Nobody starts with the origin stories. At least when I first fell in love with comic books, the lure wasn’t the story arcs of these individual heroes. It was in finding out about this whole world full of outsized characters, many of whom had decades worth of interconnecting storylines. When I’d pick up individual…
Pixar has been on the forefront of innovation pretty much since the company’s inception. With each new film that they produce, their animators take another step forward in terms of improving and streamlining their workflow to create a more naturalistic finished product. For their latest release, Incredibles 2, they…
A good trailer can really make or break a film. If that tightly edited two-minute clip does its job well, previously uninterested audiences may find themselves brimming with anticipation. On the other hand, a clunky or overly expository trailer may be the first of many flashing warning signs that read, “This movie you…
Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.
We’ve been getting increasingly strident hints for a while now that things were Not Good, re: sexism, at beloved animation studio Pixar. For one thing, there’s the numbers: Out of the 20 films the studio has produced during its lifespan, only one, 2012's Brave, featured a female director—and Brenda Chapman was…
Earlier this month, we reported that Walt Disney Animation and Pixar CCO John Lasster was finally—finally—stepping down from those two companies, just about seven months after numerous allegations of sexual harassment came out against him (including stories about prolonged hugs, unwanted touching and kissing, and…
It’s been a long road back to the big screen for the super-powered Parr family—14 years, to be precise. But if the box office receipts from Thursday night preview screenings of The Incredibles 2 are any indication, then perhaps it was for the best to build up a decade-plus of anticipation for the sequel. At least, if…
Early into Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2, Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) races down the gridlocked streets of a Space Age metropolis on a custom-built motorcycle: flinging the bike in and out of tight traffic, stretching her impossibly malleable limbs around the sleek surfaces of a runaway maglev train. One of several dazzling…
“What’s going on with John Lasseter?” remains an open question in Hollywood at the moment; the Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar CCO—whose work on Toy Story and Pixar’s other CGI charmers has been foundational for American animation over the last 20 years—took a mostly talked-around leave of absence last year…
John Lasseter, the co-founder of Pixar and chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation took a leave from those companies over allegations of harassment and misconduct, including (as one anonymous source put it) “grabbing, kissing, [and] making comments about physical attributes” of women at…
Years ago, the magic of selective editing enraptured the internet when some genius edited Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining into a comedy. This kind of cinephilic manipulation subsequently flooded the web, but nobody is doing it quite as well as YouTube channel Editing Is Everything, which routinely edits a single,…
Regardless of whether they went to see Pixar’s Coco for its thoughtful, beautifully-rendered yet overdue look at Mexican culture, moviegoers were required to be more patient than usual ahead of their feature screening. In addition to the commercials and coming distractions, Disney tacked on a short film that not only…
Rashida Jones and her writing partner, Will McCormack, have issued a statement tonight denying an allegation made by The Hollywood Reporter earlier today, refuting the claim that they left the creative team for Toy Story 4 because of an “unwanted advance” from John Lasseter. Lasseter—the chief creative officer for…
John Lasseter, co-founder of Pixar and chief creative officer for Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, is the latest high-profile Hollywood power player to take a leave of absence amid charges of sexual harassment—or, as he puts it, “unwanted hugs.” Lasseter uses that very Disney-esque phrase in a memo to his employees …
The afterlife imagined by Pixar’s new animated film Coco is a labyrinthine, luminous necropolis crisscrossed by string lights and papeles picados, a place both strange and all too familiar. Its currency is memory; its exit visas are family photos, without which the skeletal dead can’t cross the orange marigold-petal…
At the end of The Incredibles, having already defeated Jason Lee’s angsty villain, Mr. Incredible and the rest of his super-family suited up to take on a Mole Man-esque villain called The Underminer. According to Pixar’s John Lasseter at the D23 conference, Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 will pick up immediately after…
Despite previous reports that he’d be co-directing the film (after taking the third installment off) Pixar leader John Lasseter won’t be in the director’s chair for Toy Story 4. Variety reports that Lasseter broke the news to fans at Disney’s D23 expo today, revealing that he’s leaving the franchise’s fourth…
Pixar has announced its latest “almost, but not quite, like the real world” setting, treating fans at Disney’s D23 expo today to news of a film set in a “Suburban Fantasy World” containing “elves, sprites and pretty much anything that would be on the side of a van in the ’70s.”
June belongs to Pixar, usually. Just about every year, right around the official first day of summer (as opposed to the start of the summer movie season, which most recognize as the first weekend of May, even though “summer movies” now open year-round), the house that Woody and Buzz built releases another zippy and…
For years people on the internet have tried to explain the Pixar universe, from breaking down a chronological timeline of all the movies to explaining the ramifications of crashing sentient, oxygen-breathing automobiles into walls in Cars. So far no one from Pixar has confirmed or denied these claims, likely because…
