I’m both very excited and a little disappointed with this news.  I have every confidence that the movie’s going to be amazing: Stanton’s already a two-time Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominee — and that’s not even counting the fact that Michael Chabon (one of my favorite novelists) worked on the screenplay, too.  And I’m glad for Stanton in that he’s stretching himself and trying to do something different.  It’s not often that animation directors cross over to live action or vice versa (though Mad Max director George Miller did so with impressive results with Happy Feet).

This means that my two favorite animation directors (combined, they were in charge of four of my top five Pixar movies) are working on live-action flicks instead.  The Incredibles and The Iron Giant director Brad Bird is readying 1906 (also due in 2012) about the great San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires which nearly destroyed the city in — you’ll never believe this — 1906.  It’s not as if I’m worried about Pixar’s output dropping in quality while those guys work on non-animated features.  Up, for instance, was perfectly excellent without any input from either Bird nor Stanton (well, that’s not entirely true; both Bird and Stanton are senior executives at Pixar who surely have input into everything).  But it does mean that we won’t see animated features from either of them until probably 2014 at the very earliest.   I trust them both and will gladly rush out to go see both of their live-action movies.  What little bit I’ve heard about each sounds like they have the potential to be fantastic.  And again, kudos to both for trying new things.

But I’m already looking forward to both of them returning to animation someday.

For the second straight weekend, Up was the top movie at the box office in the United States Ummm, oops, scratch that…Up was the second-place movie at the box office in the U.S. this last weekend – its gross dropped only 35% from last weekend to this weekend.  People, that’s absolutely spectacular, at least for most movies, and it’s still pretty impressive even by Pixar’s lofty standards (see chart below).  For some perspective, industry pundits celebrated Star Trek’s 42% second-week dropoff as an example of excellent staying power, and this is…well, it’s seven better, isn’t it?  (For further comparison, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian fell off 55% between the first and second weekends and X-Men Origins: Wolverine fell off 69%.)

The lesson to be learned here?  Short movie titles lead to better audience retention numbers, of course.

Up has already grossed $137 million and is still going strong after weekend number two, meaning it’ll easily sail over the $200 million mark with a decent shot at $250 million by the time it’s done, which would put it in the upper echelons of Pixar’s top moneymakers (but well below Finding Nemo, their biggest hit to date).  For more numberiffic comparison, here’s how the nine previous Pixar flicks did in their first two weekends and overall:

So, it’s official:  Up is a blockbuster commercially and critically:  an astonishing 98% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com and, honestly, probably already something of a lock for next year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar (or at least a nomination; we do still have half the year left).  That makes Pixar ten-for-ten, consistency which is almost mind-boggling.  They’ll have to wind up with a swing-and-a-miss someday, of course, but this streak is one I’m hoping doesn’t end anytime soon.

And Up gives us these weighty messages wrapped up in the gaudy Mylar of thousands of helium-filled balloons.

As I discussed in my ranking of the ten Pixar movies to date, the “worst” (for some awfully lenient definition of “worst”) of their films don’t engage the emotions nearly as much as they engage the eyes.  That fault most certainly does not plague Up – I have to admit that I cried while watching it, and I can’t remember if I’ve ever done that before.[1] Pixar started their career by finding the humanity in inhuman characters (toys, bugs, monsters, etc.), but in Carl Frederickson they’ve created quite possibly their most human character yet.

Director Pete Docter lays out all we need to know about Carl in the first ten minutes of the movie, covering sixty-odd years of his life during the opening sequences.  His crankiness is given believability and meaning; grumpy though he may be, he doesn’t fit the simple Grumpy Old Man stereotype.  Carl is not ill-tempered by nature but by circumstance, and it’s the circumstance of meeting Russell, his young opposite, which begins to bring him out of his emotional hole.

Russell couldn’t be much more Carl’s antithesis:  young where Carl is old; optimistic and exuberant where Carl is withdrawn and cranky; brave and adventurous where Carl is shuttered.  Even visually the difference is clear:  Carl is almost a perfect square, Russell is almost a perfect egg.  What the two have in common is something of a common history, and the bond which develops because of it, each affecting the other, ultimately provides much of Up’s lift.

I must talk for a minute about the dogs which feature so prominently in Up.  To see just what an amazing feat of modeling and animation these dogs represent, what a leap in quality, please go back and watch the first Toy Story.  Even at the time, watching Buster felt like a “they’re not quite there yet” moment in the middle of an otherwise technologically mind-blowing (again, for 1995) movie: his square, awkward build and clunky animation left plenty of room for improvement.

And improve they did.  Each of the dogs here has not only a distinctive and well-rendered look, but a clear and well-animated personality as well.  Dug was especially done well:  his character model may be cartoonier than the other dogs’, but that more cartoony look allowed for more expressiveness, which the animators used to fantastic effect.  His look also visually sets him apart from the other, more realistically-modeled dogs so that we never group him in with the “bad” dogs.  Dug stands out as my favorite character in the movie:  the fact that he always remains Just A Dog and never an especially “humanized” or anthropomorphized dog (even though he could speak) was one of Docter’s nicest touches.

