keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

...I'd like to point you to a post, now a year old, called "Growth, Maturity and Decline."   My impression is that Pixar is done.  That doesn't mean that they won't make the occasional film that is exceptional, but the initial energy that propelled the company creatively is gone.  It was inevitable;  they are now predictable.  In terms of the previous article, they are a mature company.  The question now is when does the studio enter its decline?  This is not a criticism of the company so much as it is a sad observation.

Character A has a conflict with Character B based on pride and control. Character A's will to power accidentally does something to put Character B in jeopardy, so Character A has to rescue Character B. During the rescue, the two characters reconcile their differences and learn to accept each other. That's the underlying structure of Brave . It's also the underlying structure of Toy Story . We may never know the story that Brenda Chapman intended to tell before being removed from the director's chair, but the story we have is a retread. It comes in a visually attractive package with qualities that were unachievable just a few years ago, but it feels like Pixar, having rejected Chapman, reverted to something it felt comfortable with. So while Brave isn't one of the Pixar sequels already released or yet to come, it still feels overly familiar with only the environment to set it apart. A reliance on setting, rather than story, smacks of the later drawn Disney fea...

I never saw Brad Bird's Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and I won't be seeing Andrew Stanton's John Carter . The analyst in me is still interested in the contrast between the two. Brad Bird Made a sequel to a successful franchise The film starred one of the few actors who can still "open" a film Made a film that had similarities to his animated film The Incredibles Andrew Stanton Made a film based on a 100-year-old book with no preceding movie The film starred someone who has never before received top billing in a feature Made a film that was not similar to his animated films Finding Nemo and Wall-E . John Carter is being touted as a flop that may not hit $30 million for its opening weekend. While Bird emerged from Mission Impossible as somebody who is bankable in both animation and live action, Stanton is already being declared a live action failure. I found this paragraph from Deadline Hollywood interesting. I have no idea how valid it is, but the fa...

This blog seems to be tipping more and more into the business, as opposed to the art, of animation, but it's hard to avoid when various media industries are conspiring against artists and the public. I reported earlier ( here and here ) that Pixar was implicated in an illegal "no poaching" agreement with other high tech firms, meaning that if a Pixar employee applied for a job at Lucasfilm or Apple, those companies would refuse to hire the Pixar employee. Pixar returned the favour by refusing to hire applicants from Lucasfilm or Apple. That violates anti-trust laws. The damage is that it prevents employees from changing jobs or earning higher pay elsewhere. The case is about to go to trial and the Department of Justice has released some evidence that you can read below. For instance, on page 3 you can read that Lori McAdam of Pixar wrote in an internal email: “I just got off the phone with Danielle Lambert [of Apple], and we agreed that effective now, we’ll follow ...

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and savior of Pixar, has lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. The official announcement is here . Jobs was also a major shareholder in Disney after he sold Pixar to Disney. While he clearly prepared Apple to continue without him, we'll have to see who inherits his Disney shares. In any case, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull have lost an ally and Robert Iger's hand is no doubt strengthened. Men like Jobs are rare and he will be missed. There was no one in the computer or electronics field to compare with him.

I haven't seen Cars 2 (and won't), but the critical drubbing it took and Pixar's move into sequels has me wondering about the bigger picture. Companies, like individuals, go through a life cycle. They grow, they mature and eventually they decline. The only difference between companies and individuals is that because companies can outlive individuals or change their personnel, they sometimes revive. Growth is a phase where companies get larger but also expand their skills and discover their point of view. If we look at the Disney studio during Walt Disney's lifetime, we can see growth from 1923 to 1942. We can argue the exact dates or films, but the overall pattern is clear. During that time period, the skills and what exactly a Disney cartoon was supposed to be continued to evolve. After Bambi , the studio was mature. A Disney cartoon was a particular, identifiable thing . When the studio deviated from that, in The Three Caballeros or Toot, Whistle, Plunk and ...

John Lasseter's appearance at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m has been cancelled. Details are here .

