Entries associated with the tag "Ratatouille":

You can have your WALL-E, as calculated and corporate a product as the object of its own anemic eco-satire (which pulls so many punches that even Bush and Cheney could probably support the message: yo, we're for less garbage and that kinda shit ... and let's get rid of those fat people too—yeee-haw!). Me, I'm more into Doug Sweetland's Presto, the five-minute Pixar short that comes on before the sentimental google-eyed robot gets down to its sanitized, softball business. Not that Presto doesn't have problems of its own, mainly in character animation that almost seems xeroxed from Ratatouille, which already looked so airbrushed and cuddly that even babies couldn't feel remotely threatened by it. (So whatever happened to all those jagged cartoon edges of the 40s? Best keep the Termite Terrace people away from pointed metal objects ... ) But the pace is dizzying, sometimes even disorienting, both physically and mentally, a perpetual-motion circus—up-down, in-out, all from a handful of obsessional riffs and themes—that puts you in mind of Road Runner and Coyote and at least a half a dozen anvils. A lot of imaginative stretching from all parties involved, extending well beyond the professional "tastefulness" that predictably turns WALL-E into such a dispassionate, stifling bore.

But don't take my word for it—you can watch the whole thing online here.

Hey, glad you could make it! Let me take your coat. What are you drinking? Guinness? Well, how about Old Style? This is a free paper, you know.

Yeah, we realize the Oscars are hopelessly corrupt, but we needed an excuse for a party. We've all filled out ballots, and here's what we'd like to see win:

PAT GRAHAM  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages ("choice with a figurative gun to my head, though Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding's more to my liking"). Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises. Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There ("easiest of all the procrustean decisions here, with fewest reservations—though oddly enough I did have a couple on first viewing"). Best Animated Feature: Persepolis ("unfortunately"). Best Cinemathography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood ("though how much actually has to do with Elswit, since most of the important logistical choices—re where to position the camera and how scenes ought to reveal themselves through evolutionary long takes rather than editing-room montage—belong to the director rather than the cinematographer [or at least ought to], and seem open to debate"). Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum (really brilliant, in a frenetic, hyperactive way that, unfortunately, makes for a movie badly in need of an anchor"). Best Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, Across the Universe ("just to get the movie in there somewhere...what do I know about costumes?").

ANDREA GRONVALL  Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Foreign Language Film: Beaufort. Best Documentary Feature: Sicko. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum. Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti/Francesco Lo Sciavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

J.R. JONES  Best Picture: Atonement. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Atonement. Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her. Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton. Best Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Juliette Welfling, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer, Atonement. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

JOSHUA KATZMAN  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Brad Bird, Ratatouille. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Julie Christie: Away From Her. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Jay Cassidy, Into the Wild. Best Art Direction: Jack Fisk/Jim Erickson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Score: Marco Beltrami, 3:10 to Yuma.

REECE PENDLETON  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul "I Drink Your Milkshake" Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: "Sorry, but I just can't get past the fact that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood wasn't eligible."

Is this what contemporary animation ought to be about?:

"Ratatouille is a tremendous accomplishment; An animated fable that feels more painstakingly true to life than most movies dare attempt."

"Pixar manages to achieve something that few other big Hollywood films do these days: a convincing reality. The body language & emotions of the characters, the machinations of the kitchen, the sights and sounds of Paris, and the dice of the celery, Ratatouille gets it all right, down to the seemingly insignificant details."

"The multitude of animators clearly paid close attention to facets of our daily lives that we take for granted: knife marks on a cutting board, the way raindrops splash when they hit the sidewalk, the glow from a street lamp. Sitting through "Ratatouille," it doesn't take long for you to forget that you're watching an animated movie and just allow yourself to become immersed in this glorious realism."

"Brad Bird's Ratatouille is the first Pixar film that feels like a studio film and not an event picture."

"And the animation, oh, the animation. Every hair in Remy's coat, a shimmering field of blues, grays, and greens, appears to have its own life."

Well yes, those "shimmering fields" I can viscerally groove on too, since getting lost in imaginative textures, the intricacies of mass and graphic linearity that leave quotidian concerns with "realism" behind, is exactly what we depend on animation for. Or at least have in the past, since apparently what we have now is something else again . . .

I'm not a fan of Ratatouille. It's a measured, professional job, almost dutiful in its craft, sticking to responsible "realist" parameters, a well-mannered "studio film" rather than "an event," embracing all the liabilities of live-action shooting—e.g., the fidgety focus pulling, not "realism" at all but the product of optical limitation, what camera lenses can or can't do—as if they're "natural" creative options. It's what comes with the live-action territory, what animation, whenever it wants to, can utterly breeze right past.

By all means admire the tight little flourishes if that's what turns you on—sedate "shimmering" effects, like anal-retentive hairs on the back of Remy's coat (except I can't help recalling that last year's Happy Feet did much the same thing to considerably less applause—poetic evocations there, always a serendipitous ripple of abstract mass and line, of imagination in love with its own visual daring, whereas in Ratatouille it's mainly a matter of technique, something the animators do because they can, as part of a strict mimetic program). But all this emphasis on literal replication, what I've touched upon elsewhere as the homuncular urge, seems a creative dead end, as naturalistic painters discovered in the 19th century and, let's assume, computer animators will eventually also. Meanwhile there's "reality" and the imaginative cramp that comes with it. How very much like what we already know . . . except isn't that why we have live-action movies?