Pixar Announces Up, Newt, The Bear and the Bow and Cars 2
Big news on the Disney/Pixar front, the mouse house has revealed Pixar’s future animation slate:
May 29th 2009: From the Academy Award®-nominated team of director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and co-director Bob Peterson comes Up, a comedic adventure taking off (and lifting spirits). Here is a brand new plot synopsis direct from the studio: Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life. Up takes audiences on a thrilling journey where the unlikely pair encounter wild terrain, unexpected villains and jungle creatures. When seeking adventure next summer – look Up. Christopher Plummer voices the villian. Up will be released in Disney Digital 3-D™.
October 2nd, 2009: TOY STORY in 3-D
February 12th, 2010: TOY STORY 2 in 3-D
June 18th, 2010: The creators of the beloved Toy Story films re-open the toy box and bring moviegoers back to the delightful world of Woody, Buzz and our favorite gang of toy characters in Toy Story 3. All we know is that Andy grows up and is leaving for college. Lee Unkrich, co-director of Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo) directs this highly anticipated film, and Michael Arndt, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, brings his unique talents and comedic sensibilities to the proceedings. The voice talent confirmed includes: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, Estelle Harris, John Ratzenberger, Ned Beatty. Composer Randy Newman returns.
Summer 2011: newt marks the directing debut of multiple Academy Award winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who made his Pixar debut with the short film Lifted, which premiered in front of Ratatouille. What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other? Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science. Will be released in Disney Digital 3-D™.
Christmas 2011: The Bear and the Bow is Pixar’s first fairy tale, from acclaimed filmmaker/writer Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt). Chapman began as an additional animation artist on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and contributed story for The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fantasia 2000, Chicken Run and Cars. A rugged and mythic Scotland is the setting for Pixar’s action-adventure “The Bear and the Bow.” The impetuous, tangle-haired Merida, though a daughter of royalty, would prefer to make her mark as a great archer. A clash of wills with her mother compels Merida to make a reckless choice, which unleashes unintended peril on her father’s kingdom and her mother’s life. Merida struggles with the unpredictable forces of nature, magic and a dark, ancient curse to set things right. Director Brenda Chapman and the storytelling wizards of Pixar conjure humor, fantasy and excitement in this rich Highland tale. Will be released in Disney Digital 3-D™.
2012: Cars 2 will be directed by Brad Lewis, the producer of Ratatouille and Antz. All the world’s a racetrack as racing superstar Lightning McQueen zooms back into action, with his best friend Mater in tow, to take on the globe’s fastest and finest in this thrilling high-octane new installment of the “Cars” saga. Mater and McQueen will need their passports as they find themselves in a new world of intrigue, thrills and fast-paced comedic escapades around the globe. Will be released in Disney Digital 3-D™.
The big news is that all of the announced future Pixar releases will get the Digital Disney 3-D treatment. I remember the days when Brad Bird was preaching that Pixar would only do 3D if it complimented the story. But I understand that 3D is the newest trend, and the result is bigger box office, so Pixar must go with the flow. I just wonder if Pixar would have made this choice if they weren’t owned by Disney. Bird also said that Sequels aren’t in the Pixar business plan and they also just announced Cars 2, the second sequel to be released by the studio in the next four years. The other big news is that it appears that Pixar will now be taking on two films per year starting in 2009. I hope this doesn’t result in a loss of quality. The Bear and the Bow and Newt sound, at least on the surface, more like films that Disney would make. But We’ll have to wait and see.
SXSW Movie Review: Choke
After watching Choke, an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s (Survivor, Fight Club) novel directed by Clark Gregg, the words vulgar, crude, profane, blasphemous, obscene, and, best of all, hilarious, all come to mind. A sharp critique aimed at our self-centered, self-absorbed culture, with a few digs at group therapy, psychiatry, and dysfunctional parenting, Choke is the kind of film that can be only made outside the Hollywood system, then gets picked up by a Hollywood-based distributor after it becomes a hit with festival audiences and critics, as Choke did at the Sundance Film Festival two months ago. Choke was picked up by Fox Searchlight, with a released planned for late August, a lucky month for them (Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine were both released in August).
Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has a problem, actually many, many problems. Victor numbs himself with meaningless sex with a random assortment of women, young, middle-aged, beautiful, and not-beautiful, then shows up for his weekly group therapy for sex addicts. When he’s not pursuing women with his fellow sex addict and best friend, Denny (Brad William Henke), he’s working as a “historical interpreter” (i.e., tour guide) at a Colonial-era amusement park. Frequent run-ins with his boss, Lord High Charlie (Clark Gregg), who takes the Colonial experience far too seriously, don’t help much. Worse, Victor’s mother, Ida (Anjelica Huston), a former grifter who made Victor’s life extremely difficult, has been hospitalized with Dementia and the prognosis is far from good.
