Marketing for Pixar’s Cars Land really is picking up. This new video attempts to go viral with a really cute idea – Dozens of kids in their Lightning McQueen Toy Cars driving through Disneyland and into Disney California Adventure with the eventual destination of Cars Land. Watch to the end for a cameo by Pixar’s John Lasseter (sporting a Cars Hawaiian shirt, of course).
To me this evokes some of Disneyland’s earliest promotions with Autopia Cars driving down Main Street USA. I mean, come on, who hasn’t wanted to do that.
Update: Disney has released an alternate “high-octane” version of the video. It’s also very cute.
Editor: Please welcome new guest author Jeff Birou! Last week, Disney, through its North American distribution partnership with Japan’s Studio Ghibli, released three more titles from Ghibli’s catalog on DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray: The Secret World of Arrietty (2010; 2011 in… Read More »Disney Releases Three Studio Ghibli Films on Blu-Ray
On my recent visit to Pixar Studios I had the great pleasure of interviewing Katherine Sarafian, the producer of the highly anticipated film Brave. She shared some nuggets (seems like there should be a McNuggets joke in there somewhere) about working at Pixar and the story behind Brave, which, in case I haven’t made it clear, looks awesome.
On her career with Pixar:
Well, it has been a long road, but I think that Pixar is one of those places where you can work on lots of different films and have a different career on each film, so I try. On each film I grew into a new role. I started sort of entry level, at the bottom, and moved up. By the time I was on “A Bug’s Life” I was a first-time manager, and once I learned that I could manage people, and really enjoyed doing that, then there was a progression into marketing for a while.
… Pixar is very much about how you recover from your errors. Because I, you know, we, learned on the job. A lot of us did here.
Last Monday Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science hosted the Marc Davis Lecture, which this year was a panel talk. Among the panelists was John Lasseter who spoke on the future of animation. One of my favorite quotes from the night was Lasseter’s insistence… Read More »John Lasseter on the Future of Animation
The recent interview with John Lasseter by Charlie Rose is now up for viewing on the web. Among the wide ranging discussion they covered the history of Pixar, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, animation, and the latest movie ‘Brave’. As usual, Rose is interested in getting… Read More »John Lasseter Interview on Charlie Rose
Raise your hand if you seriously thought Cars 2 would be an Oscar contender this year. Yeah, right. Me neither. It was a good effort, but lacked the heart and story craft that separated previous Pixar films from the pack. Yet, for some reason the… Read More »Cars 2 being cast as non-contender for Academy Award
In a new story in the New York Times, Pixar chief John Lasseter and director of five movies for the studio, defended the studios 2011 release – Cars 2. When asked if he was pressured by the Walt Disney Company to make a sequel in… Read More »John Lasseter Defends Cars 2
Hello, and welcome to the D23 Expo, Day 2 (for more expo coverage read my D23 Expo Day 1 and Alison’s D23 Expo Day 3 recaps!) where things were taken up a big ol’ notch. I know, I couldn’t believe it either.
This is where you say, “How in the world did they top the first day? Nothing could be sweeter than Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog singing a tribute to the late, great Jim Henson! Nothing could be better than Dick Van Dyke in concert!
Fair enough. However, where Day 1 was a tip of the hat to Disney legends, Day 2 was about the now and the immediate future. Hence John Lasseter introducing Billy Crystal to a standing ovation (Lasseter also received a standing ovation) while discussing the upcoming Pixar film Monsters University. Also, Jason Segel coming out with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy to discuss the new Muppet Movie. And of course, the Avengers assembling. On stage. That’s right, with the exception of the Hulk and Captain America, the entire team came out to watch a trailer that they had never seen. Robert Downey, Jr. made us watch it twice. Basically, it was a parade of celebrities (including Jennifer Garner, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Cryer, to name but a few) and Disney awesomeness (including Rich Ross, Andrew Stanton, and Marvel’s Kevin Feige, to again name but a few). My inner geek setting was at 11.
