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Showing posts from February, 2021

Pixar Month - Soul (2020)

          Hey guys, Chuck here. Well, here we are at the end of Pixar Month . With that said, let's take a look at Pixar's latest release: Soul . Initially intended for a theatrical release in 2020, Soul  was ultimately pushed to having a release on the streaming platform Disney+ on Christmas Day. But, at the end of the day, was it worth it? Let's find out as we wrap up Pixar Month  with Soul .         So, the movie focuses on Joe Gardener, who is a middle school music teacher who dreams of one day having a career as a jazz pianist. One day, when the opportunity to do so arises, he falls down a manhole and ends up in a place called the Great Beyond. Long and short, he's dead. However, Joe is unwilling to die and give up on his dreams, so he enters into a place called the Great Before, where souls train to journey to Earth and become a living person. It is here that he meets 22, and now Joe has to train her and help find her "spark." So, does Joe return to life

Pixar Month - Pixar Films I Missed

          Hey guys, Chuck here. Well, we're almost at the end of Pixar Month , and I couldn't quite get to every single Pixar film that has been made. Mostly because even though I like a few of these movies, I don't like them enough to give them their own reviews at this time. Also, I procrastinate, whoop-dee-doo. So, without further ado, here are my quick thoughts on the Pixar Films I Missed.          Now, let's get this out of the way, I did not see either Monsters University  or The Good Dinosaur . For one, I thought they both looked incredibly stupid, and on top of that, why would I want to see Mike and Sulley from Monsters Inc  in their college years in what's basically Pixar's version of Animal House ? So, aside from those, let's dig into some Pixar films I did see.          Starting off with the Cars Trilogy. Okay, the first and third films of this series are okay, but the second one was just straight up stupid. The first Cars  focuses on hotshot rook

Pixar Month - Coco (2017)

       Hey guys, Chuck here. Well, we're inching closer and closer to the end of  Pixar Month , so today, we're going to be taking a look at Pixar's 2017 film Coco .           The movie introduces Miguel, who comes from a family in Mexico that specializes in shoemaking, going as far back as his great-great-grandmother, Mama Imelda, who began the family business after her musician husband left her and their daughter, Coco, behind to focus on music. Miguel, however, is less interested in shoemaking and more interested in music, especially the guitar, much to the detriment of his grandmother, who is the daughter of Coco, now known as Mama Coco.           On the night of Dios de los Muertos, Miguel accidentally falls into the mausoleum of Mexican music legend Ernesto de la Cruz, whom Miguel believes is his great-great-grandfather based on an incomplete picture of Mama Imelda and an infant Mama Coco, with Imelda's husband's face torn off and the rest of him folded behind

Pixar Month - Toy Story 3 & 4 (2010/2019)

          Hey guys, Chuck here. Well, we're inching closer and closer to the end of  Pixar Month , so let's wrap up the Toy Story  series with Toy Story 3  and 4 . Released in 2010 and 2019, respectively, Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4  bring an end to both Andy's story, as well as Woody's story. But, let's dive into these films, starting with Toy Story 3 .           So, we open Toy Story 3  with Andy playing with his toys, and we actually see the scenario played out by the toys themselves. For instance, Woody and Jessie work together to save a group of Troll doll orphans from a runaway train, hijacked by One-Eyed Bart and One-Eyed Betty (Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head), with Buzz helping out, Slinky as a force field dog, Rex as a full-sized Tyrannosaurus, and Hamm as Dr. Porkchop, dropping a barrel of monkeys on them by pressing the "Death by Monkeys" button on his airship console. Years go on, and Andy is getting ready to head off for college, and the remainder o

Pixar Month - The Incredibles & Incredibles 2 (2004/2018)

        Hey guys, Chuck here. Today, for Pixar Month , you're getting two movies reviewed together: The Incredibles  and its sequel Incredibles 2 . Both films are directed by Brad Bird and feature the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Brad Bird, and Samuel L. Jackson. The first Incredibles  features the voices of Spencer Fox, Elizabeth Pena, Bud Luckey, and Jason Lee, while the sequel features the voices of Huckleberry Milner, Jonathan Banks, Catherine Keener, and Bob Odenkirk.           So the story of The Incredibles  is set in the world of superheroes, and one of the most beloved superheroes out there is Bob Part aka Mr. Incredible. On the day of his wedding to another superhero, a hero named Helen aka Elastigirl, Bob ends up stopping a car being chased by police, rescues a woman's cat from a tree, catching a guy who robbed a tour bus, who is knocked out cold by Elastigirl, and after a quick chat with best friend and superhero Lucius Best aka Frozone, ju

