Ratatouille

[Ben]

Eisner looks like a man that has just been told he's history by Dick Cook. Lasseter is pondering "hey, don't tell him yet!" while Bird is just happy for the news to be out.

Haha.

[Wonderlicious]

Okay, my caption...

Brad Bird: Ha! It's TweedleDum and TweedleDee, JL!
John Lasseter: I take it that TweedleDum is referring to Eisner and his CEOing of the past few years, right?

[ShyViolet]

I just thought it was a very, very strange picture. You don't find pics like that unless you really look for them....

(Actually, ANY picture that has Eisner and Katzenberg together is even weirder...but those are, of course, pretty old, even rarer and MUCH harder to find. There are a few on wireimage.com but you have to pay them $70 a month just to get access. )

This isn't the first time their designs have had a muppets look to them - remember Monsters Inc.?

Yeah, and even funnier, Frank Oz, head Muppet, did a voice for Randall's assistant witht the 3 eyes! (I forgot his name)


Oh, and another thing about Ratatouille: here's an early opinion from Mr. Fun on AnimationNation (or Floyd Norman as most people know him)

Perhaps Brad can consider a sequel after he finishes his chores on "Ratatouille."

By the way, "Ratatouille" was screened yesterday at Disney. The movie looks darn good. The Pixar streak continues.

Also, here's an interesting little "insight" on Brad Bird's personality: (from "Intergalactic", posted today)

posted October 01, 2006 12:31 PM
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My buddy was at one of ASIFA screenings for The Incredibles, originally Brad was to be on hand at the first one but something came up so they actually did an additional re-screening that Brad was able to attend.

I think Brad Bird is a great guy and I've had the opportunity to meet him and talk, he's full of energy and has a great out look for the art of animation.

Well here's what happened to my buddy, he had his hand up for who knows how long to ask Brad a question...a two parter.

One being "Hey are there going to be any out takes from The Incredibles, you know like we've seen in the past?".

And two "Is there a chance that we'll be seeing an Incredibles 2 anytime soon?".

Let me just say this...Brad ripped him a new one.

Mr. Bird is not a big fan of repeating what's already been done before, so he wasn't exactly a big fan of doing a "bloopers reel" or adding "out-takes", I myself thought that was getting a bit old anyways.

It was funny for a little while, the "Jack-Jack Attack" was a much nicer addition to the dvd.

As well...Brad isn't a big fan of potentially doing a sequel for The Incredibles, again this is based on my friends questioning.

Needless to say my buddy felt like a real jerk for even asking…

Although I personally would love to see Brad sit down and hash out another script for The Incredibles it's only going to be kick ass if he's the one in control of the script and the direction.

...i

[Meg]

Hee hee, I read that. Does that guy ever run of of energy?

[ShyViolet]

Let me just say this...Brad ripped him a new one.

I wonder what he said to the guy?

[ShyViolet]

Hey, it's Pixar....underwater!


http://features.cgsociety.org/stories/2 ... e_team.jpg

[Meg]

Ha! That's cute.

[ShyViolet]

Actually there was another poste added there that perhaps Brad MIGHT be open to make Inc. 2 after all.


http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/050228c.php


He probably just got mad at that guy because he asked a "fan question." You know--any sequels on the way? Any 'outtakes'? Any subtle references we may have missed? Etc...etc....Remember when he said on the Incredibles commentary: "If anyone asks me one more time: 'Isn't it awesome to work on an animated feature?' I'm gonna punch them!"

[Ben]

I understood a second Incredibles was in production when Bird took time out to complete Ratatouille?

I've also heard talk of a TV series. Guess we'll know soon enough.

[Macaluso]

I hated that there weren't any outtakes

[Dacey]

I understood a second Incredibles was in production when Bird took time out to complete Ratatouille?

I've also heard talk of a TV series. Guess we'll know soon enough.

OMG, that could be SO COOL!

I certainly hope that the sequel at least is true.

[ShyViolet]

This is from Mike Barrier's site (I don't always agree with him, in fact, I usually don't, but I thought he says some interesting things here.)

He reflects on Cars, Lassetter vs. Bird, and what this might mean for Ratatouille.

