What's next for Studio Ghibli: The first UK trailer for "Arrietty"

The other day at work, my fellow cubicle slave (and damn fine reporter) Mike Stucka and I were discussing the worst animated movies we had ever seen, and I somewhat facetiously mentioned "Cars" (though I do truly loathe that movie).

I eventually settled on "Chicken Little" for my pick, and I firmly stand by it, and he chose, sight unseen, "Anastasia," because as he said (and I'm probably paraphrasing by now), "why would you take a kid to a movie about an entire family being gunned down"?

Solid point, that, and all that got me thinking about what are actually my favorite animated movies, and found that they come from only two directors, Brad Bird and Hayao Miyazaki (hey, I know what I like). In order, they are:

1. "The Iron Giant"
2. "Kiki's Delivery Service"
3. "Ratatouille"
4. "Porco Rosso"
5. "The Incredibles"

And I tell you all that to tell you this, though thankfully Miyazaki is again at work on a new movie, and even better its the sequel "Porco Rosso 2" (due out in 2012), the next Studio Ghibli offering is something called "Arrietty," directed by studio animator Hiromasa Yonebashi.

Based on May Norton's "The Borrowers" series of novels, it's about a family of tiny people who live under the floorboards of a human family's house. And below is the first trailer I know of for the UK version, which, for some reason, will be different, voice-wise, from the American version, which is set to come out Feb. 17.

Any Ghibli, however, is potentially great Ghibli to me, so enjoy the trailer and have a great rest of the weekend. Peace out.

Minority report: A slightly dissenting view of "Up"

Before I get into anything about Pixar's "Up," there's great news out there today about Duncan Jones, a k a David Bowie's son and the man who directed the best slice of old-fashioned sci fi I've seen this year, "Moon."

For his next project, Jones will direct "Escape From The Deep," the story of a World War II U.S. navy submarine that sank after a torpedo malfunction, leaving the crew stranded on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Faced with drowning, nine men made it out alive after swimming the 180 feet to the surface without getting the bends.

I love submarine movies, so that all sounds great to me, but I'm still more than a little peeved that "Moon," featuring a top-notch performance by Sam Rockwell, never got any proper distribution in the U.S. - definitely catch it on DVD as soon as it hits there.

But, getting back to "Up," I should probably just keep this to myself, because for the most part I enjoyed Pixar's latest offering almost as much as everyone else in the world has seemed to. However, I didn't find it to be top-shelf Pixar, which for me includes "Ratatouille," "The Incredibles," "Wall-E" and "Toy Story."

So then, what kept me from loving "Up" unconditionally, which I certainly wanted to do going in? Well, from the outset it's a much more somber affair than I had been led to believe, but that certainly wasn't the problem. In fact, it turned what could have been the most mediocre of montages into perfectly concise storytelling as it opened by telling the life story of Carl Fredricksen (a seriously curmudgeonly Ed Asner) in heartbreaking fashion (and I'm not afraid to admit it was the first, but not the last, time that "Up" had this grownass man on the verge of bawling.)

And if I can skip ahead to the big action climax, it's a set piece that has Carl and young Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai, who gets the movie's best line with his enthusiastic "But it's a talking dog!") battling the movie's big bad in an aerial encounter that finally delivers on the full promise of 3-D. It had me holding my breath and experiencing a serious fear of heights, and I'd imagine the real peril it puts our heroes in might be a bit much for the kiddies, but it's also just tons of fun.

So then, where's the beef? Well, to paraphrase Russell in talking about the middle of "Up," "But it's a flying house!" Watching it take off is indeed as remarkable as I could have expected, so I was just amazed at how little time they spent in the air before reaching their South American destination. I mean (AND THIS IS A BIG SPOILER, SO READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT) really, having Russell almost instantly find it with his GPS device? Where's the adventure in that?

And once they're - sort of - tethered to the ground again, I was hoping for much more of a B-movie, Indy Jones sort of tale, but this part just never really got going, in large part because the big bad Charles Muntz, voiced by Christopher Plummer, was just one of the worst Pixar characters I've ever encountered. By having him stop well short of total madness, they also rob him of any real motivation and make this portion of the tale - in my opinion - just much less compelling.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on what is, after all, a kid's movie and a moving tale about one man reaching his life's aspirations. But this is Pixar, after all, and I've come to expect nothing short of perfection. And besides, like Carl Fredricksen, I guess I just like to complain, so please feel free to let me know all the ways I'm just off base on this one. Peace out.

Robot dialogue coach?!?! How do I get that job?

In case anyone who's never been here before doesn't know it, I - like many people in the world - am simply a sucker for Pixar movies, so be warned you're gonna hear a whole lot about "Wall-E" here this week until and possibly after I get to see it, probably Saturday morning.

Sunday's Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times had a very interesting interview with "Wall-E" director Andrew Stanton, which you can still read here. Why in the world it didn't make the cover I'll never know, but people who make a lot more money than I do make those decisions.

Here are some of the highlights:

* Although I've seen a figure of $120 million listed, the Times article pegs the cost of "Wall-E" at $180 million, which must include marketing and various costs. No matter how you add it up, though, that's a lot of cheese for a relatively silent movie about robot love.

* Stanton, ever the film geek at heart, says he drew on films from science fiction’s golden age - “1968 to ’81” he said. The second half or so of "Wall-E" promised to be an epicly fun space journey, and I just can't wait to see it.

* And, in my favorite nugget of all, Stanton answers the question: What do you do when you need robot dialogue for a flick with very little of the human variety? Well, you get the guy who did the dialogue for R2D2 in "Star Wars" (and less excitingly, E.T. too), Ben Burtt. Stanton said he wrote a conventional script — “Hi, I’m Wall-E” — and Mr. Burtt essentially translated the dialogue into robot, something he calls “audio puppeteering.” How in the world can I get that job?

The headline of the article itself sums up the big storyline for "Wall-E": "Pixar Gambles on a Robot in Love." Following up "the rat movie" (my favorite movie of all of 2007, of course, "Ratatouille") with this endearing oddity may be a bit of a "gamble," but here's hoping the Disney-owned Pixar continues to take chances.

One thing I found surprising in the NYT article was that "the rat movie" actually made substantially more worldwide than "Cars," definitely not one of my favorite Pixar flicks. Here are the Box Office Mojo numbers:

“Finding Nemo”: $340 million domestic, $865 total.
"The Incredibles": $261 million domestic, $631 total.
"Cars": $244 million domestic, $462 million total.
"Ratatouille": $206 million domestic, $621 million total.

None of those numbers, of course, would show a studio that's really hurting in anyway, and I suspect that by the time you add in worldwide numbers for "Wall-E" it will be back around "Nemo" territory. Judging from the response of all the tots who laughed throughout the "Wall-E" trailer that preceded "Kung Fu Panda," the kids are certainly ready to embrace the little robot, and I am too. Peace out.