On Pixar's Day & Night

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* Good opening...
* Heey, nice 2D-3D combo. That's new.
* Cooool, awesome with the metaphors!
* Whoooaaw! what a story!
* All that and a message,too? Geeeniuuuss!!!
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Pixar Keeps Getting Biggar

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John Lasseter once declined Disney’s proposal to produce Toy Story sequel for DVD release --Disney-style second-class rate manufacture. He argued that Pixar has only one reason in minds to produce sequels: better stories. Toy Story 3 shows they still deliver that promise. After fifteen years since the first time the gang introduced themselves and you’ve got a friend in me still ring true.

(warning: spoiler inside)

When Pixar-Disney released the original Toy Story in 1995, I bought the ticket merely on the ground that it has a Walt Disney brand on it --a gesture of a loyal customer. Disney was on the mid chapter of its downfall. Its animated features were at best doing okay in box office race (Hello Pocahontas!). Their exploitation of cable TV downgraded them to mediocrity. Disney was in desperate hours and pixie dust just wouldn’t cut it. Who would have thought that Disney’s decision to outsource Pixar to bring the magic back to the kingdom would work like a charm? Maybe not even Disney and Pixar themselves realized at the time that two magic lamps are better than one.

Picture source: Gloaming and Dawn

Toy Story is such a tease I want to take a peek behind Pixar’s curtain. When the DVDs were finally released, I exhausted repetitively all their special feature contents. I take up readings on anything Pixar-related (I tell you, movie magazines, printing nothing but trivia, are the poorest source of all). Business industries, it turns out, can never get enough lesson on creativity and innovation from these storyheads (only cool stuffs are in these articles!). Pixar office setup: it’s practically a brainstormer in bricks and stones! Pixar people: They’re Donald Ducks in the flesh. Pixar approach: simulating face expression, camera movements, hair-fur-feather, lighting, water. They make experiments look like millennium party. It’s in their credo that every detail is worth sweating happily.

Since the release of Monster, Inc. I take Pixar’s next movie project way too seriously. I went through the upcoming of each release with the anxiety that the day Luxo’s light is dimming has come and Pixar can no longer keep up with the growing number of audiences’ inflating expectation. I’d feel terrible if that happens (I think I sound creepy). Time and time, from The Incredibles to Up, I stand absolutely corrected, which then leaves me with the guilt of ever having the nerve to lose faith in the first place (again with the creepy part).

David A. Price ended his biographical take on the company, in his book Pixar Touch, by likening it to teenagers taking off from their adolescent stage. One probable outcome of such situation is having stripped off of their playfulness and gradually head on to stagnancy. In other word, it’s Disney all over again. Price pointed out that Pixar’s next challenge is to not let that happen. It has been two years since the book is first released and Pixar --to borrow Prices’ perspective-- is stepping up to young adulthood. I am among those groups of people who are curious of how the real Pixar story will unfold.

In this third installment of Toy Story, subliminally or not, Pixar sets their first and oldest son Andy off to college. The plot: The judgment day that every toy dreads has come --the day they turned into throw-aways. (There is indeed always a stronger plot to grow for any sequel Pixar wishes to produce). The Story: the gang learned about the truth of how their Andy feels of them via a bumpier ride --unlike the prequels, direct contact with real-live throw-aways. The end: Andy tenderly bequeathed his story friends to a child neighbor that merits his own level of narrative masterdom.

Pixar’s specialty --solid plots, body of story that rocks, an end rich of grace-- are all there in the right places. If anything, those are evidences that Pixar are nowhere losing their touch. Such craftsmanship cannot be an accident. And for hypothesis sake, Andy’s elegant decision might clue you in something about Pixar’s actual development report card. A good apple comes from a good trees, right? I hope so. If it does, Price’s optimistic scenario of adult Pixar may have started to take place after all. That’s great to know.

After the last line of the credit title left the screen I let out a long exhale, once again being ever glad to be proven wrong. Cars 2 is next in the pipeline and already my heart starts racing.
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Iron Man 2 > Iron Man 1 (FALSE)

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(picture source: web)

Plot. Nothing particularly new in Iron Man 2 and it does not deliver its plot in higher speed, either. Mr. Stark already did his soul-searching in the first installment (and I get that he needed to), but on this second installment he insists us to see his second kind of search. That’s just one self-centered Iron Man too many, in my opinion.

Enemy. Insignificant: a muscled genius (rare, but not a banging kind of surprise) and loud mouth moneybag team up to build a squadron of Iron-Man-wannabe (again?). America apparently had more enemy on its own soil than abroad.

Casts and Scenes. Johansson’s take on the sequel was cosmetic, at best (talk about under-empowering your human resource). Bettany didn’t voice enough Jarvis (too bad). Iron Man-War Machine brawling scene: that’s just jock fight in metal suits. Not even Rourke with his newly-found signature gave Iron Man 2 a better taste. Stan Lee was mistaken for Larry King (you may want to double-check on this one for me): that’s cheesy, even for you, Mr. Lee.

What’s Left. Two good things about Iron Man 2: (1) Director Jon Favreau played good hapless tertiary sidekick (how’s that for irony?), and; (2) AC/DC scratched good axes for the soundtrack, I actually want to buy the CD (look at me with my 80’s rock lingo).
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