Toy Story 3

[Meg]

Here's a new character poster from the film, which was posted on Disney/Pixar's Facebook page -

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d58/S ... 1266509221

[chernabog]

Awesome! The more I see of this film, the more I find myself not caring that it's a sequel instead of a wholly new franchise. I agree that Cars 2 is a hard one to get excited about straight off the back of this but the small gap between that and The Bear and the Bow means it's not a massive wait for something new.

[EricJ]

And when we get a Toy character that deliberately cute...we know Pixar is Up To Something.
Never trust what you see.

[Meg]

Looks like you were on to something - turns out the character is male, something the character design doesn't suggest at first glance...

[GeorgeC]

Update on Studio Ghibli DVDs --

http://www.nausicaa.net/wiki/Latest_New ... ased_on_BD


The substance is that there is confirmation of conversion of older Ghibli titles to Blu ray with releases coming later this year.

No confirmation on what titles are being released on BD or what the release schedule is like...

Expect at least a 2-3 month wait for North American releases AFTER the Japanese premiere dates.

Right now, Ponyo is the only Studio Ghibli feature film on Blu ray now. The American release of Ponyo debuts next month.

My money is on My Neighbor Totoro being one of the first earlier films to make its debut on BD unless some restoration work needs to be done on it. It's a surer but that newer films from the past ten years (Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, etc.) will see BD debuts first.

EDIT: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... his-summer

Latest word is that Nausicaa will be the next Studio Ghibli film to hit Blu ray. No word on the exact date of the Blu ray disc release beyond the fact that it's planned for "summer 2010."

[EricJ]

When I heard the male actor too, FIRST thought was "Dennis Leary as Francis, from A Bug's Life", and wondered What Was The Catch.

[chernabog]

I know this isn't really related, but I didn't know if it would really be worth starting a new thread based on so little information. Anyway, over at Upcoming Pixar is a bit of news about a possible future film or short.

http://pixarplanet.com/blog/more-art-re ... production

[Meg]

Interesting! I'm guessing it's not a short, simply because the number of different dinosaurs/characters there are rough models of. Normally most of their shorts don't feature more than two or three characters...Could be wrong of course.

[Foxtale]

One looks like Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur.

[Josh]

Regarding Ken in Toy Story 3, I was shocked to learn an actual Ken doll - Animal Lovin' Ken - was its inspiration. In an interview with MomLogic.com, director Lee Unkrich explained:

We were happy that Mattel was okay with us going with that. At first they wanted us to use whatever their current Ken was. And we said no, we know that it's going to be funny this way.

[Foxtale]

That is too funny. When I saw that Ken that was the first one I thought of. I had that Ken doll when I was younger and I immediately saw the resemblance. It definately is funnier that way.

[American_dog_2008]

It's getting better and better!

[ShyViolet]

Here is a third trailer (international) that is about the same but has a few new scenes:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44016

*language in comments

[Ben]

Nice! I've caught up with most of the Ghibli films on our Film4 movie channel here, who have been running them all on and off over the past two years. I still have to say that I find some of the plotting to be "out there" and the dubbing to be a bit "dubbed", if you can see what I mean, and still can't quite get my head around the frankly poor animation combined with some scenes of great beauty, but I have to say I've enjoyed more of them than I was expecting.

However, I'd probably resist the BDs as I'm quite happy with my off-air DVDs for the majority, though I'm ready and eager for Porco Rosso, Cagliostro and maybe a couple of others. Rand is going to be handling our review coverage for the upcoming wave, but I may have to fight him for some of those other titles in the coming months!

[Randall]

No problem there. I've reviewed most of the others already anyhow, and have copies of them all. They look pretty good on DVD, and an upgrade to Blu may not be all that enticing for me.

I watched Totoro again last night (maybe my least favorite Ghibli title, but still decent enough), and plan on viewing Castle in the Sky tonight or tomorrow.