Pixar Month - Finding Nemo (2003)

         Hey guys, Chuck here. As we wind closer to the end of Pixar Month , here we come to a movie that, while I acknowledge it's good, it doesn't rank among my favorites from Pixar, and that would be the 2003 film Finding Nemo .           The story focuses on a clownfish named Marlin, who loses his wife Coral, along with most of the eggs with their unborn children, in a barracuda attack. A single egg survives, and Marlin protects it and names the child inside of it Nemo. Years later, and Nemo is excited for his first day of school, and Marlin has become more overprotective over Nemo, even going so far as to following the class, taught by a manta ray named Mr. Ray, to a place called the "drop-off," where Nemo is taken by a scuba diver, and Marlin goes on a journey to rescue Nemo. Along the way, Marlin meets a regal blue tang named Dory. Dory suffers from short term memory loss, but is able to memorize the words on a diving mask worn by the scuba diver that took Nemo

Pixar Month - Monsters, Inc. (2001)

        Hey guys, Chuck here. Today, for  Pixar Month , we head back to the early 2000's, at a time when Pixar films were more dominant at the box office than the hand-drawn animated films from Walt Disney Feature Animation (before it became Walt Disney Animation Studios), and take a look at Pixar's fourth feature: Monster's, Inc .           Set in a world filled with monsters of all shapes and sizes, Monsters, Inc . focuses on roommates and best friends James P. Sullivan, or Sulley for short, and Mike Wazowski, who work together on a scare floor at Monsters, Inc, a company where monsters enter the human world and scare human children, as the screams of children are harnessed as a source of energy. Sulley's main rival is a chameleon-like monster named Randall, who wants to take the top spot from Sulley. After a hard day's work, including two incidents of a "dead door," where a door has to be shredded due to the child no longer being scared, and a "23-

Pixar Month - Toy Story 2 (1999)

        Hey guys, Chuck here. It's been a few days, but here we are with the continuation of Pixar Month  with the first feature length sequel produced by Pixar: Toy Story 2 . Originally intended for a straight-to-video release, the story of this film became a project worthy of a theatrical release. So, let's dive into Toy Story 2 .         We open with Buzz Lightyear, who is on a mission for Star Command seeking out the secret base of Emperor Zurg, only to be defeated by Zurg, followed by a "Game Over" screen. Yeah, this fake-out turns out to be Rex playing the Buzz Lightyear video game. While Buzz gives some words of encouragement to Rex, Woody is looking for his cowboy hat, as he and Andy are set to go to Cowboy Camp. Slinky does manage to find the hat, but it turns out that the hat was taken by Buster, Andy's puppy that he got for Christmas at the end of the first Toy Story . Andy eventually walks in, and plays a scenario where Woody and Buzz save Bo Peep from

Pixar Month - A Bug's Life (1998)

         Hey guys, Chuck here. As we continue with Pixar Month , I'd like to talk about some behind-the-scenes history at the Disney studio. Back in the 80's, Disney was in a financial crisis, and needed new studio heads to turn the company's fortunes around. To this end, Michael Eisner joined the company as CEO, with Frank Wells as President of the Studio, and Jeffrey Katzenberg overseeing film production, particularly the animated films. This led to Disney's greatest era of film animation: the Disney Renaissance. Movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King , and Pocahontas were all released around this time, and were all critically and financially successful. It was also around this time that Disney made the deal with Pixar to produce their first animated feature, Toy Story . It was around this time that John Lasseter of Pixar pitched to Katzenberg the idea for Pixar's second animated feature, A Bug's Life . Unfortunately, maj

Pixar Month - Toy Story (1995)

         Hey guys, Chuck here, and welcome to the first review of Pixar Month . All throughout the month of February, I'll be taking a look at a few of my personal favorite films from Pixar Animation Studios, and we'll wrap up the month with my review of Pixar's latest film: Soul . Now, I won't be reviewing every Pixar movie, because for one thing, I haven't seen every Pixar movie ever made, and not only that, there's so many movies from Pixar and so few days in February. So, let's start Pixar Month  off with the first full-length feature from Pixar: Toy Story .          So, in the world of Toy Story, toys come to life when humans aren't around. So, for example, when a child leaves the room, the toys come to life and interact with each other. The particular group of toys we focus on are the toys belonging to a kid named Andy. The toys include Hamm the piggy bank, Rex the dinosaur, a bucket of green army men, Slinky dog, a Bo Peep lamp, Mr. Potato Head, a