And to all of you who are qq:ing over the princess-wants-to-be-a-hero story… no, it’s not overdone. Have you seen the amount of pink princesses that girls are bombarded with? Dainty little sparkly princesses? I’m not into that, my daughter is not into that. I rather have the princess that kicks some… training dummies. And I absolutely loved this princes! Although I don’t think she was a princess… just the daughter of a warrior, but perhaps I missed the princess part… I’ll watch it again (I think the hair distracted me).

that said, that red hair is mesmerizing, i may watch the trailer again with the sound off just to look at it.

with a six year old girl in the house, there’s no avoiding disney princesses completely, but i inoculate with regular doses of spunky miyazaki heroines and avoid cg barbie and tinkerbell movies like the plague. 

No doubt Disney it exhausted by the courageous “Wall-E” or the excellent “Up”.  Disney is incapable of creating a movie as lovely as Toy Stoy 3.- they stray from Disney’s tired formula. 

Sorry, Steve.  

The thing I love about it is that it’s an okay sci-fi story that ends up being pretty kid-friendly.

Still, it looks like it could be good.

Maybe I am being too pedantic, but why is a Scottish character given a Spanish/Latin name?

Test audiences rejected Gruoch, Olith and Bethoc as being “too orcish”?

Personally, I liked the trailer.

The Toy Story movies were fantastic. Monsters, Inc., was a great concept and love the colors. Ratatouille blew me away, mostly due to its lush, warm visuals. That movie was just stunning from an artistic standpoint. I thoroughly enjoyed Wall-E… especially the first half. 

One of my favorites, though, is definitely The Incredibles. I found the premise, the humor and the great retro feel to be just fantastic. The 60′s-esque style is just so well done, both on a visual and musical level.

I’ll certainly give this a shot, too. Kelly McDonald alone will add some real fun to it. :)

To me, it was a movie about the inherent difference between being a hero and being heroic.

Oh, and about the fantastic costumes.

Pixar is the first large scale cartoon production house to actually enforce positive morals in children that aren’t based on typical gender role stereo types, and common misconceptions about the intelligences of children.
I’m stoked.   Even the worst Pixar film has Disney by the short and curlies.

I wonder how much of this movie was inspired by “The Secret of Kells.”

Ouch. The Irish and the Scots usually don’t really like to be lumped together like that. (Of course I’m the progeny of several such lumpings so I guess I shouldn’t complain.)

Speaking of Billy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVR3xF8h1Ao&feature=related

Does this take place in the cave of Caerrbannog?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg

When viewed from that angle, it makes more sense. Not saying it was great, but my son LOVED (and still does live) that film.

But Cars 2 was the biggest load of animated crap I’ve ever seen. Heartless, soulless, pointless, violent, centered-around-Larry-the-Fakeit-guy garbage. Given the incredible stuff they (Pixar) have done in the past, I was stunned at how … just plain idiotic the whole thing was, even for kids. Heck, especially for kids (my 7-year-old son FREAKED THE HELL OUT the entire time, worrying all the cars were going to die).

Either the death of Carlin and Newman forced them to come up with a new script ASAP, or they just didn’t care and  mailed it in.

Regardless, I’m not sure I’ll pay outright to see another one of their films I was so mad at that movie. Instead, I’ll just borrow it from someone else if interested.

I was impressed with Violet’s hair in the Incredibles, but this is…wow.

‘Wall-E’ has such an amazing build up only to focus on fat, lazy boring humans and the eco friendly theme. Imagine if the story had stayed focused on love between the robots amid all the scrap of humanity. 

‘Up’ starts out with a homerun and then ends with an arthritic  80-year old man doing acrobatics and fighting off flying dogs. 

We’re not even going to talk about ‘Cars 2′. 

Trying to make up my mind whether the issue is the material or the director…

Maybe Pixar could catch back up to the other studios by starting to treat their workers a little less like shit.

“Catch back up?” With the exception of Cars 2 every single Pixar film has been a major commercial and critical success (and even that one made a boatload of money). I can’t think of any other studio that can make such a claim.

I’m not sure what makes you think they treat their workers like shit, but I’ve toured their studio more than once and it looks like a freaking amazing place to work. Sure they often work long hours (just like most comparable studios), but where else can animators build actual, fully-stocked tiki bars in the middle of their work spaces?

Frrrreeeedommmm!

The heroine is Merida which makes no sense to me.  Maybe I am being too pedantic, but why is a Scottish character given a Spanish/Latin name?

I really enjoyed The Incredibles and Ratatouille.  Up was a surprise, so maybe this will be as well.

But that’s not the story that the Wikipedia entry describes. Apparently the protagonist “defies an age-old custom sacred to the uproarious lords of the land” and her “actions inadvertently unleash chaos and fury in the kingdom” leaving her to “undo a beastly curse before it’s too late.” Huh? Where was all that, in the trailer? What age-old custom? What beastly curse? How does she break it? How do we know when” it’s too late”? What happens if she fails? What are the stakes?

It’s not a bad trailer because any particular sensory element in it is lacking in quality. It’s a bad trailer because it lacks any sense of narrative motion.

I am disappointed that the heroine is surrounded by the usual ineffectual male fair and those males that do feature some reasonable effectiveness are seemingly buffoons.

Wall-E is a mix of The Velveteen Robot and utterly brutal SF satire ala Kornbluth or Sheckley. The ending credit sequence had me openly sobbing when I watched it on DVD, out of relief and the suggestion that humanity could maybe not blow its second chance.

Toy Story 3 was fun but kind of routine; what made it extraordinary was the Almost Ending, and the actual ending, which was magisterial; it managed to be a surprise and seem utterly inevitable.

It’s a good thing. Even our whiny criticism is a part of building up the hype.