Pixar Animation Studios has sort of a funny relationship to its parent company, Disney: in terms of artistic and critical repute, its the company's prestige boutique line, yet it's also one of Disney's greatest cash cows. Last year's WALL-E was the fourth of Pixar's nine animated features to win the Academy Award, an achievement that is even more impressive when you consider that Pixar's first three features were made before the Academy bothered to create a category for Best Animated Feature. But last month, Richard Greenfield of Pali Research came up with an unusual way of celebrating the impending (May 29) release of the tenth Pixar feature, Up: he downgraded the company's stock. As Brooks Barnes reports in The New York Times, this was part of an overall expression of concern from "two important business camps — Wall Street and toy retailers" - about the commercial prospects of Up. The movie, which was directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and is to be released in 3-D, is about a 78-year-old man (voiced by Ed Asner) who, widowed and threatened with being moved to an assisted living facility, sets out for South America in a flying house powered by balloons, with an eight-year-old stowaway in tow. The naysayers fear that young audiences will find the aged protagonist and the lack of a prominent female character a turn-off. And the businessmen are expressing their lack of faith in the movie in a way that other moviemakers with strong critical reputations, such as Martin Scorsese, don't have to sit up nights worrying about: they're not lining up to produce lines of toys based on the film. "Thinkway Toys, which has churned out thousands of Pixar-related products since 1995’s Toy Story,” Barnes writes, "will not produce a single item."

This sort of talk pisses Pixar off, partly because they've heard it before.

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A collection of thirteen vignettes set around the country during George W. Bush’s presidency, We Pedal Uphill gauges the state of the union with less flash and blunt-force blather than your average Hollywood message picture, but nonetheless contains quite a bit of preachiness. Addressing various socio-political issues from the past eight years, writer/director Roland Tec certainly attempts a subtle touch, his script largely sidestepping declarative speeches and leaden exposition to make its points. His functional digital-video cinematography won’t win any awards, and his theater-trained cast’s unshowy turns are saddled with a stagey quality, but strictly in terms of aesthetics and performance, Tec’s film eschews – save for a few notable exceptions – ostentation and pomposity in favor of tonal and narrative modesty. Unfortunately, while he channels his anger, frustration and sadness about the nation’s health into short stories free of hysterics, his collage still all too frequently succumbs to moralistic clichés, and never coheres into a rousing, affecting whole.

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NEW YORK: "Essential Sturges" at Film Forum crams a week's worth of the good stuff into what's left of the year, with a day after another of the funniest double bills ever offered to a city full of people in full need of a sanctuary from all the sorry weather. Also booked through January 1, but showing only at early-afternoon matinees: the 1941 Hoppity Goes to Town, the 84-minute animated feature that marked the end of the Fleischer Brothers' challenge to the Disney monopoly. It's an unusual movie that saw the Fleischers toning down the trademark anarchy and injecting more of the Disney cuteness into their mix in what now looks like a desperate attempt to stave off the collapse of their company. The attempt failed: pushed back from its original release date so as to avoid direct competition with Disney's Dumbo, the movie wound up being released two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that did little to whet America's appetite for the tuneful tale of a lovelorn grasshopper's attempts to save his community from human onslaught. The movie's failure led to the end of Fleischer Studios, leaving it behind as a little-seen relic from a remarkable time in the history of American animated films.

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If you are anything like me -- and why wouldn't you be? -- you're a sucker for Christmas.  The arbitrary yet somehow natural-seeming traditions; the carols which somehow only sound right when you've got just enough bourbon-fortified eggnog in you; the extra days off from work; the fact that people give you free stuff wrapped in shiny paper; the way everyone pretends to be nice to each other for a change:  what's not to like?  It's also one of those Western cultural touchstones so universal (suck it, Judaism!) that pretty much everybody gets into the act; despite the bogus claims from pouty conservatives about a "war on Christmas", the birth of Baby Jesus is still commemorated on almost every TV show on the air, and Yuletide is second only to summer as a Hollywood high holy day.

