I loved this film! You have to see it in it's 3D version too. It reminded me alot of another great film...Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO. The focus is on an elderly gentleman CARL FREDERICKSON (Ed Asner) and a wonderful character named RUSSELL (Jordan Nagai)...a modern day CHARLIE BROWN. Make sure you bring some tissues...the montage towards the beginning is REALLY well done. PIXAR has another ACADEMY AWARD winner here. I rank it high up there with THE INCREDIBLES. PIXAR is light years ahead of all the other PIXAR wannabes and the one half hour of trailers before the feature were proof of that. Don't animation companies realize that it takes heart and warmth in these films (like RANKIN/BASS films have) to make them a masterpiece as PIXAR does? There was a trailer for an AWFUL upcoming DISNEY computer animated film called G FORCE, that the theater showed three times?!?!? The trailer ended with hamsters saying "Poop in his hand"? I heard small kids in the theater repeating that line after the trailer. Total garbage. Anyway, do not miss UP! TOY STORY 3 in 3D is next and they are redoing TOY STORY 1 and 2 in 3D!
Boy, am I gald I didn't listen to the reviewers at AMAZON on this book. This book is just as good as any of the other of the PIXAR Art of books...maybe even a little better. Tim Hauser did a bang up job! PIXAR also cites RANKIN/BASS as a HUGE influence on the film. They were trying to create that "Animagic" type look and feel, since it was to be in 3-D. I would love to storyboard the next PIXAR classic. After I did my first post about UP, two weeks later I heard the WGN radio morning team saying the same exact things about the heart and warmth, awful trailers from the PIXAR copy cats, etc.
My friend Albert Lozano designed and worked on alot of this film! I LOVE this design (My favorite in the film). Albert and I became friends when he was working at SPUMCO.
