The Nominees:

“Braveheart” – Mel Gibson’s stirring epic would take home a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, perhaps deservedly. I know I’ll get crushed, but I don’t love it. Just my $.02; these types of historical epic action dramas aren’t my thing. I appreciate the movie more than I enjoy it. I never got the whole controversy, which painted the movie and Mel Gibson as homophobic. The supposed outrage felt completely inorganic, manufactured, and just plain phony.

—–

“Sense & Sensibility” – Never seen it. Look, there are people who don’t go see “Fast Five” one time, much less three times, and there are people like me who do. The people in the latter camp typically don’t watch movies like “Sense & Sensibility.”

“Apollo 13″ – Good movie that spawned the lamest catchphrase of the decade and made “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” a wee bit less challenging.

“Il Postino: The Postman” – I seem to recall it was the dark horse favorite to win Best Picture and the odds on favorite to make me throw up in my mouth. It didn’t win. And, whoa, I kinda liked it.

“Babe” – Seriously. No, really, seriously? A talking pig movie?

What should have been nominated: (more…)

Synopsis via Collider where you can see stills from the film — which debuts next summer:

Brave is set in the mystical Scottish Highlands, where Merida is the princess of a kingdom ruled by King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). An unruly daughter and an accomplished archer, Merida one day defies a sacred custom of the land and inadvertently brings turmoil to the kingdom. In an attempt to set things right, Merida seeks out an eccentric old Wise Woman (Julie Walters) and is granted an ill-fated wish. Also figuring into Merida’s quest — and serving as comic relief — are the kingdom’s three lords: the enormous Lord MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd), the surly Lord Macintosh (Craig Ferguson), and the disagreeable Lord Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane).

Huffpo is all excited over the element that means the least; the protagonist’s gender:

(more…)

[Ed. Note: After reading Charles' insightful and convincing defense of "Wall-E" I asked him if he would do the same with each Pixar film. Themes are what give a story its emotional center and heft and are always the most fascinating part of any film discussion.]

There’s a lesson in Toy Story for James Cameron: cool technology does not a story make. It is the story that makes a legacy and Toy Story tells the story of Andy’s toys. And what a story it is! Jealousy! Betrayal! Redemption! It’s heady stuff, but it’s the stuff of great stories. (I hope Hollywood took notes.)

As every child can tell you, the story of toys is as limitless as the imagination, but all children wonder, “just what sorts of lives do the toys lead when I’m not around?”

Pixar’s real genius, then, was to depict the toys in a novel way. They couldn’t lie flat like the cartoons (or is it ghosts?) of Disney past. They had to appear entirely real. They had to create the world anew and populate it with souls.

One of those souls is Woody (Tom Hanks), who is equal parts sheriff and cowboy. He corrals a community of toys – a neurotic dinosaur Rex, a cynical Piggy Bank, Bo Beep and her sheep, a barrel of monkeys – into a real community where he is their uncontested leader, strong and true. (more…)

Okay okay, Big Hollywood — and people all over the world — love Pixar.  I get it, I get it. But why is Hollywood missing it?!

It is obvious the studio honchos can’t quite fancy what gives Pixar the upper hand in churning out hit after hit, otherwise they would have bottled and sold it in mass quantities.  Here’s a hunch — Pixar’s success might have something to do with respect for the audience.

Toy Story 3 was again the week’s #1 movie topping new fare from Adam Sandler, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.  For well over a decade, Pixar has single-handedly delivered a new golden-age of animated film-making.  Just like it was thrilling to be a teenager growing up with Luke Skywalker, E.T. and Marty McFly, it is easy to see why today’s kids are electrified by Buzz Lightyear, The Incredibles and Wall-e.

But it’s worth considering that the original Toy Story never should have worked under the Hollywood studio executive orthodoxy.  In the early 1990’s, computer animated feature films did not exist, yet Disney took a risk to fund a group of PhD’s who swore they could make it work.  It wasn’t just the technology they believed in, but in the stories they could tell.  The animation was futuristic, but Pixar leader John Lasseter envisioned using it to tell a home-spun tale of a typical American boy and his best pal Woody, who happened to be a 1950’s era toy cowboy.  But… (more…)

When people criticize Big Hollywood for being too negative my response is always the same: So what? Shut your face. Which is to be expected when you’re surly and defensive and let the alcohol do the talking. But consider our position. We’re right-of-center folks exclusively covering an industry that declared all-out  ideological war on us over a decade ago. Not only do we have a lot of catching up to do, but we’re not in this to referee from the sidelines; we’re not in this to wring our hands and document our own demise.

