Cars

Well, I saw Cars the other day. I must admit it was better than I had expected, it's not the best Pixar film, but it is very good. I immensely enjoyed the short at the start and the trailer for Brad Bird's next film Ratatouille. I wonder if the difficulty of making Cars was worth it... because from what little knowledge I have about 3D this must have been VERY technically difficult to produce. When it was done I was entertained and delighted to see it. There were many other 3D-CG films previewed before the film, in fact there was a lot of them! I counted seven! Including the films that have already come out this year that's 13 animated films coming out this year! It's too bad only one of those is classically animated. That's averaging one every month for 2006!

1. Cars
2. Monster House
3. Happy Feet
4. Over The Hedge
5. The Ant Bully
6. Barnyard
7. Meet The Robinsons
8. Flushed Away
9. The Wild
10. Ice Age 2
11. Open Season
12. Hoodwinked
13. Curious George

That MUST be a record or something!!! I must say maybe 4 of these films (excluding Cars) look either cool or entertaining in someway after seeing the trailers, but the others look down right awful. Cars is the only one I've seen from this list. I'm told Hedge and Ice Age are funny and worth seeing, and Flushed Away is probably the only one I might see in theaters this year. The remainder are typical films that use the CG medium as a novelty, a lot are all looking like cookie cutter time-fillers and in fact make them all seem to be a bit needless in their function. It will be a couple years before Disney/Lasseter develop multiple/meaningful traditionally animated films again. Ratatouille (coming out next summer) will be a refreshing treat after a year of these quickly-pumped-out 3D movies... here's the trailer: