#when disney did a screening at pixar and i think it was pete docter who advised them to make the rabbit the main character

[squideo]

Squideo’s Favourites: WALL·E 🌱

Released in 2008 as Pixar Animation Studio’s ninth feature film, its third since the company was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2006, WALL·E had been in the works since the nineties. Created by Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter, this fast classic has become one of Pixar’s standout films. So much so that Disney pushed for an Academy Award Best Picture nomination.

Controversially, this wasn’t accepted by the judges but WALL·E did go on to win their Best Animated Feature prize, and also scooped it up at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Hugo Awards, People’s Choice Awards, Saturn Awards, and many more. It even scored two Grammys for Randy Newman and Peter Gabriel’s music performances.

We’re diving into the production behind this animated film, exploring the style and techniques which came together to create this compelling story.

Creating a Story

When Andrew Stanton first came up with the idea for WALL·E, the premise was simple: “what if mankind left Earth and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?” This was first pitched in 1994 when the young company was thinking about its future films, yet WALL·E wouldn’t start production until 2003 – eventually making it onto screens in 2008.

Stanton continued to develop the idea of a Robinson Crusoe robot with Pete Docter in the nineties, even as both went on to direct other Pixar projects – Finding Nemo (2003) and Monsters, Inc (2001) respectively. There was doubt, however, that this film could be pulled off. Pixar had created anthropomorphised robots before in its first animated short Luxo Jr. (1986). The lamp depicted in this short would become Pixar’s mascot, but was a feature film about a robot something that could be compellingly animated?

What helped to move WALL·E into production was the release of the massively successful Finding Nemo. Like robots, fish weren’t expressive. Like outer space, water was difficult to animate. And yet they pulled it off, releasing what became the highest-grossing animated feature film of all time up to that point and Pixar’s first Academy Award winner. Directed by Stanton, he now had the attention of the company who were eager to hear his next idea.

“WALL-E was a very conscious dive into risk. I knew nobody really wanted to make it. But I also knew nobody could say no to me because Nemo was just so big… we’d been so successful at that point that we could afford the hiccup. If we called it wrong economically or critically, we’d survive it.” Andrew Stanton

The film centred on two robots who only spoke when communicating their names and directives. The majority of WALL·E’s first half is largely free of dialogue, with the exception of live-action recordings from Hello, Dolly! (1969) and Buy n Large’s owner. Many robot characters only converse with chirps and beeps, and the only robot with full lines of dialogue is 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired villain Auto.

Key to getting WALL·E into production was the approval of Steve Jobs, who was Pixar’s primary investor and acted as their co-founder and chairman. Jobs split his time at Pixar with Apple where, in 2004, an exciting new product was announced to a select number of people: the development of the first iPhone. The developments at Apple ended up having a profound impact on WALL·E, with the team at Pixar receiving prototype phones before the general public. The film was punctuated throughout with Apple references, using the sound of the Mac boot-up chime when WALL·E finishes charging, and the iPod and iPhone inspiring EVE’s design.

The story is built on themes of environmentalism and global catastrophe, examining consumerism and complacency. One of Pixar and Disney’s most politically themed films, WALL·E attracted conservative criticism but that didn’t stop it from performing at the box office: grossing $532 million worldwide. Receiving widespread acclaim, WALL·E became the second Pixar feature film to be preserved by the National Film Registry and Library of Congress in 2021. In 2022, WALL·E also became Pixar’s first film selected by The Criterion Collection.

Animation Style

While other Pixar films typically generated between 50 and 75,000 storyboards for each production, WALL·E ended up with over 125,000 drawings and 96,000 storyboards. A lot of thought had to go into the character’s design, since their emotions would have to be conveyed physically rather than verbally.

“Robots are a huge challenge, because robots are function-based machines. When you’re drawing them, you can only make up so much stuff that doesn’t actually function, or the person looking at them, even if they’re not engineers themselves, they’re going to notice that that joint wouldn’t actually work. So it became important to look at actual robots. You can only make so much up out of your head.” Jason Dreamer

The team looked at a variety of robots, including those made for bomb disposal. For Jim Reardon, head of story for WALL•E, it was important that they didn’t “draw human-looking robots with arms, legs, heads and eyes, and have them talk. We wanted to take objects that you normally wouldn’t associate with having humanlike characteristics and see what we could get out of them through design and animation.”

To help, Stanton arranged film screenings of classic silent films from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to show how silent film actors told stories without reliance on dialogue.

To create the wasteland that WALL·E is left behind in, the animators looked at everything from local dumps to the abandoned city of Chernobyl. For the modern ship Axiom, they looked to Disneyland’s Tomorrowland and cruise ships. To design the human characters, they consulted with physiologist James Hicks to find out the effects of atrophy and prolonged weightlessness while living in space, proving that no detail was too small for the team behind WALL·E.

All of these considerations created a future that seems tangible, and helps to drive the importance of the film’s themes. WALL·E ends on an optimistic note, with Jim Capobianco’s end credits which show the evolution of humanity through different schools of art. For audiences facing the realities of climate change and environmental destruction, this confidence in the power of humanity to fix our world is the right ending. Perhaps explaining why it is one of the few Pixar films to receive no sequel or animated shorts. The story is perfect as it is.

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#wall e #pixar animation studios #disney pixar #pixar #andrew stanton #pete docter #randy newman #peter gabriel #luxo jr #finding nemo #steve jobs #apple #iphone #ipod #criterion collection #jim reardon #jason dreamer #jim capobianco #Youtube

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

TOY STORY 5, ZOOTOPIA 2, and FROZEN 3 Oh My!

So that's where we're at, huh?

Disney recently did an earnings call, where these surprise sequels are usually first announced. That's where, in 2014, we first heard of TOY STORY 4, CARS 3, and INCREDIBLES 2 all happening at Pixar... And in 2015, when they announced that FROZEN II was a thing happening at Walt Disney Animation Studios... Not-sequel animated features, they save for elsewhere: D23, announcements in the trades, etc.

Time for some unorganized thoughts!

TOY STORY 5...

Well, that's a real bomb drop right there...

Even though TOY STORY 4, at least to those who liked the film like I did, was arguably a firm conclusion to the story... Maybe it's a firm conclusion to Woody's story, much like how TOY STORY 3 was to the toys' lives in Andy's room... Maybe TOY STORY 5, following Buzz Lightyear and the Bonnie's room gang, will be about the end of *their* story? It feels kind of wrong to me... Especially since Don Rickles has not been with us since 2017. Mr. Potato Head's few lines in TOY STORY 4 were a pieced-together zombie performance from lines recorded for the first three movies... Either that, or they just follow Woody and Bo Peep as vagabond lost toys... Also, Estelle Harris, the voice of Mrs. Potato Head, is not with us. But, like... Honestly, how much longer can you stretch this? I would've preferred if LIGHTYEAR had done well and had gotten a small series of spacebound adventure movies. To me, that was the best way to continue this franchise without having to make another TOY STORY movie proper... But you can't have everything I suppose, haha. I'm surprised this is their next big sequel announcement, and not something like... Say... LUCA 2 or whatever. (Hey, it is a possibility.) Heck, at this point, A BUG'S LIFE 2 wouldn't be too farfetched. Pixar made sequels to movies where some of the cast had passed away (CARS with Paul Newman and George Carlin, TOY STORY 3 happened after Jim Varney's passing), so... they could possibly make that movie if they wanted to.

These announcements are usually vague anyways, so who knows... Maybe it's just 90 minutes of Ducky & Bunny. That would be funny. Key and Peele spearheading a wacky TOY STORY spin-off where they just kabitz and goof around, I mean... What else could they possibly spin off? They won't be doing a WOODY'S ROUNDUP-style Western, for sure. LIGHTYEAR lost money and proved to be divisive. So much to think about, so much to ask... Who is even directing/writing? Lee Unkrich retired, Pete Docter is CCO of Pixar and is likely too busy to direct this (he was already working on SOUL before he was named CCO, and that's likely the last film he'll direct), Josh Cooley isn't at Pixar either. Andrew Stanton is off trying to get live-action movies off the ground, but I assume he'll at least contribute to the story/script, ditto Docter... It's all so weird.

Capitalism, ya know? If characters are beloved and your latest sequel makes over a billion at the worldwide box office, you bet 'yer behind it's getting another installment. The wheels keep turning. STAR WARS went on without George Lucas, etc. Maybe a reinvention is in order? Whose to say we can't follow *other* toys that are alive in this setting? I haven't seen LOST OLLIE yet, but it shows there are other ways to tell the "toys come to life" kind of story in a post-TOY STORY age. TOY STORY 5 doesn't have to be about Woody or Buzz or anyone we've met in the series on screen over the past 28 years. What about the humans themselves? What's Andy up to as a college student? Where did Al McWhiggin pursue after he got his comeuppance at the end of TOY STORY 2? (There was a sketch made during the making of TOY STORY 3 indicating that the toys at one point would've visited Al's Toy Barn, now known as Hal's Toy Barn. Under new management.)

TOY STORY 5 would mark the second-ever American animated movie series to reach five mainline *theatrical* movies, not counting spin-offs. (DESPICABLE ME is at five, soon to be six. SHREK is at six because of the two PUSS IN BOOTS movies.) The first ever was ICE AGE, whose fifth installment, COLLISION COURSE, came out and made enough money in 2016. I think Disney, since they shuttered Blue Sky, will just keep that franchise going as a Disney+ thing. After all, that BUCK WILD movie exists. Back to the fifth mainline movies... SHREK will be next, whenever SHREK PLEADS THE FIFTH bows...

On the Walt Disney Animation Studios front, FROZEN III was always a given. What it could be about, I don't know. Anna and Elsa, similarly, went their separate ways at the end of the sequel... Though travel is a thing, so... Again, I don't know what to add. I quite enjoyed FROZEN II and felt it was an improvement over the original, so yeah... FROZEN III, do whatever. Makes coin, helps fund original movies, it's all good and... Ahem, cool. When does it come out, anyways? Next year after WISH? FROZEN II will turn five that season. WDAS is doing one a year every Thanksgiving from here on out, so it could be one of the 2025 or 2026 releases, too. One of those "Untitled Disney" placeholders for live-action/CGI tech demo movies could go to a WDAS as well, if they want to get a sequel and an original out in a calendar year.

ZOOTOPIA 2 was a given as well, even if it has been a while since the original bowed in the late winter of 2016. I love the detailed and carefully-crafted world that Byron Howard, Rich Moore and the film crew created. ZOOTOPIA was an on-the-move 48 hours adventure, so we didn't get to see all of that big metropolis. ZOOTOPIA+, the Disney+ midquel series, showed us a little bit more, which was nice... But now a whole other movie? NOICE! I wonder if it'll work in elements from scrapped earlier versions of the movie... When it was known as SAVAGE SEAS/SAVAGE CITY, and was more of a James Bond-inspired movie. I think that's the logical next step, honestly, for Nick and Judy. From cops to spies. Especially in a day and age of us being more informed and aware of what the real-life police have done. That 1st movie is in some hot water now. Without getting too political, I'll leave this at "I'm curious to see what they'll do"...

That could also be a 2025/2026 release... Some 9-10 years after the first movie came out. Who directs? Does Byron Howard return, now that ENCANTO is done and out of the way? Co-director Jared Bush confirmed on twitter that he's still involved. Was it given to someone else?

For anyone not in the know on how animation works, the question would be "why'd they wait 10 years to make ZOOTOPIA 2?"... Animation takes a long time, originals and these sequels have to co-exist, but time is time... and maybe WDAS should consider upping that recently-opened Vancouver studio (who are currently at work on the MOANA Disney+ series) to feature-making status? Much like how the Orlando unit in the '90s and early '00s started doing whole features with MULAN and went on to make LILO & STITCH and BROTHER BEAR before their unfortunate shutdown? Again, Disney locked a bunch of placeholder dates for different movies... Whose to say WDAS can't up the load and release two movies in, say, 2025 or 2026? Why not two in the year Pixar does only one new movie?

So yes, this is all so very, very wild... In addition to the company marking WDAS and Pixar releases dates from 2024-2026 weeks ago, we now know that... TOY STORY 5, FROZEN III, and ZOOTOPIA 2 are all happening. I have *several* questions about TOY STORY 5, I look forward to seeing what Anna and Elsa are up to next time around, and I'm totally game for ZOO2PIA...

#zootopia 2 #zootopia #toy story 5 #toy story #walt disney animation studios #disney animation #pixar #sequels #animated movie news #animation #opinions #unorganized thoughts

[happyendingsong]

i think raya dragon is less disney sameface and more friendship is magic ponyfication

what i think is MUCH funnier is how the design has completely changed from the first design we got in 2019, barely a year and a half ago!!!!

how much of this film have they completely overhauled since then!!!!! like the circumstances under which this film was developed, including but not limited to 1) the ousting of john lasseter 2) the resulting creative/corporate shakeup at disney appointing jennifer lee as chief creative officer and 3) having to switch to working remotely in 2020/21, are so so tasty and unfathomable. this film is gonna be such a fucking trainwreckkkkk <3333

#raya and the last dragon #disney #it's so so so funny looking into the development hell at disney nowadays #i think it's the case with all 3d animation studios now #like because you spend the first couple years building sets and models and you have different departments working on different sequences at #the same time #so if you completely overhaul the story like a year or two before it's meant to be in cinemas #you physically CAN rework the scenes you have and just abuse your workers with ridiculous crunch until it's finished #like at this point they just have a general jist of the look and shape of the film #so they can have the modellers and lighting department and layout artists and whoever else working on shit in the meantime before you even #have to touch animating #so they can leave the actual story in limbo til the last minute #it sounds so fucking exhausting and infuriating lol #like zootopia apparently had the fox as the main character until a YEAR before it's release!!! #when disney did a screening at pixar and i think it was pete docter who advised them to make the rabbit the main character #so that we're introduced to zootopia as a place to be redeemed as opposed to left behind #so that's a complete fucking reworking of the film they had to do in a YEAR it sounds so awful #and couldve been fixed if they just gave the writers and artists enough time to figure that basic storytelling choice out at the start! #anyway it's all very juicy and disney's development hell is the most interesting shit to come out of their animation studio in years #o #media thots

[burnouts3s3]

Pixar Seeing Red after Disney Plus Release

So, once again, Disney, after releasing Pixar Animation’s Soul and Luca direct to its streaming platform, Disney Plus, decides to put the upcoming film “Seeing Red” exclusively to Disney Plus, avoiding theaters altogether.

(For those wondering, I actually really enjoyed Soul but thought Luca was meh).

After Spider-man: No Way Home shattered the post pandemic box office records and proved audiences will, in fact, show up for a movie they want to, the question becomes “What Now” concerning theatrical releases and their relationship with the various streaming services they’re exclusively contracted to.

See, if you’ve been living under a rock this past year (which wouldn’t be surprising, considering the numerous vaccine mandates that have taken effect) big movie studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers have been experimenting with simultaneous releases to test the waters to see how much they can shake down offer to their respective customers in a completely honest way that just also happens to be a way gather subscribers to their subscription services.

For example, Warner Brothers blew up the theater business by offering free simultaneous releases of their movies both on HBOMax and in theaters. Meanwhile, Disney experimented with a Pay-per-view model, Premier Access, while offering its customers a 30 dollar additional charge on top of their subscription service for the sole privilege of watching their movies.

Which you cannot keep if you unsubscribe from the service.

