In Contention

Tag: Toy Story 2

  • INTERVIEW: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ producer Bonnie Arnold

    Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Bonnie Arnold was a product of the Watergate generation of journalists, fired up by the state of current political affairs. She sought her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia and soon took off to grad school at Boston University, where some dabbling in broadcasting was enough to light a fire of passion for the film business.

    “I got an internship at WGBH and started to get a little taste of what was going on and what other jobs might be available,” she says over lunch on the DreamWorks campus (as they call the Google-esque environment, with its health initiatives, yoga classes and mind-settling landscaping) in Glendale, California. That job led her back to a job in Atlanta with a television station and producer David Picker, who was working on the first season of “American Playhouse.” As soon as she set foot on location, Arnold knew this business was for her.

    “The minute I saw what went on behind the scenes of a film production, any menial job on that set was exciting to me,” she says. “Now it seems there are film commissions in every city in every state in the country. At that time there just weren’t. But Atlanta being a major airport, and Burt Reynolds bringing a lot of work there, Georgia’s a big state with mountains and the beach, there were a lot of advantages. I felt like I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.”

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  • 1/21 Oscarweb Round-up

    (from left) James Schamus and Ang Lee• Cathy Yan chats with “Up in the Air” star Anna Kendrick. [Speakeasy]

    • James Schamus sets to work on “tragic, suicidally depressing” script for Ang Lee.  Terrific. [Hollywood Reporter]

    • Peter Bradshaw saddles back up to “Toy Story 2,” with a father’s eye. [The Guardian]

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Phenom ‘Activity’

    Couples RetreatThe number one movie at the box office this weekend was Universal’s “Couples Retreat” with $35.3 million. That’s the ninth-biggest October debut in history and the biggest total ever tallied on this particular weekend of the year, but it’s not the biggest success story of the weekend. Not by a mile.

    No other films were released wide to compete against Vince Vaughn and company, so the (last) resort comedy was able to stretch its legs and monopolize the date crowd despite poor reviews. Mainly, people showed up to see if the filmmakers actually had the gall to cast Jon Favreau as the irresistible ladies man. Now that’s comedy.

    “Zombieland” dropped a very good 39% due to the lack of new competition and has shot up close to $50 million total already. Second weekend holds were pretty good all around with the “Toy Story” double feature dipping 39% as well and “Whip It!” falling 40%. Only “The Invention of Lying” seems to have missed out on the good word of mouth and falls 52%.

    But let’s talk about “Paranormal Activity.” The film opened two weeks ago with midnight showings only at 12 theaters in college towns. It averaged $6,489 at each of them, which was pretty impressive. Last week it expanded to 33 screens and a couple of Friday and Saturday evening shows, which turned into a $16,129 per theater average for the weekend. Again, impressive, and proof that Paramount’s unusual distribution approach (which at first appeared like just dumping unwanted product with a contractually obligated release) may actually be working.

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  • 10/2 Oscarweb Round-up

    Where the Wild Things Are• Maurice Sendak’s one nit-pick with the adaptation of his “Where the Wild Things Are.” I agree with him. [io9]

    • Capturing the miniature worlds of the film. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Adding a new dimension to Woody and Buzz Lightyear. [New York Times]

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Great ‘Balls’ on fire

    SurrogatesAmerica lined up for seconds as “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” topped the box office for the second weekend in a row, dropping only 19% to $24.6 million. That’s a fantastic hold for the only family film out in the market and makes $100 million a very real possibility, if not a formality.

    It was an otherwise slow and disappointing frame at the multiplex as audiences found some other way to entertain themselves. Did football season just start?

    Second place went to Disney’s “Surrogates,” which grossed $15 million. While that might sound a little soft, it’s actually better than Willis’s average for this type of film in recent years as “Perfect Stranger,” “Lucky Number Slevin,” “16 Blocks” and “Hostage” all did less than $13 million. The trailer was great but the posters featuring robot models were pretty weak and I think Disney missed an easy chance to take the top spot.

    MGM released its first film since “Valkyrie” amidst reports of possible bankruptcy and the $10 million pulled in by “Fame” is probably not going to help matters much. When dance films like “Stomp the Yard” and “Step Up” can pull in $22 million each, a remake of a well-known classic shouldn’t pull in less than half of that. Of course, I use the term “classic” as loosely as they use the term “remake.”

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  • ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Toy Story 2’ 3D re-release trailers

  • THE LISTS: Ranking 14 years of Pixar

    UpThis weekend, Pixar Animation Studios will be releasing its 10th feature film, “Up.”  For many, with the film having successfully opened this year’s Cannes International Film Festival, the occasion has marked another milestone in the studio’s continued maturation.

    In my recent review of the film, I wrote, “Watching Pixar Animation grow and develop as a studio has become almost more fascinating than experiencing one of the company’s many creative films unfold on screen. Beginning with an industry leap in 1995’s ‘Toy Story’ and eventually moving into its daring own with 2008’s ‘WALL-E,’ the studio has, at the very least, shown a desire for creative progression.”

    So it seemed as good a time as any to look back on the last 14 years of Pixar product and dedicate an installment of The Lists to the studio’s esteemed portfolio.  Of course, unlike other editions of this feature, there are only 10 entries to fill the collective.  But the order will be different for everyone.

    “WALL-E,” for example, was a major high point for many last year.  Not as much for me.  “Monsters, Inc.,” on the other hand, isn’t considered top tier Pixar to some, but as you’ll note below, I beg to differ.