I recently posted about Pixar and Lucasfilm being found guilty of restraint of trade by the United States Department of Justice. Apparently, this is not the only time Pixar has been found guilty of this. According to an editorial in The New York Times , "In September, the Justice Department settled another suit over similar no-solicitation agreements involving Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and Pixar." After a little digging, I came up with this : "Apple-Pixar Agreement "Beginning no later than April 2007, Apple and Pixar agreed that they would not cold call each other's employees. Executives at Apple and Pixar reached this express agreement through direct and explicit communications. The executives actively managed and enforced the agreement through direct communications. The agreement covered all employees of both firms and was not limited by geography, job function, product group, or time period. In furtherance of this agreement, Apple pl...

The United States Department of Justice has found Pixar and Lucasfilm guilty of restraint of trade. "Beginning no later than January 2005, Lucasfilm and Pixar agreed to a three-part protocol that restricted recruiting of each other's employees. First, Lucasfilm and Pixar agreed they would not cold call each other's employees. Cold calling involves communicating directly in any manner (including orally, in writing, telephonically, or electronically) with another firm's employee who has not otherwise applied for a job opening. Second, they agreed to notify each other when making an offer to an employee of the other firm. Third, they agreed that, when offering a position to the other company's employee, neither would counteroffer above the initial offer. ... "Lucasfilm's and Pixar's agreed-upon protocol disrupted the competitive market forces for employee talent. It eliminated a significant form of competition to attract digital animation employees a...

Link via Boing Boing . Go read the comments there.

John Canemaker has been contributing articles to Print 's online version. His latest is " Chuck Jones at the MacDowell Colony ," a speech that Canemaker made as the prelude to Chuck Jones receiving the MacDowell Medal. Jones was only the second filmmaker to receive it (the first was experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage). You may have seen video of Pixar's three dimensional zoetrope. If not, you can see it here . Gregory Barsamian is a sculptor who does something similar, creating sequential sculptures that he then films using strobe lights. Unfortunately, his site does not allow embedding or direct links to specific pages, but you can see his work here . Hogan's Alley is an eclectic magazine about all forms of cartooning. The 17th issue is out and the articles relating to animation include a career-spanning interview with the late Bill Scott conducted by Jim Korkis. Scott was a writer for Warner Bros, UPA and most especially, Jay Ward. There is also an or...

In comments to my post on Toy Story 3 , Daniel Caylor asked, "Can you give me some examples of rich characters from animation that have set the bar for you personally?" While animation people are constantly yelling, "story, story story," I think that they have a very limited understanding of certain aspects of it. They understand plot and they understand personality, but I think that animation's understanding of character is pretty perfunctory. Character in animation tends to be linear and go from A to B. Grumpy hates women and ends up loving Snow White. Pinocchio is irresponsible and then he's responsible. The plot moves these characters from one emotional place to another, but their growth is uncomplicated and easy. They don't have to struggle with their emotions in order to grow and don't have to give up anything along the way. It's no sacrifice for Pinocchio to stop being irresponsible. In fact, it's been nothing but a disaster f...

(There are mild spoilers below.) Watching Toy Story 3 , I think I'm getting a clearer understanding of Andrew Stanton's contribution to Pixar. While most people are comparing the latest Toy Story to the two previous films, it seems to me that the new Toy Story relates most closely to Finding Nemo and Wall-E , two films directed by Stanton. Stanton is listed as one of the writers on the latest Toy Story . Toy Story 3 resembles Nemo in that it is about moving to a new stage of life, where old relationships cannot stay the same. Marlin has to loosen his grip on Nemo in order for Nemo to grow. Andy has to let go of his childhood in order to become an adult; the toys have to accept that their time with Andy is over. Both films (and many of the Pixar features Stanton has contributed to) deal with separation. Stanton was adamant about Wall-E not being an ecological fable, yet Toy Story 3 takes the characters to a dump, an endless stretch of society's garbage. It's...