Okay, Disney, when you pull nonsense like this, it makes it really hard to support you.

Yes, yes, Devil’s Advocate, it’s an alternative to promoting the movie in theaters to support the dying industry and Disney can legally do this, but it still stinks to me.

And apparently, it stunk to Scarlett Johansson who sued Disney for breach of contract since her lawsuit claimed she was damaged for the $66 Million Disney earned on Premier Access and states she should have a cut of. Johansson and Disney eventually settled out of court.

Disney quietly retired the Premier Access program and allowed Shang-Chi to be theater exclusive where it was one of the few films that generated a profit for Disney in 2021.

(Devil’s Advocate: it’s entirely possible that Disney can make back its budget back on an individual film through physical sales and subsequent merchandise, but that’s a long shot. Though, I did see a family get a big-ass Raya and the Last Dragon toy set at my local Wal-mart).

The end result? Aside for a few exceptions, Disney and Warner Brothers ended up losing money hand over foot with box office earnings bleeding out like stuck pigs. A majority of the films ended up going far over budget and lost money (again, not counting physical sales data or merchandise sales). That’s why Disney’s Encanto, despite ranking high on the domestic box office during its release, ended up losing money, having gone way over budget on production and marketing costs (again, not counting physical sales data or merchandise sales). Meanwhile, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, despite ranking mid at the domestic box office ended up making back its production and marketing costs since Sony made that for so cheap.

Worse yet, Disney and Warner Brothers lost money since a bunch of people pirated their films online.

comicbook.com/marvel/news/marv…

Which brings us back to Disney shoving Pixar films onto streaming only.

Now, on the one hand, I’m glad that Premier Access garbage is done away with for the time being, but on the other hand, I can’t help but feel bad for the folks at Pixar, who are very talented and put out high effort works.

Even Pete Docter, director of films such as Up, Monsters Inc. and Inside Out commented on this trend when Soul was released as a Disney Plus exclusive.

"I would be lying if I said we were thrilled about that. I think there is something big and monumental about a theatrical release, going to these big buildings with a bunch of strangers to see it on the big screen. That’s the way we’ve made it; we finalized every frame on a big screen. So to kind of skip that and know that people are gonna be watching on their iPhones or whatever? I hope they’re not watching on their iPhones. I hope they at least put it on a TV with some good sound because the people who worked on the film, you know, there’s such amazing stuff in there.

In terms of the actual release, I think there are details in terms of where you advertise and how you get the word out, but to me it almost felt like the audience was bigger on Soul. Part of it might be where we are in time; we’re all stuck locked up at home. So for everybody, in the privacy of their own homes, to have suddenly seen the film within a weekend or two weeks or whatever, that was pretty mind blowing. Whereas theatrically, it seems like it’s a little bit of a longer [wait]. Sometimes there’s months before I hear from friends who are like, “Oh, finally saw your film!” whereas [with Soul] it was all pretty quick."

It’s so weird to see Disney treat a key subsidiary like this.

Way back in 1995, Pixar was the life preserver that saved Disney from drowning when multiple complications such as the sudden death of Frank Wells, Jeffery Katzenberg leaving to form Dreamworks, and the realization that 2D animated theatrical releases were on their way out after the less than stellar critical and financial reception of Pocahontas. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Toy Story started an industry wide boom that changed the landscape forever and subsequent releases giving Disney numerous box office successes and Academy Awards for Best Animated Picture.

Now, it’s like Disney is telling all those animators and employees at Pixar “Hey, thanks for the money. Prepare to be sacrificed on the altar of streaming so we can compete with Netflix!”

To me, Disney acquiring Pixar as a subsidiary is more important than Disney’s subsequent acquisitions of Star Wars, The Simpsons, Marvel and even 20th century Fox.

And the end result? Disney treating Pixar like a redheaded stepchild.

I really hope Disney gives Pixar a chance to be theater exclusive movies again.

As for Turning Red, we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out when it releases on Friday, March 11th, 2022.

#pixar #seeing red #disney #disney animation #disney animation studios #luca #soul #toy story #finding nemo #wall-e #pete docter #hbo max #disney plus #disney+ #streaming service #subscription #exclusive #Meilin Lee #blog post #article #dreamworks #Jeffrey Katzenberg #frank wells

[aion-rsa]

Soul: How Nine Inch Nails Scored the New Pixar Movie

https://ift.tt/3obLK6P

For many music fans, the name Trent Reznor has long been synonymous with Nine Inch Nails. It is, after all, the groundbreaking industrial rock act that Reznor founded in 1988 and was the sole stationary member of until Atticus Ross was added as a permanent member in 2016. For others still, Reznor and Ross are the Oscar and Emmy-winning composers of scores for acclaimed films and TV shows like The Social Network, Gone Girl, and Watchmen. And yet, even with this eclectic legacy, it’s likely few except the minds at Pixar ever thought of either NIN member as the sound for a Disney movie.

Until now. The duo, who were just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month, have composed the electronic portion of the music for the new Pixar film, Soul, which also features jazz compositions, performances, and arrangements by Jon Batiste.

