Tag: Peter Sohn

Is Love Primal or Elemental in PIXAR’s latest?

It’s possible that Elemental isn’t a fully PIXAR production. It has a lot of Disney elements laced throughout its narrative.

Elemental Movie PosterJust how Elemental this latest work from PIXAR depends on what viewers want to read from it. By this film’s end, what I understod led me to getting Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” stuck in my head.

But there’s more to this tale than meets the eye. While this film is gorgeous to behold with the new tricks that can be done with lighting and transparency in CGI to render some photo-realistic details, the tale needs refining.  Here, Ember and Wade (voiced by Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie) are complete opposites. One is from a fire nation, and the other water. On certain types of diagrams, they aren’t supposed to meet or combine to form combined substances. When this film is about the four primary elements, any other beings created by their joining won’t necessarily be explained. 

One head scratcher is in how Earth and Air are represented. Whether the tree represents the former and a cloud the latter, that depends on what kind of chemical chart you’re looking at. Continue reading “Is Love Primal or Elemental in PIXAR’s latest?”

An American Tale? The Good Dinosaur Goes West, A Movie Review

The one detail that the trailer to PIXAR’s The Good Dinosaur forgets to reveal is that the story takes place a million years after the planet Earth has dodged the bullet.

The_Good_Dinosaur_poster

The one detail that the trailer to PIXAR’s The Good Dinosaur forgets to reveal is that the story takes place a million years after the planet Earth has dodged the bullet. The asteroid that’s supposed to wipe out the life of these giant creatures have caused evolution to take a different direction. Since evolution is allowed to take place “normally,” these mighty creatures developed an intellect to conceive language, domestication and agriculture. They are no longer roaming beasts wandering the land in search for their next meal.

Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand) are anxiously awaiting the birth of their three children, Libbey (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner) and Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). The latter is the runt and is fearful of everything. That includes attempting to tame some primitive looking chickens and Henry decides that he has to teach his son how to deal with confronting his fears. There’s a few Studio Ghibli like moments with Arlo and Henry as they find a field of fireflies, but in what makes this film a sweet watch is the music. This movie is very much a love-letter to the Western, and it shows in the visual narrative and the orchestration.

Continue reading “An American Tale? The Good Dinosaur Goes West, A Movie Review”

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