    In addition to the features, I thought it might be fun to rattle off a ranked list of the 16 shorts the studio has produced, going all the way back to 1984’s “The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.”  Some of them appeared in theaters alongside feature films, others might have popped up on home video as bonus features.  You can see nearly all of them on the recently released “Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1” on DVD and Blu-ray.  The most recent addition to this collective is “Partly Cloudy,” which plays along with “Up” in theaters.

    On to the list.  Be sure to give us yours in the comments section below.

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  • ‘Toy Story 2’ meets ‘The Dark Knight’

    Kind of awesome:

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 films of 1999

    (from left) Joe Pantoliano, Laurence Fishburne, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The MatrixRemember that Entertainment Weekly cover from November of 1999?  The headline boldly proclaimed: “The year that changed movies.”  Indeed, it has become nearly a cliche to harp on and on about those 12 months of solid product as a time not equaled since the glory year that was, 1939, but to many, the truth was the truth.  1999 was the best year for films in a long, long time.

    And it wasn’t a microscopic view of “quality” either.  A broad net was cast, from genre successes aplenty to art house sensations, both finding equal play in the film awards circuit that year.  And so it is that hammering out a list of the 10 best constitutes to be a pastime of sorts for the movie lover, especially those like me who were experiencing an awakening of sorts around that time.

    1999 was my first year of film school — the dark ages, as I like to call them (because I’ve come to know film school as a fool’s errand of sorts, an education not easily passed from one person to the next but better learned through trial and tribulation).  But I was still an eager, unjaded soul and took a trip to the local theater one day with a troupe of friends for our own double feature: Sam Mendes’s “American Beauty” and David O. Russell’s “Three Kings.”  It was our first real understanding of the year that had been unfolding right before our eyes.

    “American Beauty” has, of course, aged quite poorly, though Russell’s Iraq war film remains a staple of sorts, a unique blip in a consistently uneven genre.  This was already the year that had seen the release of the first “Star Wars” installment in over 20 years (however disappointing), the last great exhibit from the portfolio of the cinema’s greatest artist (Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut”) and a science fiction masterpiece that owed as much to William Gibson as anything else (at least those ideas were making it to the screen).

    Moreover, this was a cinematic year that would see releases from more top-tier directors than any other year: Kubrick, Scorsese, Lucas, Lynch, Allen, Fincher, Burton, Leigh, Minghella, Anderson, Almodóvar, Mann, Lee, Stone, Jordan, Sayles, Soderbergh, Forman, Burton, Pollack, Darabont and Howard, while simultaneously launching the exciting careers of untold newbies.  The range of quality, as expected, was certainly wide, but that all of these guys were in neck deep in their work during the same stretch of time had plenty to do with the perception of 1999, then and now.

    So with that, I felt that this week’s top 10 list (a Tuesday regularity now, if you haven’t been keeping score) would address 1999, the year that was.  Here are my picks:

    (from left) Mark Wahlberg, George Clooney and Ice Cube in Three Kings10. “Three Kings” (David O. Russell)
    David O. Russell is a visionary of sorts, but he seems to always be right at the surface, just about to break through with an unyielding brilliance, never fully harnessing the wicked talent he clearly has.  But for a brief moment in the fall of 1999, he discovered an outlet in this Iraq War dramedy that became more famous for its off-screen drama than what unfolded on-screen.  Pity, because I would rank “Three Kings” in a list of the 10 greatest war films ever made without flinching.  George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Spike Jonze and Ice Cube headlined a sprawling cast that probably deserved some ensemble attention.

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  • Counting down the best of Pixar

    In honor of today’s release of Walt Disney/Pixar’s “WALL-E” (it seems we’re sticking with the hyphen), the gang at New York Magazine’s Vulture blog have offered up a countdown of the best films in Pixar’s consistently impressive portfolio.

    I have to say, I share their opinion that “The Incredibles” simply…isn’t all that.  I was on the bandwagon for “The Polar Express” back in 2004, but comparisons aside, the film never hooked me the way it did the rest of the film-going community.  And that says a lot, given my comic geek roots.  It’s a nice film, but a little flat.

    Their pick for the studio’s greatest work is a slightly unconventional choice: “Monsters, Inc.”  I confess I actually haven’t given it a second look since 2001 (what became the year of “Shrek”), but I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy for a number of years now.

    My choice is far and away “Finding Nemo,” the only animated film ever to land in my top five for a given year (#3 in 2003).  But I do love the “Toy Story” films.

    Here’s their list:

    1. “Monsters, Inc.”
    2. “Finding Nemo”
    3. “Toy Story 2”
    4. “Ratatouille”
    5. “Toy Story”
    6. “A Bug’s Life”
    7. “The Incredibles”
    8. “Cars”

    I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but it’s looking more and more like “WALL-E” will top everyone’s list in due time.

    Speaking of “WALL-E,” Sasha Stone at Awards Daily has put up her first State of the Race column this week, focusing on the film, its awards potential and the political message supposedly within.  Take a look:

    Wall-E begins its run at midnight.  Some peripheral chatter is focused on it being not kiddie fare or it being a target for conservatives for having a “message.”  If the message ends up being that we as a culture have a disease of consumerism and that it will end us in pathetic ruin, that is not a great leap in logic.  Look around.

    But if the conservatives do start whining about it that only means its Oscar chances shoot through the roof, as if they haven’t already.  We have here a “too big to ignore” film, a Schindler’s List of the animated feature category and if anything is to take it down it’s only going to be a shocker at the box office, an extremely unlikely scenario.

    Read the rest here.