Asked if the idea of Nine Inch Nails scoring a Pixar film was met with a raised eyebrow or two, director (and Pixar chief creative officer) Pete Docter tells us, “That’s what was attractive about it, because I think we all have a little bit of ‘let’s pull the rug out from underneath all of this.’ For sure, we knew it was going to make some people go, ‘What?’ and scratch their head. I love [the score]. I think it’s really going to speak to a lot of people. It sounds simultaneously appropriate for a Disney film, a Pixar film, but also still Trent and Atticus.”

Soul stars Jamie Foxx as the voice of Joe Gardner, a high school music teacher and aspiring jazz pianist who meets a potentially fatal accident on the evening of a gig that could jumpstart his career. Finding himself–or his soul–in The Great Before (after accidentally wresting himself off the escalator to The Great Beyond), Joe teams up with a soul named 22 (Tina Fey), who has no interest in joining the living on Earth, to try and find a way to get back to his body.

Music, as one might expect in a movie about a jazz musician, is vitally important to the story, themes, and emotional content of Soul, both as the passion of Joe’s life and the backdrop of his metaphysical journey into the realm beyond life as we know it.

Jon Batiste–musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and creative director of Harlem’s National Jazz Museum–seems like a natural choice to incorporate the jazz element into the film, saying in a recent press conference, “This film has a lot of light in it, a lot of light and life force energy, and that was really the beginning of me figuring out my way into the music, and finding the spiritual tone.”

But just as the lines blur in the film between the world of the living and the world of the yet to live, the musical contributions of Batiste, Reznor, and Ross weren’t neatly segmented either.

“Trent and Atticus did the score, and some of their score is actually in the human world as well,” says Docter. “It’s just that Jon Batiste did all the jazz arrangements. When you hear a jazz performance, that’s Jon Batiste, but the score is Trent and Atticus. There’s one jazz piece that they did because of COVID. We were kind of not able to do in person recording sessions with Jon anymore.”

“That’s Batiste playing the music,” adds Kemp Powers, who co-wrote the script with Docter. “That’s actually an original composition by Trent and Atticus, but Batiste plays.”

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As for how Reznor and Ross felt about being asked to score a film for the Mouse House, Docter says, “They were really intrigued. I think they were in. They have kids now. It could be that 15 years ago, they would have been like, ‘What are you talking about?’ But they’re artists. They’re also really looking to stretch and expand what they’re doing.”

“Trent related so much to Joe,” adds producer Dana Murray. “He was deeply invested in the story himself and he would call us and give great notes. So yeah, they were so great.”

Batiste says that he is pleased with the way the music he performed for the movie and the score that Reznor and Ross composed complement each other. “I really am thankful that we had the chance to do that, because at first we didn’t even hear each other’s music,” he recalls. “And then as the process started to go along, I got a chance to hear some of the music they were making, they heard some of the music that I was making, and we came together in this one moment and it really changed the rest of the music that I was composing for the film, because I got a chance to see into their process.”

Docter agrees that the collaboration of the three artists was a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of great creative luck. “It’s hilarious to get Trent and Atticus, and Jon Batiste together because they’re so polar opposites as people,” he notes. “It’s a real joy. They’re all so incredibly talented and come at things from such a different way that it ended up being a great marriage, I think, in the film.”

The director adds that Reznor and Ross’ style of working was also different than that of some of Pixar’s best-known and most popular composers. “With Randy Newman or Michael Giacchino, we usually lock the picture and then they start scoring,” he explains. “In this case, Trent and Atticus started developing themes as we were cutting the sequences, and so they just threw a barrage of different music at us, and we’d be like, ‘Oh, wait. This one. That would work great here.’”

The seemingly spontaneous way in which the musicians worked lends itself to the idea of jazz as a metaphor for life, with its unpredictability and improvisation–one of the main themes (no pun intended) in Soul.

“Much like life, in jazz most of the time you’re handed a tune, here you go, now what are you going to do with it?” says Docter. “You could take it any number of ways, and it’s also such a group activity. You’re playing and you’re listening to other musicians and sparking off them, and what magic that brings to it is so familiar to life, as well.”

“I think we picked about as entertaining a metaphor as humanly possible. Music is just something that connects people,” adds Kemp Powers. “It was really encouraging when we did our first kid’s screening to watch kids lean into the musical performances, even though it was a genre that a lot of the children had never heard of or knew anything about before. They became immediate fans. I think seeing a passion for music is something that kids really are able to connect with, so it’s a really great device for delivering a metaphor with that.”

Soul will premiere on Disney+ on December 25.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Kevin Wozniak on Kevflix: Most Anticipated Movies of 2020

Every year, hundreds of movie are released.  From micro-budget indies to gigantic blockbusters, the year the full of movies of all kinds from all around the world.  There are films that come out of nowhere (seriously, who saw Parasite being the movie of 2019?) which are always fun to see, and movies we have been hearing about for years finally being released.  But of the ones that I know are coming out this year, these are the ones that I am most excited for.

And look, I know we’re already almost a quarter of the way through 2020, but let’s be real, there wasn’t a lot of exciting movies coming out in January and February anyway. The only films from the first couple months that would have made this list would have been Bad Boys for Life, and possibly The Invisible Man. However, starting in March, 2020 gets really exciting, so it seemed like the perfect time to do this list.

Here are my most anticipated movies coming out in 2020.

  *NOTE* – I am excluding any film that I saw at Sundance 2020.