We’re in this fight and we’re either gonna win it or go down swinging.

The Big Hollywood contributors are, however, very, very good at swarming with all kinds of love over the rare pop cultural oasis that manages to somehow get through the leftist propaganda machine that is Tinseltown. And over the course of the last fifteen years it’s become quite obvious that Pixar Animation Studios is far and away the largest oasis of them all.

Starting in 1995 with the first “Toy Story,” this incredible team of storytellers has consistently dazzled, enchanted, entertained and moved us in ways no other studio has since Hollywood’s Golden Age. Pixar’s track record of quality is nothing less than remarkable and that they’ve accomplished this with a series of films that only ever aim to elevate the human spirit is something we should all be grateful for. Especially parents. (more…)

The miracle of “Toy Story 3” is not that Pixar has done it again and created yet another animated masterpiece (they’ve spoiled us, we now expect this). It’s that 15 years after the original and 10 years after the first sequel, number three manages to somehow surpass what we all thought were unsurpassable predecessors. After all, how do you improve on perfection? But brimming with more imagination than any ten films put together, the continuing saga of Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and company, somehow does improve on perfection with an enchanting, heartfelt and exciting adventure that casts a spell from the opening Old West fantasy sequence, straight through to a memorable set of end-credits.

Andy, the boy who owns this now iconic set of toys, is all grown up. 17 and leaving for college, Andy has to decide what to do with the playthings of his childhood. Built to be loved and played with and already feeling neglected by an owner whose outgrown them, a series of simple and not-so-simple mix ups lands the increasingly neurotic and insecure contents of Andy’s toy box at a daycare center that at first glance appears to be a kind of Toy Heaven — a never-ending supply of children who will forever love and play with them.

But is it all too good to be true?

What gives this refreshingly simple, perfectly paced, and absolutely flawless story the kind of emotional depth that creeps up and catches you off guard, is a richly complicated theme that explores the struggle between the loyalty and faith required to slug ones way through the ups and downs of any relationship and the universal need and understandable desire for constant validation and affection. The toys feel, for lack of a better term, jilted. Andy’s moved on, grown a little bored with them, and now they live in that awful in-between world filled with the artificial highs that come with any sign things might go back to the way they were and the unavoidable lows that are a natural part of the insecurity that comes with the fear of being discarded. (more…)

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks Animation have definitively proven that Digital 3-D is a blockbuster format. Not only has Monsters vs. Aliens seized a monstrous $58.2M in opening weekend ticket sales, Real-D (the technology provider) and Dreamworks have revealed that $25M or so of that gross was generated specifically from 3-D and IMAX 3-D. Fox is reporting that fully 43% of the total take was from the estimated 2,218 Digital 3-D screens.

MONSTERS VS. ALIENS tore up the box office this weekend - especially in 3-D

That means that the Per Screen Average for the movie in 3-D was about $11,700, while the 4,800 or so traditional 35MM 2-D engagements had a Per Theatre of just an estimated $4,780. Exhibitors who figured out a way to overcome the credit crunch and pay the estimated $100,000 to convert a traditional theatre into one that can show Digital 3-D made a killing this weekend.

(more…)

Yesterday the Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper, ran a column accusing Pixar of the unforgivable crime of hypocrisy.

When it comes to Toy Story and WALL-E, the Guardian has a point. After all, any movie that preaches the evils of consumerism and, at the same time, expects its audience to snap up Buzz Lightyear and EVE dolls, has a serious case of split personality.

The problem is, the article lumped all Pixar films together. But there are notable exceptions: the movies of Brad Bird. He wrote and directed such classics of free expression as The Incredibles and Ratatouille. These movies celebrate individualism and, dare I say it, free markets. (more…)