Brave -- Pixar's 2012 release

http://io9.com/5899668/weve-seen-the-first-30-minutes-of-pixars-brave

That said this part really caught my eye:

Aside from the texture, the characters, and that hair, the thing you'll be talking about most when you leave the theater? La Luna, the short film that will play before Brave. We did see a final cut of La Luna, and nothing has ever made me feel so profoundly that I was watching an Italo Calvino story brought to life. I can't wait to see it again in June.

Hell yes to that!

Taking the marketing a little too far there, John:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/26/business/DISNEY/DISNEY-popup.jpg

What? No such thing. More Scottish snare.

The way Pixar has handled this movie is very shady, imo: http://www.themarysue.com/brenda-chapman-discusses-brave/

http://www.disney.co.uk/brave/images/video_thumbnail1.jpg

yeah, this got our Amber's attention..

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28000000/Princess-Merida-disney-females-28011547-480-254.jpg

The way Pixar has handled this movie is very shady, imo: http://www.themarysue.com/brenda-chapman-discusses-brave/

― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Thursday, 26 April 2012 16:09 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

This doesn't actually tell us anything though

Yeah there's nothing new in there.

I am just saying I'm dubious.

About what, exactly? Just wondering as I am kind of close to this movie.

Pixar does not have a great track record with female characters, and then they pull the female director on the project (who came up with the concept) under suspicious circumstances. And I'm sure they'll be promoting it will a lot of blah blah blah female empowerment when they don't practice what they preach.

Pixar does not have a great track record with female characters

then they pull the female director on the project (who came up with the concept) under suspicious circumstances

I'm trying to understand what you think is suspicious about the circumstances!

well they're suspicious because they're opaque

a lot of people were pretty disappointed when she was taken off the project, but none of the details are public

But surely that's to be expected for any big company. Speculation when you don't have information either way is not particularly helpful (posts that summarise ILX etc)

yeah i mean im reserving judgement. but i get why people are disappointed

Not a very positive review. This part is leaping out at me:

So far, so good, if nothing particularly original: It's a standard story about a tomboy princess who lusts for a quest of her own, a striving for freedom and independence, with some Stonehenge-type structures thrown in to give the movie some mystical resonance. You're fully expecting a full-throated action adventure in the second half of the movie, as Merida fights like her father while learning that her mother has a few lessons to teach as well.

That is not what happens. I am hesitant to give away the movie's big plot twist halfway through, but suffice it to say, when it happens, it's a needle-off-the-record moment that sends the movie careening off in an entirely different, much dumber direction. It signals that the movie is about to go silly on us, and not in a "Look, I'm Woody, howdy howdy howdy" fun silly direction. The mystery and potential scope of the first half is just sent flying off the back of the truck, and the movie becomes an odd mix of slapstick and fairy-tale flimsiness, an utterly conventional tale of derring-do that keeps bumping into the lane of the faintly ridiculous. The movie's second half is a weirdly aimless slog, as if it forget all the threads it set up in the first half. If I didn't know it was animated, I'd have thought they had to bring all the cast together for some last-minute emergency reshoots.

I have some guesses as to what this involves based on the trailers.

yeah, it seems fairly obvious

If you watch enough kids shows, the toy commercials have some pretty big spoilers so I already know the twist.

Some of the promo images for this are just teal_and_orange.xls to the fkin max

neg reviews oddly making me anticipate this quite a bit where i wasn't at all before

This was not the story that I was expecting or hoping for. Without giving anything away, bears figure prominently into this, more so than I would have liked. And I'm a fan of bears.
-Mark Ellis, """""Schmoes Know"""""

i mean the title was originally "the bear and the bow" so it seems like this is more a advertising-related problem

Reviews on this one are starting to rival Cars 2.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/critics-notebook-has-pixar-gone-the-way-of-the-simpsons

"All good things must come to an end."

hard left turn into batshit during 2nd act-- involves bears-- I'm intrigued!

6 or 7 bear tops.

bear say hi to me

Ha, forgot about the real thread. I had posted on the "Up" thread, too, that this one seems to meet a derailing digression mid-movie. Which is a shame, because the images released so far in clips and whatnot look gorgeous.

