You know what's a good movie? (Part 3)

To recap, Tonedog and I thought it would be a cool idea to try a six degrees of separation type game. We'll talk about a good movie, then find a common actor, director, plot, etc., and then move on to the next movie.

In the last installment of "YKWaGM?" Tonedog talked about Toy Story.
Today, I'm going to tie that in with a few common themes with The Incredibles, number one obviously being animation, and number two, Pixar.

Disney distributed Pixar's The Incredibles in 2004, roughly 10 years after Pixar's smash hit Toy Story. This film is easily one of my favorite animated features of all time, and includes an all-star cast including Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee, Sarah Vowell and Brad Bird.


The concept for the movie originated with Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant on my favorite television series The Simpsons. Bird had also previously directed the excellent animated classic The Iron Giant. Work on The Incredibles started out as a traditionally-animated feature for Warner Bros.' animation studio, but after the studio shut down, Bird took the idea with him and went to Pixar.

Pixar had a lot of work on their hands making the feature. It was planned to be a whole 15 minutes longer than any of their previous films, and had a lot of difficult animation that needed to be perfected, such as long hair, skin and clothing on human characters.

One of the main reasons I appreciate the film so much is because of it's adult tone. While primarily a kids movie, the film had a lot of grown-up issues in it, such as the government ban of superheros, insurance company practices and family and marital problems. There's even [spoiler alert] a character that dies in the end!
The humor in the movie is also just plain genius, and reminiscent of the sarcastic tone found in The Simpsons.

Like that, Pixar once again revolutionized the animated film industry as we knew it, just as they had done a decade before with Toy Story. It's also the first Pixar film to feature an entirely human cast of characters.

The movie eventually opened up to $70,467,623 its opening weekend, averaging about $9,000 per screen, the highest opening weekend for Pixar at the time, and held its # 1 spot the second week. It went on to become the 5th highest grossing film of 2004, and the 3rd highest for Pixar after Finding Nemo and Up.
It is ranked in over 25 professional film critic's Top 10 lists for 2004.
It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards and won 2 of them, including Best Animated Feature, the 2nd of Pixar's 4.

Till today, I'd have to rank The Incredibles as my favorite animated movie of all time, tied with Disney's most recent hit, and Academy Award nominee for best picture, Up. I hope a sequel will soon be in the works, as they have a lot of different ways to continue this story line.

I hope you can all agree with me when I say that Pixar's The Incredibles is most definitely one of the greatest films of the 2000s.

Check back for our next installment of You Know What's a Good Movie? to see what movie Tonedog will tie-in with this new classic.

Guest Review: Albert D.: "Up"

Pixar doesn’t know how to stop making great movies. This isn’t one of their greatest, but it still kicks everyone else’s butt in animation.
I didn’t know much about the movie until I actually saw it. Their trailers didn’t really explain the plot other then there was a house, and it was going up! But that didn’t stop me from continuing to support Pixar. I can’t stand it when a movie has such little content that the trailer needs to show every single thing about a movie in order to draw some freaking appeal. It' pathetic. But I guess you can’t blame trailers, because so many movies come out now a days, it’s hard to choose what to watch and what not to watch.

"Up" was a different movie then Pixar usually makes. It drew tears of sadness, and tears for joy. Pixar really took animation to a new level to touch a person’s emotions. Carl Fredrickson, “the old man”, recently lost his wife and begins a new chapter of his life to pursue a dream they both had on his own, and finds a little help on the way. Mr. Fredrickson was living in a world beyond his own, and was soon being forced into a retirement home. He decides there’s nothing left for him now but to finally get away to a place he and his late wife had dreamed of their whole lives. All he needed was a compass, supplies, thousands of balloons, and the little piece of paradise in South America. His sidekick is an 8 year old boy named Russell, who is trying to help Mr. Fredrickson in order to receive his wilderness explorer "assisting the elderly" badge. Along the way he finds help from a curious pet bird, and a brave talking dog. They battle to help the bird, who Russell named Kevin, get back to her babies against a man named Charles Muntz that Mr. Fredrickson used to idolize as a child. Charles Muntz wanted to prove to the rest world that he was the ultimate explorer and the rare bird named Kevin was the missing link to prove it. He’s protected and cared for by a crew of talking dogs.

Like I said this movie was extremely entertaining, just not one of Pixar’s best. It’s hard to top movies like "The Incredibles," or "Ratatouille," but it's still amazing in its own right. It had very little dialog, like "Wall-E," but way more of a human element.
The other thing I like about Pixar movies is that they appeal to all ages. Most movies can’t do that. Most movies really focus their attention on a specific genre of people, whether it's a chick flick, comedy, action, or drama. Pixar, on the other hand, really packs a punch and includes a little bit of everything. Movies like this one really show that animated movies are going to stay in high demand, and more and more companies are going to follow in Pixar’s footsteps.

I guarantee you're going to leave the movie theater saying one word, “Squirrel!”

Quickie: Promotional poster for Oobermind

Hey everyone,

Last week I mentioned the Dreamworks project about Superheros, ala "The Incredibles", it's called "Oobermind". AICN has just released a poster. It looks pretty, but we'll have to wait and see the movie to know for sure. Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey will be the stars of this movie set to be released in November of next year. The premise is this: superhero beats everyone, gets bored, wants a super villain to make him look good.... HOLD ON, WAIT! Sounds like Mystery Men, but shhhh.... Ben Stiller is producing "Oobermind", so there's no way the star of Mystery Men would re-hash a story and just make it animated would he? Hmm... naw, I'll still see it. Enjoy.