Pixar's next film will dare to go into a confusing, scary and extraordinary place, the mind of an eleven year-old girl.
Inside Out is the story of young Riley, who moves with her family from the Midwest to San Francisco and encounters all the hectic mental turmoil that comes with having a major life change at that age. We get to see it all play out through the emotions that occupy her head: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). Although Joy is used to running the show, all her fellow emotions begin jockeying for position and control in the wake of all the change.
The film is directed by Pixar veteran Pete Doctor (Monsters, Inc., Up) and co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen. It opens in the U.S. on June 19, 2015.
Inside Out is a film I'm super excited to see. I already love the look and feel of the little bit we've gotten to see in the trailers. The color scheme is great and the Aerosmith track is perfect.
Leave it to Pixar to come up with a movie trailer that touches on all the nostalgia of their past movies before it hits you right in the feels...and then gets you excited for their most original-looking film in years. Welcome to Inside Out:
Pixar's journey into the mind of a young girl comes with an impressive voice cast: Amy Poehler as Joy, Bill Hader as Fear, Lewis Black as Anger, Mindy Kaling as Disgust and Phyllis Smith as Sadness. It's directed by Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up). Inside Out opens in U.S. theaters on June 19, 2015. This is definitely one to look forward to.
One question though: Is using Aerosmith in the trailer a sign of a new mashup ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios? Pixar's Sweet Emotional Roller Coaster anyone? Anyone?
We've heard a little bit about Pixar's new film, Inside Out, opening in the U.S. on June 19, 2015. Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up) will direct this whimsical journey into a young girl's mind where all her emotions play out: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). There's considerable talent attached to this project--and it's an original project, not a sequel. I am seriously excited about this film.
What we haven't heard as much about yet is the short film that will precede Inside Out in theaters. Disney/Pixar has now confirmed it's called Lava, it will be set on a volcanic tropical island, and it will be a "musical love story that takes place over millions of years."
I'm intrigued.
Here's the poster for Lava. Note the erupting volcano. Note the playfully paired up sea and air creatures. This one looks fun.
Lava will be directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren.
Five years ago, Disney released the first Pixar Short Films Collection on home video. It was a seminal compilation of Pixar's early cartoons, starting with John Lasseter's breakthrough experiments in computer animation from the mid-1980s, The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. and Luxo Jr. This 13-film collection also included the Academy Award winners Tin Toy (1988), Geri's Game (1998) and For the Birds (2001), all films that would be the proving ground for up-and-coming animators (including Lasseter) as Pixar made its inevitable plunge into feature films. On this single DVD, you could witness the growth of computer animation in leaps and bounds as movement, texture and complexity improved dramatically with each short film.
On Tuesday, Disney will release the Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2, and while you won't see quite the evolution of technology you witnessed in Volume 1, you will get a dozen entertaining tales, because the one constant in any Pixar creation is story. Even when computer animation was limited to anthropomorphic desk lamps, unicycles and windup toys, it's always been Pixar's gift to inject a good deal of heart, humor and humanity into its characters.
Tops among the Volume 2 entries is Day & Night (2010), director Teddy Newton's incredibly clever look at what happens when the keepers of light and darkness meet. First, they're overcome with suspicion and jealousy, but with time they learn to appreciate each other's differences with a sense of adventure, fun and common purpose.
Also notable are La Luna (2011), a gentle, dreamy fable about a boy who learns the business of tending to moonlight and falling stars from his father and grandfather, and Presto (2008), the story of a magician who learns there are repercussions when you don't properly feed the rabbit in your hat. I particularly enjoyed Presto for its frenetic silliness reminiscent of 1940s-era Warner Bros. cartoons. The gags come fast and furious as Alec the bunny uses his boss's magic against him to acquire the tasty carrot he craves.
Presto
For Toy Story fans, the Volume 2 collection also includes the "Toy Story Toon" shorts Hawaiian Vacation and Small Fry.
Small Fry
John Lasseter accepts his 1979 Student
Academy Award from actress Quinn
Cummings for Lady and the Lamp.
