Channel Frederator Blog

The Orange County Register has a story about 10 year old Colby Curtin, who was diagnosed with vascular cancer. Colby enjoyed Pixar’s films quite a bit, and was looking forward to seeing Up in theaters. Unfortunately, she was much too ill to travel to a theater. Doctors told her mother she was fading fast.

A friend of the family began to cold call both Pixar and Disney. She was able to guess a name in order to talk to a real person via Pixar’s automated phone system. She got through to the right people and Pixar agreed to send someone out with a DVD screener the next day.

Pixar sent an employee (who is not mentioned by name) to Colby in the hospitol with a screener of the film and some Up memorabilia. Though she couldn’t see the movie (the pain kept her eyes closed during the film), her mother gave her a play by [Read more…]

Disney/Pixar’s Up has had a great opening weekend.  The film has brought in an estimated 68 million dollars, which places it just behind Finding Nemo ($70 million), but ahead of WALL•E ($63 million).

It will be interesting to see how much of the revenue was due to the 3D release, which carries a higher ticket price due to the stereoscopic projection. Up is Pixar’s first RealD release.

Congratulations to the crew!

-Floyd Bishop

The Superbowl is going to be on TV this Sunday. While the Superbowl is usually not an event that is considered a “must see” for many artist types, there are many animated reasons to watch this year.

First of all, there are the commercials. Even in such an economically depressed times, there should be many animated commercials. In other years, the Superbowl commercials have been like a mini film festival, with many different styles and techniques on display.

Secondly, we should be seeing a new trailer for the Disney/Pixar film “Up”. I would love to see something along the lines of the Mike & Sully through the closet door type of thing, where the trailer is not made up of content from the film. I think that tends to give away too much.

Another great reason to watch is the 3D trailer for the Dreamworks film “Monsters Vs Aliens”. Before the game, be sure [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…]