The Incredibles Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A few years ago, I wrote a Cinematical Seven on my favorite dysfunctional families in films. Everyone has a crazy messed-up movie family they love, whether it's the Hoovers in Little Miss Sunshine or the Bullocks in My Man Godfrey or the Corleones in the Godfather saga. I thought that this year, it would be fun to make a list of families that got along, worked together, and supported one another. You know, happy families ... but not dull, one-dimensional bundles of endless cheer.

It's a lot more difficult to find seven movies with happy-but-not-sappy families than it is to find the screwed-up kind, especially if you are looking for something more interesting than the Cleavers. Since I'm visiting my relatives for the Thanksgiving holidays, I asked them for suggestions. They were all very helpful, and I'm sorry I couldn't include all the suggestions, which ranged from The Thin Man to The Sound of Music to The Hills Have Eyes. Let me know what else we missed in the comments.

The Parrs in The Incredibles (suggested by my husband)

The Parrs aren't perfect. After all, Bob (aka Mr. Incredible) sneaks around behind his family's back to use his superhero powers again, after they've all decided to live a life as ordinary non-powerful folks. And Violet is rather sulky, but that's what teenagers do. But when someone is in trouble, everyone rushes to help. I was torn between The Incredibles and another movie about a family full of action heroes (or potential heroes), Spy Kids. Both feature strong families, but are never boring.

We've been pretty hard around here on a certain movie with adamantium claws. Yes, whenever I'm reminded of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today, I wish I had been shot with amnesia bullets. Still, I appreciated Hugh Jackman's determined efforts to stay out of the damn costume. Whenever Wolverine has donned a uniform in the previous X-Men flicks, he looks like he can't wait to rip it off. In his natural state, as the wandering, memory-challenged Logan, he repels latex like Congress repels taxpayers.

Most actors quickly declare that the biggest challenge in superhero movies is the costume: how to avoid looking sheepish or silly while wearing a form-fitting, custom-made suit that may reveal more than most of us are willing to bare at the beach? With advanced, super-realistic, computerized special effects and ripped body / stunt doubles available as needed, though, I think the bigger challenge lies in bringing the secret identities of superheroes to life: all those moments when supposedly normal people are leading supposedly "normal" lives.

Who, then are the most convincing superheroes without costumes? What actors and actresses have made you believe that their very human characters on screen could transform into larger-than-life heroes and/or heroines with a quick dash into a phone booth? Mind you, I'm not just talking Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen ...

1. Famke Janssen as Jean Gray in X-Men
She cuts a fine figure, doesn't she? Famke Janssen is undoubtedly sexier than Wolverine when they both suit up, yet she really shines whenever she's using her brain -- which is all the time. She doesn't need the costume to be one of the smartest, most empathetic, and most lethal people, in the universe.

This week, the first season of J.J. Abrams' terrific television series Fringe comes to DVD, and if you haven't seen it yet, well, this is a great chance to catch up on what you missed before the new season starts on Sept. 17. The most intriguing character on the show is Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), once a brilliant, acclaimed scientist whose work in the area of "fringe science" made him the father of any number of ethically questionable, highly dangerous, and flat-out weird innovations that now seem to be popping up all over the place. In the tradition of the great mad scientists of literature and film, Bishop's brilliance and the nature of his work drove him bugnuts crazy, leading to his being institutionalized for 17 years.

Going back to Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse, science has long been a force that drives gifted men insane, often with violent consequences. The underlying message is that we mere humans shouldn't play God, and the mad-science industry really boomed once we started testing atomic warheads in the 1940s. The later crop of science-based masterminds, like James Bond's nemesis Dr. No, Buckaroo Banzai's Dr. Emilio Lizardo, and Wild, Wild West's Dr. Loveless, were more interested in global domination than the usual areas of obsession like genetic mutation, robotics and bringing the dead back to life. But deep down inside, they're all mad scientists, and here are just a small handful of favorites:

Ever since the news broke early this morning that the Walt Disney Co. had acquired Marvel Entertainment for upwards of $4 billion in cash and stocks, a number of additional details have emerged via a shareholder conference call regarding the deal. Now, first, it's important to understand that Disney just doesn't nab every Marvel character in existence when it comes to movies, since the rights to some characters -- like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and The X-Men -- are in the hands of other studios. Also, Paramount still has five more Marvel movies to distribute under their deal (Thor, Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America and one other), so don't look for Disney to begin screwing around with those (or any) upcoming Marvel projects just yet. Eventually, though, Disney wants to become the sole distributor for all of Marvel's films.

However, when you step away from those projects currently in development is when this deal gets very interesting. On the conference call earlier, they noted that Pixar's John Lasseter has already taken a meeting with the Marvel folks to begin brainstorming different collaborations, and apparently that meeting went extremely well -- which means there's a very good chance we're going to see Pixar's name on an upcoming film featuring Marvel characters.

