Cars

Now that Pixar is a part of mighty Disney empire, its feature animations are big summer animation releases, until Disney animation studio can get their acts together. John Lasseter finally returns to the directing duty after long absence with a fine form. The early net reviews were quite mixed, but I knew I could trust John and his Pixar team and I had a blast of time with other kids in the theater.

The movie is lush and glitters like sunlight reflecting on water. If it weren't for the talking cars, the scenes were breathtakingly real. I never described any Pixar animation as photo-realistic, but this movie certainly showcases Pixar technical prowess. They are only few years away from making realistic humans for their animations, save for Final Fantasy: the Spirits within. He also features somewhat over-the-top directions, even though the movie is set around race cars. Pixar animations have featured extremely streamlined, efficient storytelling, but I felt some of the scenes in this animation were a little sentimenal, sometimes indulgent, and showy. I think John Lasseter wanted to push his directorial skills to the limit with advances in CG technologies as well as healthy competitive spirit with other Pixar directors, mainly Brat Bird, in my humble opinion.

It's clearly not John Lasseter's best efforts to the date, but the movie is still the best I've seen in this year. Now if you will excuse me, I gotta go buy some Cars toycars for my kid cousins.

Ratatouille trailer is a hit! Brad Bird's direction in this little piece is simply superb. I especially loved it since I'm going to Paris later this month to sample their finest cheese, wine, and beautiful parisians. Oui, j'adore Paris!

One Man Band, a short animation attached to Cars was disappointing considering their previous excellent efforts. The idea was fine, but somewhere in the execution, it lacked... pathos. I certainly hope this doesn't mean Pixar's story department people are spreading too thin to work on many projects at once in their pipelines.