Chick Hicks wins the Piston Cup, thanks to his attack on The King and Lightning's baffling self-sacrifice. Cars asks us to believe that race fans and corporate sponsors would turn their backs on Hicks despite his victory. On the film's own terms—that is, its presentation of Hicks's assaults as a naughty but acceptable way to conduct oneself on the track—such an outcome is simply not plausible. Here again, there's a discrepancy between Cars' message and what it shows us on the screen: the coarse, seductive glamour and razzle-dazzle of the world of professional stock-car racing. The inhabitants of that world might hesitate for a moment before cheering Chick Hicks, but cheer him they would. In stock-car racing, as with big-budget Hollywood movies, winning is what matters.

In Cars, however, Lasseter and his colleagues ask their audience to embrace the idea that winning isn't everything, that friendship and fellowship—which the Pixar people evidently enjoy in abdundance—count for a lot more. Should we believe, then, that Cars' box-office performance its first weekend was a matter of indifference at Emeryville? Cars finished behind the first-weekend figures for both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, grossing about $60 million (not the $62.8 million originally reported) versus more than $70 million for each of the earlier films. The reviews—the more thoughtful reviews, in particular, as opposed to the reviews written on autopilot—have been surprisingly skeptical. Cars will turn a profit, no doubt, but the seeds of future failure have been sown in the nagging disappointment that many people will feel, especially in the weak closing minutes.

Cars opened just after the consummation of Disney's $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar. I have to wonder if Pixar's new proprietors in Burbank are still thrilled with their purchase—especially when they remember that Robert Iger's much-reviled predecessor as CEO, Michael Eisner, resisted paying so much.

Shortly before Cars' release, Premiere magazine named Lasseter and Steve Jobs, his boss at Pixar and now a board member at Disney, as the most powerful people in Hollywood. Lasseter was hailed repeatedly, when the Disney deal was announced and in the months afterward, as a new Walt Disney. Lasseter has presided over seven successful animated features, a string that Disney never matched; but Walt was far more ambitious than Lasseter has proved to be. Lasseter, shunning the difficulties of animating human characters, has settled for making children's films filled with toys and bugs and fish and automobiles—each film more technically sophisticated than the last, but each increasingly questionable as a story. The Lasseter who made Cars most resembles the Walt Disney who toward the end of his life made sentimental live-action wallows like Follow Me, Boys! and The Happiest Millionaire.

One Pixar film stands apart from the rest: The Incredibles (2004), directed by Brad Bird and far more Bird's film than Lasseter's. There is in it none of Lasseter's sentimentality; there is instead much greater risk-taking, in the animation of its human characters especially. A trailer for a Bird-directed effort called Ratatouille, the next Pixar features, precedes the theatrical showings of Cars. Ratatouille is, I gather, a project dropped into Bird's lap after other people struggled with it. I found the trailer ominous. The title character is a rat, living in a Parisian restaurant, and the trailer shows him sampling a cheese cart, to the justified horror of diners and server. Rats have almost never been made into cartoon characters; they're filthy, disgusting animals, and people recoil from them for good reason. In the trailer, another rat advises Ratatouille to suppress the "gag reflex" so he can eat any disgusting thing, as the second rat is cheerfully doing. Will audiences have to suppress the "gag reflex" to sit through the film? Perhaps Lasseter should have hired John Kricfalusi to direct it. Maybe Bird will surprise me—The Incredibles was much better than I expected it to be—but with Ratatouille he is working with far more suspect material. Of one thing we can be sure: if before Ratatouille's release next year some Disney shill like Time's Richard Corliss starts hailing Bird as the new Walt Disney, we should save our money, stay home, and watch Dumbo again on DVD.

[Ben]

Good points, well made.

[Meg]

Rats have almost never been made into cartoon characters; they're filthy, disgusting animals, and people recoil from them for good reason.

WTF? Yes, they have. All the time, too.

[ShyViolet]

With all due respect I can't really think of anyone except Justin from Secret of Nimh (I'd probably put him under "sexiest cartoon characters" too! ...except maybe Templeton the Rat from Charlotte's Web (although he wasn't an especially nice character. Plus he also eats garbadge.)

What other characters are there? Just out of curiousity. For some reason I'm drawing a blank.

(Well, there's also Ratty from the Wind in the Willows Feature, but all these rat characters are taken directly from children's books, so they already have a background for them.)

some Disney shill like Time's Richard Corliss

He forgot about Leonard Maltin!