Posts tagged "Pixar"
Wrecking Ralph: Extinguishing the Quest for Glory
Film / Reviews / Theology

Wrecking Ralph: Extinguishing the Quest for Glory

by Bryan J. on Nov 14, 2012 • 3 Comments

Score one for this year’s winter film season! With a half-dozen movies premiering on Mockingbird’s *must* see list (including The Hobbit, Les Mis, James Bond, Django Unchained…), Wreck-It-Ralph kicks off the winter with a pixelated parable of judgment, love, and identity so potent,  you half-expected to see Martin Luther listed as a guest-writer in the credits. Okay, so perhaps I’m a bit over-enthusiastic in my praise of Disney’s newest in-house release, but when movie critics call Wreck-It Ralph “pixar-esque,” well, we’ve kind of got to take notice.

Perhaps there’s no better world to play out the drama of law-trapped characters than the unforgiving…

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Mothers and Daughters and Bears, Oh My! Pride and Expectation in Brave
Film / Gender / Relationships / Reviews

Mothers and Daughters and Bears, Oh My! Pride and Expectation in Brave

by Mockingbird on Jul 3, 2012 • 3 Comments

Just in time for Independence Day, a wonderful (if spoiler-heavy) review of Pixar’s latest from resident animation guru Jeremiah Lawson. Have a great Fourth and we’ll see you back here on Thursday:

Now in its 17th year of box office activity, Pixar may have entered into chronological adolescence, but the studio is far from becoming a brazen teenager who’s unaware of the past. With Brave, the people that brought us the Toy Story trilogy–arguably the greatest film trilogy originally conceived as a story for the screen–have given us a movie that, at first glance, runs the risk of being confused with…

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Another Week Ends: Our Dreams, Pixar and Brave Honesty, Lebron Bravery, Why Americans Apologize, Why Ryan Leaf Wants Prison, Why Women Pray More
Addiction / America / Art / Celebrity / Everyday / Film / News / Prayer / Psychology / Sports / Suffering / Theology

Another Week Ends: Our Dreams, Pixar and Brave Honesty, Lebron Bravery, Why Americans Apologize, Why Ryan Leaf Wants Prison, Why Women Pray More

by Ethan Richardson on Jun 22, 2012 • No Comments

1) The Harvard Business Review released a behavioral study on the divergent ways apologies happen in American and Japanese sociality. It turns out not everyone apologizes in a way that implicates the apologizer as guilty (who knew?)…What’s more interesting, though, is the connection made between implied guilt and trust, that the Japanese way of apologizing without direct condemnation of personal responsibility actually allows for trust to be repaired more quickly, while the American (Western) way of the “apologizing culprit” tends to falsely distinguish sheeps from goats, making lines between those who have flaws and make mistakes from those who do…

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Another Week Ends: Dumb Smart People, VeggieRemorse, Pixar Tips, Transfigured Authority, Profanity Laws, Fiona Apple and Mad Men
Children / Church / Everyday / Identity / Law / Music / Psychology / Religion / Social Science / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Dumb Smart People, VeggieRemorse, Pixar Tips, Transfigured Authority, Profanity Laws, Fiona Apple and Mad Men

by David Zahl on Jun 15, 2012 • 4 Comments

1. You’ve probably heard the classic arithmetic question, “A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” If your kneejerk response is in the double digits, well, think again. Jonah Lehrer kicked off his new post at The New Yorker with a couple of terrific new pieces. “Why We Don’t Believe in Science” was the first and “Why Smart People Are Stupid” is the latest, and it in particular warrants some excerpting here. Another cogent reminder that self-knowledge (or knowledge in general) is not…

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Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns
Addiction / Film / Grace in Practice / Humor / Interviews / Literature / Music / Religion / Social Science / Suffering / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: John Carter, Obesity FAILs, Mary Karr on Suffering, Winning!, Friends with Kids, Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball and Community Returns

by David Zahl on Mar 9, 2012 • 3 Comments

1. “I am not Jesus, but I have the same initials.” Thus sang Jarvis Cocker on the classic Pulp track “Dishes” (at bottom), and it now looks like he has a new contender to the throne, Tim Riggins himself, Mr. John Carter of Mars. That’s right: Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature is out this weekend, and the consensus thus far is that there’s no consensus. Some claim that it’s an overblown mess, others that it’s the sort of exceedingly fun pulp adventure that doesn’t get made anymore. But Stanton is a filmmaker that I trust over any…

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Another Week Ends: DFW50, Simpsons 500, Ira Talks Radiolab, Rowling Talks New Novel, Helpless Women, Helpless Kids, Lenten Identity, Cormac McCarthy Pictionary
America / Business / Children / Church / Everyday / Film / Humor / Identity / Literature / News / Science / Sermons / Theology / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: DFW50, Simpsons 500, Ira Talks Radiolab, Rowling Talks New Novel, Helpless Women, Helpless Kids, Lenten Identity, Cormac McCarthy Pictionary

by Ethan Richardson on Feb 24, 2012 • 1 Comment

All the best wishes for those mockingbirds at the Liberate Conference in Fort Lauderdale this weekend, including our very own David Zahl.

1. Along with the rest of the blogosphere this week, we wish David Foster Wallace a happy 50th birthday. There’s too many blessings to recount, but the web has exploded with numerous avenues for you to get your feet wet or soul soaked. Take a look at The Awl’s “46 Things to Read and See for David Foster Wallace’s 50th Birthday,” a piece of which includes an 86-minute interview with German TV ZDF, the first of which you’ll find…

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Another Week Ends: Immortal Smartphones, Jefferson Bethke, Adolescent Rewards, Profound Comedy, Therapeutic Irony, more George Lucas, Pixar and Hunger Games
Books / Business / Children / Film / Humor / Music / Religion / Science / Social Science / Technology / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Immortal Smartphones, Jefferson Bethke, Adolescent Rewards, Profound Comedy, Therapeutic Irony, more George Lucas, Pixar and Hunger Games

by David Zahl on Feb 3, 2012 • 2 Comments

1. In last weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Carina Chocano explained “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg” – AKA what our current obsession with “data” has to say about our humanity – dropping her usual allotment of insight bombs along the way. Not only does she point out the increasingly prevailing illusion that if something wasn’t ‘documented’ it didn’t happen, she gets at the real crux of our smartphoned existence: the false promise of immortality. In other words, a familiar serpent has found its way into the, um, Apple Store:

This is the dilemma of being a cyborg: It’s not just that…

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Finding Freedom in Finding Nemo: When Andrew Stanton Tried to Get Fired
Film / Grace in Practice / Identity / Law

Finding Freedom in Finding Nemo: When Andrew Stanton Tried to Get Fired

by R-J Heijmen on Nov 14, 2011 • 2 Comments

From the New Yorker’s recent profile of Andrew Stanton, Pixar writer/director extraordinaire of Finding Nemo, WALL*E and the upcoming (live action!) John Carter, starring none other than Tim Riggins himself. The author writes of Stanton’s cathartic, career-making crisis a couple years into the Nemo process, when Stanton, in response to enormous internal pressure (not to mention the Law represented by Pixar’s winning streak), faced his worst fears and experienced what can only be called a “bottoming out” moment of repentance. It almost reads like a Judgment and Love entry:

For years, Stanton believed that the original braintrust—Lasseter, Stanton, Docter and Joe…

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Friendships and Fender-Benders in Cars 2
Film / Forgiveness / Grace in Practice / Relationships / Reviews / Theology

Friendships and Fender-Benders in Cars 2

by Todd Brewer on Nov 10, 2011 • No Comments

The release of Cars 2 this past summer marked the first Pixar movie to receive almost unanimously poor reviews. While some of this criticism was probably veiled jealousy of Pixar’s consistent success, I still have to admit that this film lacked the heart-tugging storytelling I’ve come to expect. The film has lots of flash – with some enthralling technical wizardry, but the substance was disappointingly thin. Or better, I didn’t enthusiastically identify with any of the characters.