So, in the spirit of this year's Summerfest series -- where I lazily Netflixed a dozen or so movies with "summer" in the title and reviewed them so you'd know what to watch while the pool guy skimmed the drowned crow out of your Jacuzzi -- I present the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon, where I get drunk and watch some of the finest Christmas movies that Hollywood has crammed down our throats, and ask:  will this movie fill you with holiday cheer or seasonal depression?

First up is 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D, although a more accurate name for it would be Not Actually Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas or even Hi Everybody We're Henry Selick and Caroline Thompson and We Directed and Wrote This Movie Respectively And What Do We Have To Do To Get a Little Credit For That?'s The Nightmare Before Christmas.  While Burton created the lead characters and wrote a poem that served as the movie's inspiration, he had very little to do with making the film itself, and the fact that he's generally given all the kudos for it is a shame, because if nothing else, it proves how other people are capable of taking his quirky, creepy aesthetic and running with it.

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The studio system is long dead, but for over 30 years, David Geffen has been proving that the old-time movie mogul is still a going concern.  One of the richest men in Hollywood history, Geffen is a true multimedia tycoon who's made money in film and music hand over fist and whose personal worth is estimated at close to $6 billion.  Indisputably one of the biggest power players in the industry, he's had a huge impact on almost every studio you can name:  Universal, Paramount, Disney, and the DreamWorks studio he founded with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.  But, having hit 65 -- the age at which most people look forward to a respectable retirement -- is Geffen ready to walk away from it all?

Just weeks after engineering a break from Paramount -- which had recently purchased DreamWorks for over a billion and a half dollars -- Geffen continued to wheel and deal like a mogul of old.  He formed a new company with Spielberg and Stacey Snider, backed by money from one of the biggest players in the emergent Bollywood system, and then -- shockingly -- seemed to indicate that he was backing off from production, and perhaps leaving the entertainment industry altogether.  According to an article in the New York Times, even Spielberg is stunned at the possibility:  "I cannot imagine not having David in my professional life.  If that's true, I'm going to have to figure out what to do about it." 

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This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance.  Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me.  These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.  

But hey, so what?  I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me.  I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me.  I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me.  I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone.  I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out.  The first tasty bowl of arsenic:  David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways.  Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime?  Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day?  Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal?  I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane.  Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny.  I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't.  It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack.  It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability:  the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from.  Or, to put it another way:  the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly.  If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does.  The old, non-political David Zucker knew better:  he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.  

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How can you keep Disney sincere after they’ve seen Shrek?

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Hey look, a new Pixar teaser.

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What made The Jazz Singer a hit?: The talking, of course. For more than three decades, moviegoers could travel to the other side of the world or even back in time, but they couldn’t hear the people onscreen actually talking. But in the late 1920s, various studios began to experiment with synchronized sound. While several short films, including Disney’s Steamboat Willie, had been already released with spoken dialogue, The Jazz Singer was the first widely-seen sound feature. Because of the sound equipment, the cost of the film was roughly twice that of a normal Hollywood production, but the movie proved so popular that its success demonstrated the commercial viability of “talkies.”

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That's the question that William Goss is asking at Cinematical.  Documentaries, long thought to be boring slogs that were designed to educate first and entertain fifth, have recently started making big money and attracting media attention.  With that, they've also started to become entertaining first and informative last; and now, catering to an audience no longer consisting only of the fringe elements who liked documentaries for their own sake, their only previous requirement -- that they be true -- has come under increasing scrutiny.  

"At what point did we begin to craft documentary filmmaking specifically to the masses," asks Goss, referring specifically to the Breakast Club-esque, heavily choreographed American Teen, "and then what happens when the masses just don't show?"  And more than that, what happens when, in service to those massess, documentaries absolve themselves of their most sacred trust -- to reflect reality -- and start become something entirely different?

