Stuff I love - Pixar    

I'm not a great one for going to the pictures. In fact its over a year since I last went to the cinema. In my opinion main stream cinema (ie the stuff we get at the multiplex cinemas) is pretty universally rubbish. Mostly we get lowest common denominator action movies with multimillion dollar special effects budgets and multi-cent scripts. Otherwise its horror, comedy and buddy movies so predictable that they make the average 'paint by numbers' look like Van Gogh (which I guess is possible if the 'paint by numbers' is of a Van Gogh picture).

Strangely some of the best movies about these days seem to be kid's movies. I'm not talking about the Harry Potter franchise. I can confidently tell you that I've never knowingly seen more than the odd trailer for the speccy wizard and his pals. No I'm talking about Pixar films. Primarily I'm thinking of the Toy Story films although I also thoroughly enjoyed 'the Incredibles' and 'Monsters Inc'.

Ok these films are full of state of the art computer generated stuff and cost a fortune to make. However the thing that Pixar also realise is that this stuff also needs great characters, stories and dialogue. So of course there are schmaltzy endings and good always triumphs - they are aimed at kids for goodness sake. But there are also rounded sympathetic characters and real attention to detail. These films aren't lowest common denominator 'will this do' type material. They're tightly scripted; full of sly humor and no fat & gristle guaranteed.