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As the staff cuts at DreamWorks Animation and Walt Disney Studios prove, bigger is no longer thought of as better in Hollywood. The suits are now angling after a far more efficient business plan. Tinsel Town 2.0, if you will. A place where smaller teams follow shorter production schedules and work within...

With " Brave " opening at No. 1 this past weekend , that now makes it thirteen hits in a row for Pixar Animation Studios . A box office winning streak which has been applauded & envied by many in Hollywood for nearly two decades now. And speaking of thirteen in a row ... By doing the voice...

In honor of Super Bowl Sunday (that annual television event that turns tens of millions of us into couch potatoes, when we wolf down handful of greasy potato chips and/or platters full of toppings-laden potato skins), I thought that - today - it might be appropriate to pay tribute to that most cinematic...

Here's kind of a depressing fact to start 2011 off with: 88% of all people will fail to keep their New Year's resolution . With 45% of those folks falling off the self-improvement wagon by the end of January. And why is that exactly? To be blunt, it's because a lot of us aren't willing...

So what's the very best way to break into the biz? Does going to some four year school like Emerson College or CalArts (which specializes in Communications and the performing arts) really give you an advantage? Or would it better in the long run to just hook up with some outfit like pabootcamp and...

With “Toy Story 3” earning over $365 million worldwide since this Lee Unkrich film was released on June 18 th (More importantly, with the “Toy Story” franchise having produced over $8 billion in global retail sales to date), it is sometime hard to remember that – just 15 years ago – there weren’t a whole...

Let’s start with the obvious question: Is Lee Unkrich concerned that he’s going to be the guy who breaks Pixar’s now-10-pictures-long winning streak? When I got to talk with the director of “ Toy Story 3 ” as part of a roundtable session at Comic-Con last year, Lee admitted that – with each new hit that...

With its turn-of-the-century architecture, Gotham Hall has long prided itself on being that spot in New York City “ … where style meets sophistication.” Well, yesterday morning, all of that style & sophistication gave way to silliness. As Disney Consumer Products turned this seven-story-tall gilded...

According to John Lasseter, the folks at Pixar Animation Studios have been dying to make “Toy Story 3” for years now. But – that said – that doesn’t mean that it’s been all that easy to come up with a storyline that was a worthy follow-up to the much-beloved “Toy Story” & “Toy Story 2.” As John recalled...

When people talk about the impact that John Lasseter has had on the Mouse House, they tend to focus on Walt Disney Animations Studios as well as the Company’s Parks & Resorts division. Which is a shame. Why For? Because these folks are really missing the bigger picture. You see, John isn’t just out...

If you haven’t already decided that you really, really , REALLY need to attend this year’s Comic-Con International, the following will certainly seal the deal. You wanna know who Disney’s bringing to San Diego this year? Would you believe John Lasseter, Tim Burton, Robert Zemeckis and Hayao Miyazaki...

Bernie W. writes in to say: Jim -- Can you please help me win a bet at work? A co-worker of mine says that WALL-E makes a brief cameo appearance in " Ratatouille ." More importantly, this guy has bet me $100 that I'll never ever be able to find that robot in this movie. Copyright 2007 Disney...

There's this genuinely eerie passage in Karen Paik 's " To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios " ( Chronicle Books , November 2007), which talks about how a single book basically changed the course of John Lasseter 's life. In ninth grade, Lasseter was searching the art section...

I know, I know. Pixar diehards keep insisting that " Ratatouille " is this enormous success. That there's no possible way that anyone could ever be disappointed with the way this Brad Bird film has performed to date. Well, if that's really the case, then someone should probably tell Brad that. For -...