Obviously, this isn't the first time documentaries have blurred those particular lines in hopes of finding an audience.  Going as far back as Nanook of the North, we find scenes that are staged, reshot, or otherwise tinkered with.  Recreations have been a hot issue since the debut of Errol Morris' work; old Disney nature documentaries frequently blurred or even fabricated the truth about their subjects; and ideological bias has been an issue in documentary film since long before there was a Michael Moore.  But in recent years, it's become a more important question than ever, with such popular films as March of the Penguins, which used manipulated footage on its way to becoming one of the biggest documentary successes of all time, the similar Arctic Tale, and the upcoming Morning Light, an alleged real-life documentary about sailing in which the cast is selected no differently than that of a sitcom.  

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In how-can-we-miss-you-if-you-won'-go-away news, At the Movies co-host Richard Roeper has announced that this month will be his last on the popular movie review program.  Unfortunately for those who have been wishing he would stop reviewing movies since he first started doing it in 2000, he will not be quitting film criticism altogether, but rather starting his own show as parent company Disney turns At the Movies into a new magazine-format entertainment-based talk show. "Over the last two seasons," Roeper said, "as (co-host) Roger (Ebert) has bravely coped with his medical issues, I've continued the show with a number of guest co-hosts, such as Jay Leno, Harold Ramis and John Mellencamp," all of whom share with Roeper the fact that they are not actually movie critics.  

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The new Pixar film Wall-E might be considered the real blockbuster of the summer movie season so far, if only because most of the other obvious lollapaloozas--Iron Man, Sex and the City, that Harrison Ford thing--opened a month or so before summer officially started a little more than a week ago. A very funny, beautifully designed, unexpectedly affecting (I cried, okay? The walking trash compactor with the googly eyes fell in love and I cried. And I'd do it again.) animated fable, Wall-E deserves all the riches it will earn for its makers, which will probably only pile up faster and faster as people look for something to take the kids to see even as the remaining summer sure-shots, such as the new Batman and Hellboy films, turn weirder and darker. Because the movie carries a pretty explicit satirical message indicting the human race--or Americans, not that there's that much difference--of having selfishly abandoned their stewardship of their own ruined planet, it will also set off a publicity-getting barrage attacks by conservative commentators denouncing it as tree-hugging propaganda, which I'm sure will do it at least as much harm as those attacks on Mr. Incredible and his family for being elitists.

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Studio executives, like TV weathermen, can be wrong half the time and still make a pretty fine living. One major difference, of course, is “The Suits” in Hollywood spend zillions on publicity and advertising campaigns to attempt to make their forecasts come true...and even then, they’re only right about half the time when it comes to cinematic hits and misses.

We here at the Screengrab will take that action. With the 2008 Blockbuster Season bearing down on us LIKE A RADIOACTIVE SPACE BUS THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A GIANT ROBOT LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, we hereby offer our predictions for the summer’s Top 5 Hits and Misses, in hopes of scoring ourselves sweet development deals based on our uncanny pop culture pulse-fingering prognostication abilities.

For the purposes of this experiment, “HIT” and “MISS” will refer not to the critical reception or cinematic quality of the films in question (because, really, who cares about that stuff?). Instead, we’ll calculate the accuracy of our predictions based on each film’s domestic box office gross in relation to its marketing/production budget and the hype/expectation surrounding it.

Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Hits, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS A BRAND NEW IMAGINARY CAR!

And now, our picks for the Top 5 HITS of Summer 2008:

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Disney, as Disney is fond of reminding us, is not just a movie company or an entertainment conglomerate:  it's a kingdom, a lifestyle, almost a religion.  And if that's true, its position on the major issues of the day are more than just fodder for the back pages of their annual stockholder report:  they're front page news, or even the subject of scholarly tomes. 

Such, as the New York Times reports, is the case with Disney's environmental record.  Throughout its history, Disney has played both sides of the ecological fence:  it recently announced the formation of a new film unit exclusively dedicated to creating nature documentaries, while its theme parks are denounced by environmentalists as resource-draining, pollution-spewing nightmares; its previous science films have sparked the interest of children in wildlife and conservation, while attracting charges of exaggeration or outright fakery; and its beloved animated children's classics have cemented a protective attitude towards nature in the minds of entire generations, while both hunters and animal rights activists claim that they present a distorted and dangerous view of animal life. 