        25. THE LAST DANCE (Jason Hehir, June 26)

Is it cheating to have ESPN’s 10-part docuseries about the Chicago Bulls during their historic 1997-1998 season on this list?  Maybe.  But as a life-long Bulls fan, I cannot wait to see the footage they show, the insight they get, and for them to show just insane and competitive Michael Jordan was.  This should be a real treat to any sports fan.

    24. VENOM 2 (Andy Serkis, October 2)

Venom was pretty silly, but rather fun and Tom Hardy’s performance was something special.  The sequel brings in the great Woody Harrelson to play Cletus Kasady/Carnage and pits Andy Serkis behind the camera, which should add more chaos to an already wild film.

    23. SOUL (Pete Docter, June 19)

Pixar has two original movies coming out this year, Onward and Soul.  Of the two, I am more excited to see Soul, mainly because I think the story sounds more interesting – it’s about a musician who has lost his passion for music is transported out of his body and must find it back – and co-director Pete Docter has yet to have made a bad movie (his previous films include Monster’s Inc., Up, and Inside Out).

    22. GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE (Jason Reitman, July 10)

Though I was a big fan of Paul Feig’s 2016 female-led reboot, bringing back most of the original cast (R.I.P. Harold Ramis) and adding Paul Rudd in the mix could make for a great summer flick.

    21. THE ETERNALS (Chloé Zhao, November 6)

Black Widow is a near sure-thing for Marvel, but The Eternals, a relatively unknown part of Marvel with all new heroes and actors, will set the stage for the future of the MCU following the Endgame finale.

    20. THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (Michael Chaves, September 11)

I love the Conjuring franchise, particularly the Conjuring films, but with James Wan not behind the camera, I have my hesitations.

    19. GODZILLA VS KONG (Adam Wingard, November 20)

This franchise might be incredibly stupid and all over the place, but being able to see King Kong and Godzilla duke it out on the big screen will be ridiculously fun.

    18. COMING 2 AMERICA (Craig Brewer, December 18)

Between Dolemite is My Name and his hosting duties on Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy proved that even after a few missteps, he was still the man.  Coming 2 America is the sequel I didn’t know I needed, as Murphy reprises his role as Akeem who finds out he has a long-lost son in the United States.

    17. MULAN (Niki Caro, March 27)

Save for 2019’s The Lion King, I genuinely like the Disney live-action remakes.  Mulan looks gorgeous and epic and given the PG-13 rating (the first of these movies), looks to be a bit more intense than the animated original.

    16. NO TIME TO DIE (Cary Joji Fukunaga, November 25)

Usually I’d be more excited for a James Bond movie, but after the dud that was Spectre, I have my hesitations.  Still, Daniel Craig is one of the best Bonds ever and Fukunaga is an interesting choice for director, so I’m at the very least intrigued.

    15. A QUIET PLACE PART II (John Krasinski, March 20)

I LOVED the first film and thought John Krasinski showed a real talent behind the camera and really am excited to see what he does next in this world.  However, I wish he had focused the movie on another family or person during this bizarre invasion/crises, but we’ll see where he takes this story.

    14. LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (Edgar Wright, September 25)

Genre-maestro Edgar Wright dives back into the horror genre in a film about one girl’s mysterious journey into the 1960’s that isn’t what it seems.  Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie lead the cast.

    13. THE SOUVENIR: PART II

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, a powerful, beautiful look at love, trauma, and memory, was one of my favorite films of 2019 and a film I still think about to this day.  I cannot wait to see what Hogg does with Part II, as this is one of my most anticipated sequels of the year.

    12. MALIGNANT (James Wan, August 14)

The plot is unknown as of yet, but it’s an original James Wan horror movie and that is all I need to see this movie.

    11. DUNE (Denis Villeneuve, December 18)

I love Denis Villeneuve as a director and am always excited for any project he is a part of.  However, with such a big cast, budget, and the general idea of a Dune movie at this scale, is this going to be a “good” movie or just the “most” movie?

    10. THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (Aaron Sorkin, October 2)

Any Aaron Sorkin screenplay gets me excited.  Even though it is the same in every movie, I am a sucker for the pacing and density of his words.  With 2017’s Molly’s Game, Sorkin proved that we was great behind the camera as well.  Having written A Few Good Men (one of the best courtroom dramas ever), The Trial of the Chicago 7 looks to be right up Sorkin’s alley, and with the likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, and Sacha Baron Cohen, and Mark Rylance reciting his dialog, this seems like it could be a Sorkin classic.

    9. F9 (Justin Lin, May 22)

The Fast and Furious franchise is one of my favorites.  It is an utterly insane franchise that features ridiculous stunts, gigantic set pieces, some racing, and the theme of family.  I don’t know what F9 has in store for us except for Charlize Theron is back as our villain Cipher, John Cena is in the film as Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) brother, and Han (Sung Kang) is back some how.  Whatever.  I’m in.

    8. NOMADLAND (Chloé Zhao, TBD)

The fact that we could get two films from the great Chloe Zhao in 2020 gives us a brief insight as to how great 2020 is going to be.  Though Eternals will arguably be the movie that shapes the MCU for the next decade, I’m more looking forward to Zhao’s look at woman (two-time Oscar winner Francis McDormand) as she embarks across the American West after losing everything in the Great Recession.

