative process behind the film, the quality of Blu Ray and digital film presentation, and hints about his future plans. Finally, Ultimate Disney reviews the disc itself and, while I disagree with most of their review, it does give a rundown of features and presentation. If you haven’t seen this movie, you should. It’s fantastic. And while you’re at it, buy the score!

Buy the DVD — Buy the Blu Ray