[1] I cried during The Iron Giant, but that’s totally different since I saw it on DVD.  Brad Bird lined up all of my emotional buttons and punched them all at once. The big meanie.

10. A Bug’s Life (1997)

While A Bug’s Life might be my least favorite Pixar movie, I want to note that I don’t at all think it’s bad.  It’s still perfectly entertaining, and the leap in technology from Toy Story, their first film, to this, their second one, was immense – just look at that model bird in the big climax.  But A Bug’s Life also featured their most annoying lead character, and most of the secondary cast, while funny, didn’t have any of the emotional connection that the great Pixar movies have.  This one gets a solid B from me, which is still damn good for being in the bottom slot on this list.

9. Cars (2006)

I know John Lasseter’s The Man at Pixar and all, but this labor of love from him was…underwhelming.  Again, certainly not bad – and it’s held up surprisingly well to the several thousand of viewings of it I’ve endured thanks to my two daughters.  But I think the fundamental problem with Cars was much the same as with A Bug’s Life:  its lead character simply wasn’t compelling enough (Owen Wilson’s voice just didn’t connect with me) and the supporting cast was colorful but not especially engaging (Paul Newman’s Doc Hudson aside).  Maybe that’s a problem which will get rectified in the sequel.

(Side note: I have a separate post brewing about that difference between these two “lower tier” Pixar movies and all the ones above it; I hope to get that written sometime this week.)

8. Monsters, Inc. (2001)

And now we enter the solid A-minus-and-up range with the movie which has bumped farthest down the list simply because all the films released after it have been better.  And that “emotional connection” thing I mentioned was missing from numbers nine and ten above?  Yeah, totally present here.  There’s more pure emotion in the closing shot of Sully than in those last two flicks put together.  (Pixar Show-Off Shot:  Sully’s fur, especially when blowing in the wind and covered in snow.)

7. Toy Story 2 (1999)

In many ways, probably a superior film to the original Toy Story, but this list is rating my favorite Pixar movies, not necessarily the best, and that’s a small but important distinction to make.  Story goes that Toy Story 2 was supposed to be a straight-to-video release (banging out straight-to-video sequels was pretty much standard practice with Disney’s animated features then), but when Disney realized just how good it was, they had Pixar finish it up for theatrical release instead.  And good thing, too:  it went on to gross $245 million, making it the third-highest-grossing film of ‘99.

6. Up (2009)

My full review’s coming very soon, but for now I’ll say that Up is the first animated movie since The Iron Giant to make me cry.  (Yes, I know that’s more knocks against my Jason Statham-like Tough Guy image.)

5. Ratatouille (2007)

One of the things I absolutely adore about this movie – even aside from the gorgeous renderings of Paris and the celebrations of both cooking and eating – is the fact that lead characters are so flawed.  Remy is petty, obstinate, defensive and rash; Linguini is weak (to begin with, anyway), cowardly, willing to take credit not due him, and equally rash.  Yet together, they manage to lift themselves above their “humblest beginnings” (so says the critic Anton Ego) to incredible successes – and they lift Ratatouille up, too.

4. Toy Story (1995)

I first discovered Pixar in 1992 when I saw their short film “Knick Knack” as part of an animation festival in Tampa.  I immediately fell in love with the company — while they certainly weren’t the first company to produce computer-generated animation, they were far and away the best I’d seen yet — and I desperately looked forward to seeing more work from them.  Then two years later, I heard they were producing a feature-length animated film to be released by Disney.  I saw Toy Story the weekend it opened in theaters — a tradition I’ve continued to follow with all nine of their subsequent releases — and loved it even more than I’d been expecting to.  The technology obviously doesn’t hold up as well as one might hope, but hey, it’s fifteen years old; that’s lifetimes in terms of software development.  The story craft was already there, though, and (here’s a little secret for you) that’s just as important to me as the actual animation.  (Toy Story also sparked some of my earliest love for Joss Whedon, before I even knew who the hell he was!)

3. WALL-E (2008)

WALL-E has to be one of the most engaging, sympathetic leads in any movie in recent history; the fact that director Andrew Stanton and his crew managed to convey those qualities with such limited dialogue really is amazing.  Yes, OK, fine — the environmental message can come across a little preachy.  Or a lot preachy.  But it’s a good message, so it doesn’t much bother me, especially in the service of such an excellent movie.

2. Finding Nemo (2003)

One of the most finely-tuned scripts of any movie I’ve seen, animated or otherwise.  Not a scene or line feels wasted to me:  the Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay director Stanton received for this movie was very well justified.  Nemo features one of the strongest supporting casts of any of the Pixar flicks, and the interplay between Ellen DeGeneres‘ Dory and Albert Brooks‘ Marlin still makes me laugh (and care) every time I watch it.  Unsurprisingly, the bit about the overprotective father learning to let go gets to me, too.  (Also, Nemo was the first of four Pixar movies to date to take home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.)