Would be interested to great your plot predictions! Although as usual, the 'art of' book probably gives things away. I don't get why they release these so early

Or maybe you could just watch http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/meet-indias-answer-to-brave-called-kiara-the-brave.html

XP *to HEAR

the bear and the bow is a better title than brave, which they had stuck with it. I have a hard time believing this movie is bad at all. will see it.

i was a lot more excited about this when it was called the bear and the bow!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/06/20/merida_in_brave_and_the_fiery_redhead_trope_why_does_hollywood_think_all_women_with_red_hair_are_the_same_.html

Brave Passes the “Fiery Redhead” Stereotype to a New Generation
By L.V. Anderson | Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2012, at 8:38 AM ET

this movie was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous to look at, but there was a distinct whiff of focus-group throughout. they leaned on madcap comedy/slapstick very hard, i fear in an effort to give boys something to watch in a "girl" movie, but it was still very fun and funny and the audience i was in laughed a lot.

as for the plot -- it did feel like they started out telling one very traditional kind of story, and then they swerved and did another, different kind of very traditional story, and in doing so it gave both halves less punch and power. the beginning of the movie sets up the various ways in which merida has non-traditional power, like her athleticism and weapons skills etc, but those don't really factor into the resolution of the story. the original title of "the bear and the bow" made me think of some kind of quest movie, where merida needs to use her misunderstood skills to save the day, but really "the bear" and "the bow" are more like symbols representing the two main characters. the bow is more a representation of who merida is. it's interesting, but it wasn't what i expected, and it wasn't what the first half of the movie kind of set you up to believe.

but (SPOILER) she doesn't fall in love with any guy in the end, so huzzah for that, anyway.

This is really good. The criticism above that says the plot twist is a needle off the record moment that sends it into a dumb direction is completely, totally wrong.

So many  reviews say that it doesnt conform to the expectation the trailer sets up - for me if this happens in a movie it is nearly always a very good thing. I like to be surprised and it's quite rare these days that a trailer is made that deliberately doesn't tell the whole story.

yes exactly.

Yeah, this was pretty good, not top-tier Pixar like the Toy Story movies or Wall-E, but perfectly enjoyable. (i.e., not Cars.)

Does anyone here remember Jane and the Dragon?

http://raspwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/20061210-janeflag.jpg

yeah it was weird

this isn't weird. and yeah, this isn't the best pixar film ever made but it's so much better than either Cars film, maybe better than Monsters Inc too. That Gawker review is ridiculous.

welp. the craft is intermittently brilliant asyou might expect: what the pixar magicians achieve with the hair and the horse alone is actually worth the price of admission.

the rest is what might have been a fine story, poorly told. title is more than a little ironic given that you can see exactly where the disney/pixar braintrust that greenlit a "darker and more mature" story lost their courage in the face of poor testing with families. the darkest moments end up getting played for laughs in a way that's not only tone-deaf but sort of morally troubling, and the tale proceeds more or less by the ancient device of "stuck? here just follow these will o'wisps to the next act"

I refuse to believe that Pixar focus-groups anything!!!!

The thing about deus ex machina is that it's an inextricable feature of fairytales, which is squarely what Brave is working in.

I'll grant the moral hazard argument, but to me this is definitely competent boutique Pixar, and while my taste level is probably devolving precipitously, I loved this film and am willing to overlook its ethical shortcomings.

this movie doesn't deserve 3/4 of the criticism it's getting.

so what is the big dumb twist that everyone is hating?

she's actually a robot and the robot is male

This is hilarious. Clueless American railing against the oppression and stereotyping of the Scots in Brave.

But the thing about setting this story in some magical version of historical Scotland, in addition to disappearing Scottish people of color, is that it allows the gatekeepers of the Patriarchy to keep telling themselves—and everyone else—that the lack of true freedom for girls and women is a thing of the past.

yeah this is a little bit much

Scottish people of color

Would love to know who they think these people are. There were a lot of Indian sub-continent people came over in the 1960s, and a decent handful of Chinese from about the same era, maybe slightly earlier. That's it.

the argument is that setting this story in "olden times" is motivated (partly) by the will to exclude those people.