To cover the costs of the expensive private facility that’s caring for his mother, Victor runs a scam on unsuspecting restaurant patrons: he chokes on food, hoping one of them, preferably someone with money and a conscience will “save” him. Once they save him, he has them on the hook, frequently contacting them with requests for money to pay his bills or cover fictitious medical procedures (money he dutifully sends to the private hospital). Everything changes for Victor (as it should) when he meets Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), a seemingly brilliant doctor who suggests a novel, experimental procedure for saving Ida from Alzheimer’s and dying prematurely. And that’s all before an out-of-left-field twist about Victor’s paternal identity presents itself, upending Victor’s views of who he is and who he wants to be.
If you’ve read or seen the film adaptation of Fight Club, then Choke is more of the same: sharp social and cultural critique delivered through scabrous, scatological, offensive, outrageous humor, all in service of whatever themes Palahniuk wants to express. Not surprisingly for a novelist for whose work pushes boundaries hard, adaptations of his work run the risk of appealing to only a small segment of moviegoers or a larger segment, but only if the adapters water it down it considerably. The latter happened here, at least where the ending is concerned (expect something wholly different from the novel). The new ending fits the film adaptation, but it veers far from the novel’s Old Testament-style ending. But that’s a minor problem for Palahniuk’s fans (or it should be) and a non-problem for moviegoers new to Palahniuk’s novels or Fight Club (all five of you).
Unfortunately, Choke has none of Fight Club’s hyperactive visual style. Gregg doesn’t have David Fincher’s (Zodiac, Panic Room, Se7en) talent or skill as a director, but he also didn’t have Fight Club’s budget or Brad Pitt/Ed Norton-level stars. What Gregg does have, though, is a talented cast in the always underrated Sam Rockwell, excellent here as the emotionally damaged, amoral sex addict/con man Victor, Angelica Huston as his grifter mother, sweet and loving one moment, emotionally manipulative the next, Kelly McDonald, a Scottish actress memorable in No Country for Old Men who’s just as good here showing solid range, and Brad William Henke as Victor’s best friend and fellow screw-up/sex addict, who does the big man/wounded vulnerability bit convincingly.
Toy Story 3 Plot Revealed
The Wall Street Journal has revealed the plot for Toy Story 3:
“Woody the cowboy and his toy-box friends are dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, leaves for college.”
Lee Unkrich, who has been co-director on Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, and Finding Nemo, stepped up to helm the third film in the series. Michael Arndt, the Academy Award nominated scribe of Little Miss Sunshine, wrote the screenplay.
Before the Disney/Pixar merger, the mouse house was hard at work on a third Toy Story film without Pixar’s involvement. Disney’s plot idea involved a recall of Buzz Lightyear toys, which includes Andy’s doll, which results in the Toys going on an adventure to Taiwan to rescue Buzz, who has been malfunctioning. John Lasseter and company were very unhappy with the idea, and didn’t approve.
The new plot line sounds interesting, but am I the only one who liked the logline for Disney’s Recalled story? (Note: I heard the actual treatment was horrible, but the idea itself sounds pretty cool). Either way I have faith in whatever Pixar comes up with.
Disney will be rereleasing new Disney Digital 3-D versions of Toy Story on October 2nd, 2009, and Toy Story 2 on February 12th, 2010. Toy Story 3 is being produced as a 3-D movie, and will hit theaters on June 18th, 2010.
Discuss: What do you think of the “Day-Care Center” storyline compared to the scrapped Disney “recall” storyline?
Fox Searchlight Buys Choke for $5 Million!
In my review of Clark Gregg’s adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke (which was posted just minutes ago), I nervously wrote a plea to distributors, hoping that this film would get the big screen release that it deserves. Choke is not an easy film to market. It contains a lot of nudity and sex, and most distributors might not want to be associated with a Da Vinci Code-esque controversial subplot. Well good news Palahniuk fans, Choke was purchased for $5 million by…
Fox Searchight!!!!!
Fox Searchlight is by far my favorite studio in terms in independent releases. Searchlight knows how to market a little film, and they know how to execute the platform release. Searchlight is the company behind the success of Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State, Once, Napoleon Dynamite, Thank You For Smoking, and Sideways.
I’m in line to see the new Morgan Spurlock movie, than after I will be off to interview Chuck Palahnuik. So please check back for that interview later tonight or tomorrow.
Official Plot Synopsis: Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as in front of it with CHOKE, a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks.
Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted med-school dropout, keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private mental hospital by working days as a historical reenactor. At night he runs a scam where he deliberately chokes in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid moment, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor must enlist the aid of his best friend, Denny, a recovering chronic masturbator, and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve this mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.
Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Chuck Palahniuk, CHOKE tickles the funny bone as it dives into darker areas of human behavior. At the heart of the film is yet another staggering performance by Sam Rockwell as Victor. He fully inhabits the character and nails both the comedic and dramatic aspects with indelible timing and delivery. A delicious blend of fresh writing, juicy performances, and sharp directing, CHOKE is actually quite easy to swallow.