Channel Frederator Blog

Disney has announced their 2009 release slate of films. These include Pinocchio: 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition (March 10) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Platinum Edition in October. Pixar will be releasing Monsters Inc. and A Bug’s Life.

Hopefully these Blu-Ray releases will be a better release than that of Sleeping Beauty last year, which received mixed reviews, mostly due to picture quality issues such as DVNR, oversaturated colors, and color timing. There was a post about these issues and the release back in November on Cartoon Brew.

I don’t know if Walt Disney Home Entertainment has learned anything (or changed anything) since their last classic on BluRay release, but I hope they did. The issues listed here are what kept me from buying the Blu Ray release of Sleeping Beauty.

-Floyd Bishop

The Golden Globe nominees for Best Animated Feature Film are Disney’s Bolt, DreamWorks Animation’s Kung-Fu Panda and Disney/Pixar’s WALL•E. Both Bolt and WALL•E have songs nominated for Best Original Song. “Down to Earth” from WALL•E features music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, with lyrics by Peter Gabriel, and “I thought I Lost You” from Bolt has music and lyrics by Miley Cyrus and Jeffrey Steele.

The animated documentary Waltz with Bashir from Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman is up for Best Foreign Language Film.

-Floyd Bishop

Pixar Planet has posted some images from the short film “BURN•E”, directed by Angus Maclane, who served as supervising animator on “WALL•E”. The film will be included on the “WALL•E” DVD and Blu Ray release on November 18th.

On a related note, check out the Lego WALL•E that Angus made for Brickfest 2007. Hopefully the Disney and Lego people get together and make some kits like this.

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In 2007, animation artists and Pixar colleagues Scott Morse, Lou Romano, Don Shank, and Nate Wragg collaborated on The Ancient Book of Myth and War (AdHouse Books, now out-of-print.) They’re reuniting for a tasty follow-up tome called The Ancient Book of Sex and Science. The book is currently in production, but a set of four prints was for sale at Comicon this summer. See images of the complete set here. (Art above by Nate Wragg.)

We’ll just have to wait until next spring for Sex and Science, but until then, check out the artist links above for more information about this fantastic foursome.

And in particular, I’m really loving the ultra-abstract paintings that Lou Romano has been posting on his blog lately. Here’s one:

Check out a few more after the jump: [Read more…]

Ever since the release of “Toy Story” back in 1995, movie audiences seem to have been in love with all things Pixar. This goes for many animation fans as well, sometimes to the point of fanaticism. Is this a healthy thing? In this post, I’ll be asking some questions that challenge that fanaticism, and I hope that Pixar fans will try to provide some answers in the comments section.

When Dreamworks released “Shark Tale”, many people implied that Dreamworks was trying to follow in the footsteps of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo”. They are both films that are primarily based underwater. The similarities end there for me. When Pixar released “WALL-E” this year, no one seemed to remember either Blue Sky’s “Robots” from 2005, nor the design of Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” (another robot who becomes self aware and gains a personality). Granted, the Pixar films were stronger films in both cases, but the similarities are there [Read more…]

The San Diego Comic Con has come and gone. It was pretty busy, with the entire show selling out. Preview Night was just as busy (if not more so) than any other day. I would love to see some sort of expansion of the Con to cut back on crowd size. Maybe a professionals only night, or perhaps making the Con a full week?

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The Pixar Touch by David A. Price is an exhaustive look into the rise of the famously innovative and super successful animation studio. This podcast interview with the author, from The Sound of Young America, will give you a taste for what’s inside the covers.

One fascinating aspect of Pixar history is the company’s roots at The New York Institute of Technology in the 70’s and 80’s. Alexandre Schure, a forward-thinking and mysterious millionaire—and founder of the school—bankrolled a Computer Graphics Lab and hired computer programmer Edmund Catmull to run it. Shure was interested in using computers to help finish up his animated feature adaptation of Tubby the Tuba. [Read more…]

Disney/Pixar’s “Wall·E” had a huge weekend, with over 62 million dollars in it’s first weekend. It has been a great year so far for animated films. Have you seen “Wall·E” yet? What did you think?

-Floyd Bishop

George Carlin, stand up comic best known for his routine “The Seven Words” has passed away. He was 71. You may remember George Carlin as the voice of Fillmore, the hippie VW bus from the Pixar film “Cars”.

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If you have been watching the basketball match up between Boston and LA, then you’ve probably seen this spot for “WALL·E”. The more I see of this character, the more interested I am in the film. WALL·E doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to work with in terms of physical poseability, but the range of expression that the Pixar animators are able to get out of the character is great.

Be sure to check out “WALL·E” when it hits theaters on June 27th.

-Floyd Bishop