9 days until Oscar. This year's 9-time nominees

by Nathaniel R

9 time Academy Award nominee Ren Klyce at work

While the 93rd Annual Academy Awards are largely a very exciting 'fresh voices!' kind of competition, all Oscar years barring the very first couple (haha) have some regular nominees show up. In the absence of a Streep or a Williams this year the only people in the double digits are songwriter Diane Warren and a couple of sound guys (more on sound in a minute). But we wanted to highlight count three men with 9 nominations today. Only one of them, has previously won. They are...

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March 29th is the biggest Oscar night, sort of...

Today in Oscar History. Five Oscar ceremonies were held on this date, the most of any night on the calendar (albeit tied with March 25th) so if today is your birthday, congratulations. You're practically a naked gold man!

Gloria Swanson, seated next to Judy Holliday, waits to hear the results of Best Actress

1951 The 23rd annual Academy Awards are held to honor the films of 1950. Fred Astaire hosts the ceremony which is a triumphant night for All About Eve (14 nominations, 6 wins). Though it seems insane given its hallowed place in film history Sunset Boulevard only won two Oscars that night in the categories of Art Direction and Story & Screenplay...

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Interview: Pixar's Mike Jones on co-writing "Soul" and "Luca"

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Soul centers around a music teacher Joe, who feels he missed his calling. He always wanted to be a famous jazz musician. Through the course of the spiritually minded adventure, which takes us from Earth to The Great Beyond and The Great Before and back again, Joe comes to understand that his calling was to teach. None us know ahead of time where our lives and career might take us. For instance, I was certain I was going to be an illustrator and ended up in Human Resources and now identify as a writer. This is also true of Pixar's Mike Jones. He was once on our side of the movie world as an entertainment journalist but always planned to shoot movies. "I went to NYU film school to be a cinematographer. You have to take a writing course as an undergrad and the teacher took me aside and said, 'You want to think about writing instead?'" Jones continued to pursue cinematography but, as it turns out, the teacher was right and the seed was planted "I did start to kind of write on my own. And after I got out of film school, I kept writing." This led him to a brief entertainment journalism career until he made the leap to filmmaking, if not in the way he originally intended. Years later he has a thriving career at Pixar as a screenwriter.

We recently spoke to him about the process of developing Soul and what it's like to be a co-writer since Pixar generally has several creatives on each film...

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Facing mortality with "Toy Story 3"

by Cláudio Alves

Have you ever thought to yourself "my time has come to an end, I'm going to die"? I have, in at least three instances.

The first was in 2011, in Tokyo when the Tōhoku earthquake happened, making me stare in horror as skyscrapers swiveled around me, looking like they could fall at any moment. The second time was considerably less spectacular, caused by gallbladder stones and some incredible bouts of bad luck. From the most searing pain I've ever felt to internal bleeding after surgery, it all seemed like it was going to end. Thankfully, it didn't. The third moment where I contemplated my death in a very immediate way is, weirdly enough, the one that still scares me the most. It was late at night, I was eating something and a piece of food got stuck in my throat. I couldn't breathe, I was alone and started to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen, gasping for air while the world around me was going dark. I lived, but I'll always remember the feeling of thinking I was going to die, the fear, and the resigned acceptance of it.

Anyway, let's talk about Toy Story 3 on its 10th anniversary…

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Let's give "Brave" its due.

alternate poster by Greg Ruthby Eurocheese

Pixar managed to sneak a film about motherhood into their canon by disguising it as their princess movie, and I have always wondered if that’s part of the reason it doesn’t get its due when we are discussing Pixar’s best films. Merida, our frizzy-haired princess, is nothing like her Disney counterparts. She takes after her father, a fun-loving, loud mouthed ruffian who loves his exaggerated stories. Merida wants a world of adventure, and she despises being held back from it because of her gender.

This leads to inevitable conflict with her mother Elinor, a queen saddled with a boisterous husband, a rebellious daughter and triplets that spend the entire film causing havoc. Let’s be honest – this could easily have been the stock mother character, side-eyeing all the shenanigans and cleaning up everyone’s messes. Elinor is smarter than that, though...

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