The success of a movie usually depends upon the audience’s ability to sympathize with the main character – if we don’t care about them,…

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Another Week Ends: Of Gods and Men, Unitarian Boundaries, pi Haters, Pinksy on Cowper, Jayhawks, Wilco, Morrissey, FNL, Falling Skies and Brad Bird
Church / Death / Film / Gender / Grace in Practice / Music / Poetry / Religion / Science / Suffering / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Of Gods and Men, Unitarian Boundaries, pi Haters, Pinksy on Cowper, Jayhawks, Wilco, Morrissey, FNL, Falling Skies and Brad Bird

by David Zahl on Jul 1, 2011 • 3 Comments

1. No doubt you’re familiar with the martyrdom of the monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, who were assassinated in 1996 by Jihadists. It is, without question, one of the most inspirational true stories of the past twenty years – regardless of where you’re coming from on the religious spectrum. You may have even heard that the recent film based on the events, Of Gods and Men, was Grand Prix winner at Cannes last year. If that weren’t high enough praise for it shoot to the top of your Netflix queue (when it becomes available on Tuesday 7/5), Andrew Sullivan’s stirring…

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Another Week Ends: Free Won’t, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cars 2, more Super 8, Antinomian Letters, The Killing and Futurama
Film / Humor / Psychology / Religion / Science / Sports / Theology / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: Free Won’t, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cars 2, more Super 8, Antinomian Letters, The Killing and Futurama

by David Zahl on Jun 24, 2011 • 4 Comments

1. I can’t stop my leg! A fascinating post on Psychology Today about the groundbreaking research of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet into the area conscious choice/willpower, entitled “Free Won’t,” ht JD:

Given our common sense notion of how our actions work, we might expect that we first have a conscious awareness of an intention or urge to act, then the brain activates the motor area that sends a signal to the muscles of the wrist or fingers. The surprising thing is this is not what Libet found.

Surprisingly, the participants’ reports of their conscious awareness of the urge to…

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A Row of Your Favorite Cereals, Anytime You Want: The Gospel According to Pixar
Art / Children / Film / Grace in Practice

A Row of Your Favorite Cereals, Anytime You Want: The Gospel According to Pixar

by David Zahl on May 17, 2011 • 4 Comments

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker penned a fantastic and very thorough profile of everyone’s favorite studio last week, Pixar. As suspected/rumored, their “corporate culture” appears to have been lifted straight out of Grace in Practice; they understand intuitively that great work is always the fruit of a root, that motivation/the internal life is everything when it comes to creativity, that art cannot be leveraged out of people. Indeed, (lasting) collaboration itself is a matter of friendship and shared interest, and even perfectionism can be subordinated to story. Lane’s descriptions of Pixar head honcho John Lasseter almost bring Thornton Wilder’s…

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Children / Comics / Film

Why Pixar?

by Todd Brewer on Mar 16, 2011 • 5 Comments

In case you needed another reason to check out our own The Gospel According to Pixar, I submit to you the following cartoon from poe-news:

It’s funny because it’s true. The Dreamworks formula is to get big name talent (Jack Black, Jerry Seinfeld, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, and Will Farrell to name a few) to inflate a less than stellar story, while Pixar just keeps putting out Oscar winning movies.

Resounding Gongs, Clanging Symbols and Pixar’s "One Man Band"
Children / Film / Theology

Resounding Gongs, Clanging Symbols and Pixar’s "One Man Band"

by Todd Brewer on Dec 1, 2010 • 4 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, we at Mockingbird happen to be big fans of Pixar. Since most of our posts on the studio have focused on its feature-length output, we figured it was time to highlight one of their brilliant vignettes, “One Man Band” (video below). For further reading, see our book The Gospel According to Pixar.

The plot of “One Man Band” is fairly straightforward. A street performer, “Bass,” tries to persuade a young girl to give him her only coin. His light-hearted tune is interrupted by a new performer named Treble. With his fancy strings Treble wins the young…

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Another Week Ends: False Danger, Stress Vaccines, Alien Baptism, Michael Vick, King of Kong, Online Dating, Get Low, Pixar
Children / Film / Humor / Psychology / Relationships / Science / Sports / TV / Week In Review

Another Week Ends: False Danger, Stress Vaccines, Alien Baptism, Michael Vick, King of Kong, Online Dating, Get Low, Pixar

by David Zahl on Sep 24, 2010 • 2 Comments

1. Another in a series of great articles from Lisa Belkin of the NY Times, this one entitled “Keeping Kids Safe From the Wrong Dangers,” in which the author continues in what appears to be her (and Jonah Lehrer’s) quest to unveil the irrationality at the base of human decision-making. There’s also a great line in there about measurement being an instrument of discontent rather than, say, greater happiness and health:

If history is any guide, we seem to veer between overreaction and underreaction — all while defining our own response as “moderate.” There is an inherent hypocrisy in our attempts…

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