RATATOUILLE at WonderCon
Last weekend at the WonderCon at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco, California, the latest about Disney Pixar’s upcoming feature “RATATOUILLE” was revealed during a presentation by its director Brad Bird. Attendees were treated to some more details about the story and the voice casting as well as to new clips from the movie - and finally also the first trailer, after the teaser has been around for quite a while. While attendees certainly enjoyed this part of the presentation, for those of us not able to attend another segment of the presentation might be even more exciting: the open-question session, during which the audience got Brad Bird to reveale some rather interesting news … about “RATATOUILLE” as well as other projects…
As a fan of great movie soundtracks and especially scores every new Disney Pixar movie brings up one big question: is Randy Newman going to provide the score and (if applicable) songs again? I have to admit: I don’t like his work. To me too much of his scores sound too similar to each other and have too much of a distinctive “Randy Newman”-style. Sure it worked great in say Toy Story and its sequel, but afterwards at least for me it got repetitive. Well … I guess I am not the only one with this personal opinion since according to Buddy-L’s report “large applause” greeted Brad Bird’s announcement that Randy Newman is NOT going to provide the score for “RATATOUILLE”. Instead Michael Giacchino is taking over the job once again after already scoring “The Incredibles” for Brad Bird - Disney fans also know him as the composer for ABC’s “Lost” and for the new soundtracks of “Space Mountain” at Disneyland Anaheim (and Hong Kong) as well as for “Space Mountain: Mission 2″ at Disneyland Paris. I admit: I am now really looking forward to hearing the score…
But since I just mentioned “The Incredibles”: Brad Bird was also asked, whether we might see a sequel to “The Incredibles”, afterall there must be more adventures in the live of a whole family of superheroes. And his answer - he really loves the characters and would love to re-visit them … but to do that the right story must be found as neither he nor Pixar does sequels just for the sequel’s sake … so the hoping and waiting of the fans will continue here. The same ordeal continues for all of Brad Bird’s fans who hope that he will return to traditional, hand-drawn animation. After all his feature “Iron Giant”, so not a box office hit, has still many fans (count me among them). But there might be hope that we will see another 2D-animated feature from Brad Bird since he said that he would love to alternate between directing CGI, traditonal animation and live action features. As much as I personally love traditional hand drawn animation and as much as I can understand that a director may want to have the diverse challenges posted by different mediums like CGI and hand-drawn animation, the goal should not be to choose any medium because of the medium’s sake. Each of the different mediums (this includes live-action, stop-motion etc.) lends itself to different styles of features. So the project, the story and the envisioned style of the feature should dictate the medium. But back to what Brad Bird said…
He was also asked, whether we might be able to enjoy a Disney Pixar feature anytime soon in Disney 3D - after all Disney presented its own CGI feature “Chicken Little” as well as a remastered version of “Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas” already worldwide in Disney 3D on the big screen. So when is Pixar getting into this game? Well, Brad Bird claims that Pixar several years ago made some tests ith IMAX 3D and weren’t convinced by the results and therefore are now a bit gun-shy. I am not sure whether I really think this will mean, that we won’t see any Disney 3D releases from Pixar anytime soon. Afterall the technology has developed alot in the last few years. Also IMAX 3D has the big disadvantage of its propietory large size screen format which requires adaptation of the screen action. Disney 3D on the other hand uses the same screen format as regular 2D movie theaters meaning that no parts of the action are lost on the sites / need to be added the top or bottom, allowing for an “easy transfer” of a feature between 2D and 3D.
For a more extensive coverage check out the report of Buddy-L over at Ain’t It Cool.