"At the same time, though, Miyazaki's presence points up the limitations of Pixar, which are the limitations of American commercial entertainment generally. Pixar landed on this list, and in the penultimate slot, not strictly on its own merits (which are, as I've said, considerable), but because of its imaginative dominance of family entertainment, and its capacity to shape future moviegoers' sense of what animation (and entertainment) should be. Pixar represents the best of what American commercial filmmaking is. But Miyazaki shows what might be possible without Pixar's inhibitions (or constraints, take your pick). "Factor out the few dark and disturbing moments in Pixar's films this decade (there haven't been many, really) and you're looking at a body of work that's fairly easy for even the youngest children to grasp and process, and ultimately not challenging compared to Miyazaki. In Pixar films, good characters sound (and usually ...

Michael Sporn , Keith Lango and Michael Barrier have all written posts expressing their reservations about Pixar's latest feature. All are articulate and their criticisms are worth considering.

(Mild spoilers below.) I was beginning to worry that Pixar had passed its peak. Cars and Wall-E were both, in my opinion, weaker than their directors' previous films. As so many animation directors seem to do their best work early on and then repeat themselves to lesser effect, I wondered if Pete Docter would fall into the same pattern. That isn't the case. It's nice to see that Brad Bird is not the only director at Pixar who is at the top of his game. Carl Fredricksen and Charles Muntz have both have made commitments to the past. Both are trying to do something they failed to do in their youth. Muntz is trying to prove his discovery of a giant bird and Carl wishes to follow in Muntz's footsteps, exploring a remote area of South America. Carl is the only one of the two to realize that the present is more important than the past and that opening himself up to others is more satisfying than pursuing a solitary goal. Carl is introduced as a child and a lovely seque...

In my post about Pixar opening in Vancouver , I spent some time talking about the nature of Canadian business. Today's Globe and Mail has an article about Canada's problems with innovation and productivity. Here is a quote that elaborates on what I'd written earlier, dealing with the small national market and the branch plant mentality that is satisfied to make things that are created elsewhere, as the forthcoming Vancouver Pixar shorts will be. Canadian businesses just don't innovate enough. Too many don't have an internal culture of innovation. The domestic market is small and fragmented; not enough firms think internationally. International, for many, means the U.S., period, a rather dangerous myopia since that country is going to be economically crippled for a long time. The report doesn't say so directly, but foreign ownership is a drag. Yes, a few Canadian branch plants get “world-product” mandates from head offices for certain products, but most don...

The Museum of the Moving Image , as part of its Pinewood Dialogues , has posted an interview with Up 's director Pete Docter. (I earlier pointed to interviews on their site with Chuck Jones and Brad Bird. You can find out about those interviews here .)

I've been quite surprised by the absolute glee that has resulted from the announcement that Pixar will be opening a studio in Vancouver. It is, of course, a good thing. However, I hope that the people celebrating are not blinded by the Pixar dust in their eyes. It is a good thing, but not a great thing. There are limitations relating to Disney, Pixar, general corporate behaviour and the nature of Canadian industry. The good things are fairly straightforward. It's always good when there's an increase in employment opportunities, especially in the current economy. There will undoubtedly be educational benefits. Pixar will bring their rigs, their pipeline and their software tools and more people will have the opportunity to use them. While they are proprietary, the nature of software is such that once something exists, it is relatively easy to imitate. Just as Disney knowledge spread into the larger animation industry at the time of the 1941 strike, Pixar's approa...

The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Pixar will be opening a studio in Vancouver. The studio will hire 75 to 100 people, most of them Canadians, and will make all of Pixar’s three-dimensional, computer-animated short films, which usually run three to five minutes. All Pixar theatrical features will continue to be made at its main studio in Emeryville, Calif., which employs almost 900. This is not the first time that Disney (which owns Pixar) has set up in Canada. Earlier, Disney opened two studios, one in Vancouver and one in Toronto, to produce direct to DVD sequels. Those studios were both closed during the period when Disney was shedding studios (in Florida, Japan, France and Australia) at a dizzying pace. At present, anything that increases employment opportunities is a good thing. However, past experience shows that satellite studios tend to stay satellites. Rather than regard the satellites as minor league teams, where talent is developed and then moved up to the majors, the ...