    7. THE FRENCH DISPATCH (Wes Anderson, July 24)

Wes Anderson is one of the best and most unique auteurs working today.  All of his movies are wildly original, wonderfully written, gorgeous to look at, and feature a stellar cast and The French Dispatch looks to have all of that and then some.

    6. TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Christopher McQuarrie, June 26)

Tom Cruise is one of my favorite actors and his partnership with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has been one of his best career choices.  Their latest collaboration pits Cruise back in the cockpit (literally) as he reprises his legendary role as Maverick in this sequel to the 80’s classic Top Gun.  Val Kilmer returns as Iceman and we get a slew of new cast members such as Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, and Miles Teller as Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, the son of Maverick’s late-friend Goose.  I’m most interested in the meta-narrative of the film, as Maverick’s career in the Navy seems to replicate Cruise’s as a movie-star, which has been a fascinating one.

    5. WONDER WOMAN 1984 (Patty Jenkins, June 5)

Does the DCEU still exist?  Who knows and honestly, who care?  But back in 2017 when it was in full swing and doing miserably, Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins came and shook the game up.  Wonder Woman is one of my favorite comic book movies ever  It was a thrilling, funny, action-packed film that features one of the greatest superhero moments ever on camera with the “No Man’s Land” scene.  There has only been one teaser for Wonder Woman 1984 and it already looks incredible.  Gadot looks great, Chris Pine is back, Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal are the villains, and every visual esthetic, from the costumes to the sets to the color pallet look great.  Oh, and did I mention Wonder Woman swings from lightning bolts using her lasso?  No?  Well that, and I’m sure many more exciting moments like that are going to happen in my most anticipated comic book movie and sequel of 2020.

    4. WEST SIDE STORY (Steven Spielberg, December 18)

This is the most interesting and weirdest film on the list, yet it is one I genuinely cannot wait to see.  Everyone knows West Side Story, the legendary Romeo and Juliet reimagining about two lovers from rival gangs that won numerous awards for its stage play and ten Oscars when it was adapted to the big screen.  The fact that this latest adaptation is directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner is what makes it intriguing.  Spielberg has never made a musical and his films of late have been quieter, politically-focused films (save for The BFG and Ready Player One).  How will he fare in an adaptation of one of the most beloved plays of all-time and one of the greatest cinematic musicals ever?  Spielberg is a master director, so this is bound to be interesting.

    3. DA 5 BLOODS (Spike Lee, TBD)

For a while there, I thought Spike Lee had lost it.  Having not made a great movie since 2002’s 25th Hour, it looked like Lee had lost all of his creative spark, making some of the worst movies of his career.  But with 2017’s BlackKklansman, writer/director Spike Lee proved that he still had the goods and that he was just as great as he was in 90’s.  Da 5 Bloods, a title I love, Lee heads to the jungle of Vietnam, as veterans from the Vietnam War return to the jungle to find their lost innocence.  Starring Chadwick Boseman, Paul Walter Hauser, and a slew of great character actors in Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Whitlock Jr., Clarke Peters, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jean Reno, let’s see is Lee can keep his streak alive.

    2. MANK (David Fincher, TBD)

It’s been seven years since David Fincher directed a feature film.  The Oscar-nominated director spend that back-half of the 2010’s focusing on producing Netflix shows like Mindhunter, House of Cards, and Love,Death, & Robots, so at least he was staying busy.  Director’s latest cinematic venture follows screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s tumultuous development of Orson Welles’ iconic masterpiece Citizen Kane.  The great Gary Oldman stars and Mankiewicz and Tom Burke, who gave one of the great breakout performances of 2019 in The Souvenir, stars as Welles in a performance I cannot wait to see.  It’s one of my favorite directors making a movie about one of the greatest movies ever made.  How can I not be excited?

    1. TENET (Christopher Nolan, July 17)

Is Christopher Nolan the best director working today?  There’s a strong case for it.  After a decade that saw Nolan make films like Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk, he’s back with yet another original action epic.  The plot of the film is unknown as of yet, but it has something to do with globe trotting espionage and time travel.  The cast is Nolan’s most impressive since Inception, featuring spectacular actors such as John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, and Nolan’s favorite, Michael Caine.  Nobody makes movies like Christopher Nolan.  Every film he makes is an event and in a year with no Star Wars and a mysterious Marvel slate, Tenet is the cinematic event of 2020 and the perfect way to start the decade.

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Inside Pixar’s Soul and the Secrets of Life Before Death

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In 2015 Pixar and director Pete Docter brought us Inside Out, a brilliant, moving exploration of how our emotions affect our relationships as we grow older. The Oscar-winning film’s script (by Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley) was heavily inspired by the filmmakers’ research into neuropsychology and the mysteries of how the human mind works. Now five years later, Docter and a new team have gone in a completely different direction–the metaphysical–with Soul.

Den of Geek was given a chance to view the first 20 minutes of the film and speak afterward with Docter, co-writer Kemp Powers, and producer Dana Murray about what may be Pixar’s most unabashedly gorgeous and advanced animated film to date.

Soul stars Jamie Foxx as the voice of Joe Gardner, a New York City middle school teacher whose dream of becoming a professional jazz musician seems to end prematurely when an accident sends him to The Great Before. This is the surreal plane of existence where new, relatively unformed souls are given their personalities and traits by older, wiser souls known as mentors, before being shipped off to Earth.