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The death of animator Ollie Johnston, at 95, marks the end of our first-hand access to an era: Johnston, who worked at Disney from 1935 until his retirement in 1978, was the last member of the core group of the studio's animators who were known collevtively as "the nine old men." (Most of them were in their twenties when they were given that label.) Johnston worked in various major capacities on such features as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Bambi; among other accomplishments, he was famous, or notorious, for having animated the death of Bambi's mother, thus making him responsible for several generations of childhood traumas.

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You may not have heard of David Zandi. If so, from the sound of it, you don't know what you're missing. The twenty-nine-year-old, Iranian-born Zandi, says that he's one of the last surviving male members of the Persian royal family. His IMDB page, which lists two acting credits--Marci C, in which he played "Musician", and Men in Black II, in which he stretched for the role of "Alien"--is full of other intriguing personal information, including the news that he's "a champion equestrian", "loves going skiing in the winter", "Turned down the offer to be a model for Gucci and Calvin Klein to stay in acting school", and that he "Coached his girlfriend with her acting and speech in 2001 so she could work on his project." (Is that what the kids are calling it these days?) This stuff goes over pretty well with the people who hang out at IMDB message boards: one post there is headed, "MARRY ME!" The page also features quotes from Zandi, including this beaut: "Even as Talent, I see it as my sole duty to do that which is in the best interest of the Studio, regardless of my own personal desires." Right now, Zandi is trying to serve the best interests of Disney by offering himself to star in the forthcoming movie version of the video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Zandi isn't exactly lobbying for the role: he just wants the studio to recognize that logic is on his side.

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More often than not, the winner of the Best Animated Short Film category seems like a foregone conclusion. With such major Hollywood players as Pixar, Disney, and Blue Sky in the mix, it can be hard for the up-and-coming animator to compete for the prize. But this year is different. There’s no big animation studio in the mix, which should make for an interesting Oscar race. In addition, there are a number of worthy nominees in the race, so one hopes quality will be the primary factor in voters’ decisions.

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As buzz has had it for over a decade now, Pixar really is the true successor to the Disney animated feature dynasty. They’re fast approaching their silver anniversary as the most critically and commercially adored animation studio in the Western world. With the exception of A Bug’s Life — which is pretty standard kiddie-picture fluff despite being beautiful — their reputation is flawless. From the look of this trailer for WALL*E, Andrew Stanton’s directorial follow-up to Finding Nemo, it looks like Pixar’s poised to make their most exciting work yet.

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Terry Gilliam is as widely known for his production troubles as he is for the quality of his films. Gilliam has had to contend with studio interference on nearly all his recent films, and has weathered such troubles as litigation over screenplay credit on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a literal pain-in-the-ass star who shut down production on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and the death of leading man Heath Ledger while shooting his latest project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It’s gotten to the point where it’s a shock when a Gilliam project runs smoothly.

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In recent years, Disney has become notorious for tinkering with the cherished contents of its vaults; you could kill a year or so by just comparing all the various "restoration" versions of Fantasia. But Pixar, the computer-animation division that has been responsible for many of the company's biggest hits and most of its critically revered creative muscle since the mid-1990s, has seemed to be too busy moving forward to spend its time and money fretting over its back catalog. Now it's been announced that the 1995 Toy Story, Pixar's first feature film and first release through Disney, and its fine sequel, the 1999 Toy Story 2, will be "remade" in 3-D, in anticipation of the eventual release of Toy Story 3, scheduled to be made in 3-D. John Lasseter, the Pixar co-founder and current chief creative officer at Disney Animation Studios who directed both films, says that "We thought it would be great to let audiences experience the first two films all over again and in a brand new way...3D offers lots of great new possibilities for the art of animation and we will continue to use this new technology to tell our stories in the best possible way."

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