Now, if you're a collector of Pixar DVDs and Blu-rays, there's a very good chance you have all the short films in this collection already. They can all be found scattered among the bonus features in Pixar's home video releases over the past five years (La Luna is included in the Brave Blu-ray, also available this week). That said, the reason to get this disc is for the bonus features, which include the early student work of Pixar directing icons John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars), Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) and Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up). It's fun to see how their short film projects at CalArts informed (and still inform) their work decades later. Lasseter's Nitemare, about a little boy confronting the monsters in his bedroom at night, is a direct precursor to Monsters, Inc. and the upcoming Monsters University. Likewise, his film Lady and the Lamp (for which he won a Student Academy Award in 1979) would influence Toy Story and Cars in its ability to bring inanimate objects to life.
My favorite of the student films is Stanton's Somewhere in the Arctic, a simply animated (Stanton acknowledges he was one of the weaker animators in his group at CalArts) bit of silliness about a savvy polar bear who outwits a trio of high-strung hunters. Like Presto, it has a Warner Bros. sensibility to it with its use of random, non-sequitur jokes (where does a polar bear find a boombox anyway?). It's fun to watch and, as Stanton points out in his introduction, it's a reminder of how an audience will let a film maker get away with shortcuts in animation as long as there's a good story.
For all of Pixar's technological accomplishments in animation, the greatest strength of its creative people has always been their ability to tell a story. As the Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2 demonstrates, even before they ventured beyond the walls of CalArts, Lasseter, Stanton and Docter had that gift.
Disney/Pixar guru John Lasseter says, "Along with the humor, you have to have heart. Walt Disney always said, 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' I believe in that."
If ever there was a movie that captured that mantra, it's Pixar's tenth animated feature "Up," opening nationwide today.
"Up" introduces us to Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner, perfectly grouchy), an elderly curmudgeon who sets his home aloft with thousands of balloons to escape a dreaded future in a retirement community and to fulfill a lifelong promise to his late wife. He's unexpectedly joined on his adventure by Russell (Jordan Nagai), an 8-year old Junior Wilderness Explorer with dozens of merit badges, but not a whole lot of skill. Their travels take them to the jungles of South America where they encounter a long lost fellow adventurer, a pack of talking dogs and a rare exotic bird named Kevin. It's a funny and whimsical flight of fancy, full of action and derring-do, but it's also a touching look at human ambitions and relationships that proves life's destinations are never as important as its journeys.
Borrowing a page from "Wall-E," "Up" establishes this theme early in a sequence where not a word is spoken. It's a beautiful montage of Carl's romance with Ellie, the love of his life (and another spunky Pixar redhead in the mold of cowgirl Jessie and Mrs. Incredible). We learn their hopes and dreams, and experience the triumphs and tragedies of their lifetimes in a few brief minutes. Sentimental, but never saccharin, it showcases Pixar's and director Pete Docter's ("Monsters Inc.) gifts for conveying deep emotion in the simplest human terms. It makes Carl less a grumpy old man that annoys you and more a misunderstood hero you root for. By the time Carl launches himself skyward and gives the raspberry to a community ready to push him aside, you want him to get back his spirit of adventure and realize the dreams he didn't even know he had.
Once again, Pixar's animation is a sight to behold, even as they move away from the photo realistic styles of "Ratatouille" and "Wall-E" and embrace a more simplistic, cartoony look. Carl is a collection of boxy shapes that suggests an older Spencer Tracy, while Russell is pretty much an egg with short, stumpy legs wrapped in a scout uniform. The South American jungles and mesas they visit are lusciously rendered, but unlike "Ratatouille" and "Cars," they never overpower "Up's" fun and tender story.
And then there's the balloons. How many do you think it would actually take to carry a house to South America?
Steve May, supervising technical director figures, well, a lot. "We're not physicists," he says. "But one of our technical directors calculated that it would take on the order of 20 to 30 million balloons to actually lift Carl's house. We ended up using 10,297 for most of the floating scenes, and 20,622 when it actually lifts off."
That's 20,622 balloons, each with their own strings that react to the external forces in the movie (wind, gravity) and to each other. It's a credit to the animators that as unlikely as it is for a house to be carried off by a massive number of balloons, it somehow looks real and totally natural. We should all own that many helium tanks.
But, that's just the technical approach to the movie. As the best of Disney and Pixar have always shown, it's that delicate balance of laughter and tears that truly makes the film. Docter understood that, even in "Up's" early development: "We came up with this image of a floating house held aloft by balloons, and it just seemed to capture what we were after in terms of escaping the world. We quickly realized that the world is really about relationships, and that's what Carl comes to discover."