Convinced he’s not supposed to be there, Joe nevertheless becomes the mentor of 22 (Tina Fey), a soul who has no interest in developing a personality and thus heading off to life in the real world. But Joe sees 22 as his means to get back to life, and he becomes determined to help her find the spark of life she’s missing while learning a few new things about himself as well.

“That’s actually the cornerstone of our story, a soul that doesn’t want to live, looks down on Earth with skepticism, and says, ‘Is all that living really worth it down there?’” Docter explains during a press presentation about the film. “So the basic concept of the film was formed, a soul who doesn’t want to go live meets a soul who doesn’t want to die.”

Docter continues, “But if we were going to make a film about souls, our first problem was what does a soul look like?  So we did a lot of research, looking into the teachings, many philosophies and traditions around the world, and what we found most was that people described the soul as vapor, non-physical, formless, breath, air.  All very interesting, but not very helpful, because how do you draw air?”

Speaking directly with Den of Geek a short time after the press presentation, Docter says that he had a “great time” exploring the spiritual and metaphysical underpinnings of his movie: “I met with a rabbi, we spoke with a Buddhist… spiritual people from all walks of life. Even a shaman, who came in and wanted to take us on a journey, and we’re like, ‘Oh, look at the time. We’re out of time.’ We were a little scared, I guess. But it was great, because it really exercises and challenges you.”

Docter and Murray both admit that exploring the nature of the soul itself gave them a different perspective on their own lives and personalities. “I feel like at the end, even looking back at other films that we’ve done in the past, I probably wouldn’t make a Monsters, Inc. the same way,” Docter says. “I might not even make it at all, because the films have changed who I am and where my interests lie.”

Murray agrees as she adds, “Absolutely, I think I changed over the course of the project. But the one thing is I probably started the project really doubting myself, and over time learned to trust myself that I’m pretty damn good at what I do. I think you grow in that way, as well.”

Read more

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Pondering the nature of the soul and the afterlife (and the before-life) is one thing; visualizing it on screen is another, and both Docter and Kemp are upfront about the challenges of creating a visual representation of things that are most likely beyond human comprehension. The Great Before, where new souls discover the traits, interests, and talents that create their personalities, was one of the most ambiguous aspects to pin down.

“We were lucky that way because as we looked around, as you say, not many traditions, religions, whatnot, talk about a before life. And so we thought, ‘Well, all right, what’s that gonna be like?’” explains Docter. “We eventually came around to almost like a world’s fair. We wanted it to be very non-specific in terms of culture, so if you look at it and go, ‘Oh, that’s Greek or Italian, or Chinese,’ or whatever, that would be wrong. Because we are saying in the film [that souls] come to Earth kind of as a blank slate in that sense. Your culture is something that you learn and grow into.”

Says Powers, “One of the things I really liked the most about the new souls–we call them newbs–all the newb souls have purple eyes because it was really important that since this is before life, their eyes are represented in a uniform color that doesn’t happen in real life,” says Powers. “Whereas when the counselors, the mentors, show up, they actually have the eye color that they had in life, so Joe has brown eyes.”

In addition to showing us most of the first act of Soul, Pixar also provides us with a look behind the making of the film. It involved bringing their characters and the worlds they inhabit–both the “real” world of New York City and the ethereal space of The Great Before–to three-dimensional, textured, colorful life. (It’s a process, by the way, that used a final tally of 73,611 storyboards to plot out the entire picture.)

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“We found this stuff called Aerogel and it’s the lightest solid material on Earth, and it’s actually used by the aerospace industry,” says Murray. “And it seemed to suggest the non-physical stuff our research would talk about but in a way we could actually put on screen. So, with this in mind, we started to explore what a soul might look like, which was not so easy.”

Murray continues, “A lot of different artists at Pixar took a crack at this, and they came up with some very cool, interesting ideas, but we still felt like we needed more humanity, like clear facial features we could recognize, with expressions and attitudes.  So we came back to [an] early drawing that Pete did, and it seemed to suggest the ephemeral but also had a face.”

“We do have a whole separate department who do thousands of drawings and paintings to try to figure out what those characters look like,” says Docter. “The next phase would be to go to layout which is now taking all those objects and putting ’em together, along with where our camera is going to go. Then we move to animation where we add the movements, the gestures, the expressions.”

The final product is a movie that combines a wholly original visual landscape with immersive sound design, top shelf voice talent, and an eclectic musical landscape: The jazz portion was composed by the renowned Jon Batiste while the film score was handled by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (more on that at a later time). All these elements, based on what we’ve seen so far, are likely to make Soul the most sophisticated and original film we’ve seen from Pixar since… well, possibly Inside Out.

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“I think the gift of these films, because they take so long, [is that] they require you to meditate or ruminate on one theme for the four years you’re doing it,” says Docter. “And it’s not like I just suddenly now know the answers to life or anything, but it did force me to examine my own life and way I was living, and say, ‘Could I be doing better?’”

Soul now premieres on Disney+ on Dec. 25, Christmas Day.

The post Inside Pixar’s Soul and the Secrets of Life Before Death appeared first on Den of Geek.

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