1. The Incredibles (2004)

Honestly?  The Incredibles is my favorite movie, period.  Here’s the thing:  when I first saw the teaser trailer for this one before Finding Nemo and found out what it was about and who was behind it, my mind was already blown.  It’s Pixar?  And superheroes?  And it’s written and directed by Brad Bird, the genius behind The Iron Giant, my favorite non-Pixar animated movie?  My expectations were so high that I was convinced there was no way this movie could possibly live up to them.

But it did.  To make a bad Pixar joke:  if my expectations were infinite, then The Incredibles went to infinity and beyond.  The characters are richly nuanced and believable, the animation and design are stunning, the script respected its audience’s intelligence, the heroic action scenes are, well, incredible…honestly, The Incredibles is pretty much my platonic ideal of a movie.  I sincerely hope they never make a sequel, because I don’t think it could do the original justice.

Of course, Pixar’s blown away my expectations before…

  The Walt Disney Company today revealed that the plot of Toy Story 3 – a movie the studio is making without longtime partner Pixar, who produced the first two Toy Story features — would surround the mysterious death of Woody at the hands of a “cereal (toy) killer” and the other toys’ quest for revenge. Speculation has it that Disney’s willing to kill off the beloved cowboy sheriff because Tom Hanks was reluctant to lend his voice talent to the project; given Tim Allen’s career of late, he’s expected to return to the role of Buzz Lightyear. No word on whether Slinky Dog (voiced by Jim Varney, who died in 2000) would also meet his grisly end in the flick.

The result?  Yeah, I’d probably watch this movie.  (That’s a lie.  Of course I’d watch this movie.)  I’m also convinced — not that I needed much convincing — that Fillion would make a damn good Hal Jordan.  Fillion himself gave Pitts’ handiwork a thumbs-up, but I don’t think that’s all that surprising seeing as it’s all about him.

Enjoy:

I’m a little surprised that I find myself in this predicament; I’ve seen every one of Tarantino’s films (with the recent exception of Death Proof) and I’ve enjoyed all of them.  Even Jackie Brown.  I’m in awe of his ear for dialogue, the performances he’s able to get out of his actors and his ability to synthesize wildly disparate elements from his wide range of influences into something uniquely his own.  Reservoir Dogs?  Excellent.  Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2?  Loved ‘em both.  Pulp Fiction?  Brilliant.

But all of the early marketing I’ve seen for Inglourious Basterds, in which a small troop of Jewish-American soliders in World War II try to strike fear into the Germans brutally killing Nazis, implies a very high level of violence — even high by Tarantino’s standards.  The posters, while graphically very striking, are also more than a bit disturbing:  various implements of brutality shown in heavily desaturated colors…except for the dark red of the blood splattered on everything.  The trailer certainly plays up the ultra-violence angle as well.

I should note that I don’t have the tolerance for extraordinary violence in movies that I used to.  I’ll usually be fine with a certain level of stylized violence in my movies, as long as the bloodletting isn’t the entire point:  I could handle the almost cartoony level of limb-chopping and blood-spurting in Kill Bill, for instance, but I have absolutely zero desire to ever sit through any of the recent “torture porn”-style horror flicks.  One of my best friends when I was a teenager was a diehard devoteé of Fangoria magazine and made me sit through countless gore-filled horror flicks, and I just never was able to gain any real kind of appreciation for them.  And I seem to be becoming even less appreciative of excessive amounts of blood in movies as I approach forty.

Now, though, I’ve started reading early reviews of Inglourious Basterds after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival that indicate that it’s…well, that it’s far more talky than reviewers had expected.  Early buzz is that it’s dialogue- and actor-driven with a fairly limited amount of action.  Dialogue- and actor-drive Tarantino?  That I very much can get behind — but I’m still not sure about the amount and kinds of brutality implied by the film’s marketing.  I realize that hyping the violence angle is far, far more likely to draw in viewers than hyping the quality of the dialogue — especially of the demographic most likely to want to see a Tarantino movie.  But as someone who feels like I should have this movie marketed to me, I’m more than a little turned off by all of the blood.  And isn’t misrepresenting the movie, if it is indeed as talky and less action-y as it now sounds, an awfully dangerous (if time-honored) marketing strategy?

Do any of you have any thoughts here?  Anyone have any sort of early opinion one way or the other?

I kept hearing that the Coen Brothers‘ Burn After Reading was a comedy — while there’s certainly some funny bits and situations in here (mainly from Brad Pitt), it’s hard to think of it as a “comedy”. According to the Coens themselves, it’s mostly something of a character exercise.  Those characters are brought to vivid life by a stellar cast which includes six Oscar nominees or winners (not counting the Coens themselves): Pitt, Clooney, McDormand, Swinton, Malkovich, Jenkins.  But the story’s lacking and there’s no real ending.  The total doesn’t come close to measuring up to the sum of the parts.

Grade: C+