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Posts Tagged ‘Pixar’

Elemental

Wednesday, February 7th, 2024

There was a period of about 25 years, it now occurs to me, when I had seen every Pixar movie in the theater. It wasn’t some corporate brand loyalty bullshit, it was because for most of that time their track record was immaculate. They were the originators of computer animated features, and of their brand of storytelling, and no one could match them, though many tried. For a while I watched most of their competitors too, then I didn’t, but I still kept up with Pixar. 21 of them in a row. To me only CARS 2 was genuinely bad. Otherwise the worst ones were just forgettable. And that wasn’t many of them.

It was the pandemic that broke my streak. I can’t remember if theaters were even open here when ONWARD came out, but I wasn’t going until the vaccine, so I saw it VOD or something. I enjoyed the clever stuff they did with the premise of a sword and sorcery fantasy world evolved into modern civilization, but the emotional part rang false to me. Since it was about a son mourning his father I really thought it would wreck me, but I was annoyed how both the main character and the movie completely ignored that his mother suffered the same or greater loss. Made me kinda hate the kid. (read the rest of this shit…)

notes on Toy Story 3

Friday, June 25th, 2010

tn_toystory3Live action filmatists, pick up the fuckin pace, please. I didn’t want to review TOY STORY 3. It is a cartoon about children’s toys. We all know by now that this Pixar company is the best at what they do. I already admitted that WALL-E touched me inappropriately in the heart, that UP made me cry like a bitch and that CARS made me wonder how talking cars make love. So it’s no surprise that I keep enjoying these Pixar movies. Everybody does. But nobody wants to hear what the guy who wrote the book about Steven Seagal thinks about Buzz Lightyear or whatever. It’s just not something I should have to do. There are plenty of movies starring ex-wrestlers or karate champions that I haven’t written about yet. But you live action directors are fuckin up this summer. You’re backing me into a corner. (read the rest of this shit…)

Up

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

tn_upWelcome to another episode of Vern’s Soft Side. In this episode, Vern cries at a fuckin cartoon.

Okay, short version first: just go see the fuckin thing. This review is gonna have spoilers in the sense that I’m gonna talk it up, you’re gonna go in expecting this or that based on what I said, it’s gonna get to your analytical mind and might fuck everything up. So don’t read this. Also disregard what I said above about crying, I would never cry, come on man let’s be serious here.

UP is the latest Pixar and somehow tops everything they’ve done before. For all the mediocrity and horribleness going on in our world today, we are lucky to live in the golden age of Pixar. Who knows how long their streak could last, but watching their movies now feels like watching PINOCCHIO and BAMBI and all those coming from the same group of people in a row. It’s just incredible, nobody else can match what they’re doing. (read the rest of this shit…)

WALL-E

Sunday, July 13th, 2008

By now you’ve heard of WALL-E. Lovable robot, etc.

I’m no cartoon fetishist, but I’m not blind. Pixar is America’s most consistently great studio, and on first glance this is probaly the best they’ve done so far. You never thought you’d see something like WALT DISNEY’S 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, but that’s what the first act of this feels like. This movie is deep. There is a poetically tragic beauty to it that has never been captured in any cartoon all the way from PINOCCHIO to BARBIE’S FAIRY MERMAID CASTLE 2 or even (arguably) OSMOSIS JONES. (read the rest of this shit…)

Cars

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

As you know I’m not one for the cartoons but somehow I ended up seeing this new one called CARS. What CARS is about is cars. However they are not any ordinary type of car like you’ve ever seen before, they are living cars. And when I say that I am not even talking about a Knight Rider or Herbie the Love Bug type of scenario here, I am talking about an entire society devoid of human life, but dominated by living, feeling cars with weird eyeballs on their windshields. They can make gestures and they can use their tires sort of like hands, and they have jobs, etc. Even the insects of this world are cars, but there are regular non-car plants.

These cars have not only created a civilization, but their civilization has been around long enough that the good old days are gone. The story is about Lightning McQueen, who is apparently not named after Steve McQueen despite his brave service to the cause of cars in LE MANS and BULLITT. Thanks alot, assholes. Lightning is a hotshot race car, basically a NASCAR star without a driver. Because he’s a stubborn egotistical asswipe of a car he fucks up and blows his huge lead making the big race a three way tie. One of the other racers is played by Michael Keaton but he looks like the Burt Reynolds of cars. Anyway Lightning has to go to California for another race and because he’s a celebrity he doesn’t even bother to drive there himself, he goes inside his friend, a Mack truck played by Cliff from Cheers. Basically, he is inside his friend’s ass, but you can’t completely blame him because the inside of his friend’s ass looks like some kind of luxury apartment. (read the rest of this shit…)

Toy Story 2

Friday, November 19th, 1999

Now correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Richard Pryor ALSO have a movie by the name of toy story. This was not one of mr. Pryor’s better pictures in my opinion, its the one where a rich white kid buys richard as a toy. He says “a big train set won’t do it for me dad, I need a famous black comic to degrade.” The basic type of humor is Richard falls in the water and runs around in fast speed while the piranhas bite him in the ass. This may have paved the way for many of the Sinbad pictures I’ve seen on cable however in MY opinion it still is not one of the high points in pryors career.

Well I guess you can tell that I’ve been out of the picture for a while because i never heard of this other toy story and here i thought this was going to be the new Richard Pryor. To be honest I promised some dudes over on alt.horror I was gonna review the End of Days this week, but I’m afraid I let them down. Arnold (who by the way I strongly suspect is a kraut despite his front as an all american restaranteur type dude) probably lifts weights as much as a lot of the guys inside. However what Richard has is a quick wit and ability to transform himself into a thousand characters, even animals or inanimated objects (he could have easily played an etchasketch or yoyo in this movie, and convincing as hell too). This is a funny motherfucker with some great fucking stories and even is attempting to go clean for quite a few years. In my new positive life it is this type of intelligent talents that I must value over the muscles. Arnold unfortunately is not a funny motherfucker judging by the 15 minutes of Jingle All of the Way I watched on tv tonight. That is got to be one of the worst executed pieces of comedy i have EVER fucking seen, even if you count the web sight Rob and Marge’s Laugh Central. Sorry arnold. Read a book.

Well as you probaly know by now if you’ve seen toy story 2, richard pryor isn’t in it at all. What this is is a VERY fucking strange story where the toys such as a cowboy doll and a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear come to life when your not looking. There is a fat dude who steals the cowboy doll. This is a dude who collects cowboys and when he gets all of them he’s going to sell them to a museum. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with this motherfucker he collects all this stuff and as far as I can tell doesn’t even like cowboys. He doesn’t have any cowboy toys in his house that he plans to keep and he doesn’t even wear boots or own a horse. In my opinion this is the same type of dude who runs the movie studios today, who likes money but not movies but maybe got fired from the bank or the US mint or wherever people who have a passion for money work. So he controls the movie studio from a little different perspective than any normal person with a beating heart who loves and enjoys the Cinema artform. (read the rest of this shit…)