But which Marvel characters lend themselves perfectly to the Pixar format? That's your call -- which superheroes would you like to see in a Pixar movie? Do you think now will be the time to create that Incredibles sequel and include Marvel villains? Perhaps The Incredibles could square off against ... The Incredible Hulk!? Oh, the cross-over potential is mouth watering -- whaddya think?

For more on the Marvel deal, and to listen to the conference call, head over to Marvel.com.

Over at NPR.org, writer Linda Holmes dared to blog an open letter to Pixar, politely asking to see a few adventures with, maybe, girls as the main characters. Her tone was set nicely in the opening of her piece, titled "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees":


Holmes points out that of the ten features that Pixar's released theatrically so far, all ten have been boy's adventures. She acknowledges that the movies "feature women and girls to varying degrees -- The Incredibles, in particular -- but the story is never 'a girl and the things that happen to her,' the way it's 'a boy and what happens to him.'" She mentions again that she loves Pixar's movies ... she'd just like to see a character like Up's Ellie or The Incredibles' Violet as the main character for a change.

There are over 100 comments on the piece and, this being NPR, the overwhelming majority of the responses are intelligently expressed and in agreement with Holmes point of view. But if you skip over to Jerry Beck's animation blog, Cartoon Brew, you'll find a lot of readers with a different perspective.

Mother's Day is bittersweet for me because my own mother passed away 11 years ago. In recent times, though, the sweet far outweighs the bitter, because I have wonderful memories of our time together watching -- and loving -- movies. When I'd come home from school in the afternoon, we'd talk and watch old movies on a tiny, black and white TV. When everyone else in my family thought I was crazy for waiting in line for hours to see Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, she told me about waiting in line for hours as a young teen to see Gone With the Wind. When she was dying of cancer and I visited for a couple of weeks from out of state, we spent hours watching old movies together.

In honor of all of our mothers, I've compiled a list of seven of the most awesomest movie moms. But this isn't a competition; it's just a list, and it's just a highly personal reflection of my own thoughts, so please feel free to share your favorite, most awesome movie moms in the comments.

1. Geena Davis as Samantha Caine / Charly Baltimore in The Long Kiss Goodnight

As Elisabeth Rappe rhapsodized recently, "the charm of the movie is that her psychotic nature is buried within a happy-go-lucky mom who enjoys baking muffins and wearing ugly Christmas sweaters." Home-made muffins are nice and all, but wouldn't it be cool if your mother could assassinate those bullies who keep beating you up after school? Not saying she would, of course, though that would have been a tantalizing prospect for me. Of course, the flip side is that you'd better behave ... or else!

I'm not entirely sure where or how /Film dug up this blog post from last summer about the lack of proper female characters taking the lead in Pixar's productions to date, but it's certainly made those of us on Twitter all... a-buzz.

Think about it: Toy Story had Bo Peep and Mrs. Potato Head serve as love interests; A Bug's Life had a princess love interest and spunky tot; Toy Story 2 can claim Jessie as a proper heroine; Monsters, Inc. is back to love interest and spunky kid; Finding Nemo does give Dory a fairly prominent and helpful presence; and The Incredibles has both Helen and Violet as prime role models. Cars and Ratatouille once again reduce the gals to objects of affection, while Wall-E falls for one admittedly assertive robot.

(In fairness, Dreamworks seems to be batting a similar average: for every Princess Fiona or Rita, there's either a Renee Zellweger or a Renee Zellweger around to muck it up.)

Pixar's next project, Up, appears for now to focus solely on one old man and one young boy. While I don't see the box office dipping in the name of all that testosterone, I still wonder if any of you are struck by this gender disparity in the studio's work, and if any sort of affirmative action is going to result in stories compromised just so they can include a Token Stand-Up Female. What say you guys and girls?

Hollywood isn't known as a place for a 'conservative' frame of mind. I think Sean Penn reminded us of that quite nicely during his Oscar acceptance speech when he endearingly referred to the crowd of tinsel-town elite as "You Commie Homo-Loving Sons of Guns". But that doesn't mean our Red-state friends don't like to go to the movies just as much as their liberal brethren -- so what's a Conservative to do? Well, the National Review has come to the rescue and compiled a list of The Best Conservative Movies. And how does a movie arrive on such a list? According to NR, "Conservatives enjoy these films because they are great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more" -- because I guess it is impossible for someone with Liberal political views to care about those things. So even though the political leanings of the cast and crew reportedly did not come into play for the list, I'm not sure I believe the addition of David Mamet's The Edge wasn't inspired (if only a little) by the filmmakers political 180 earlier this year.

Now for the list itself, well, there are the obvious choices like Red Dawn, 300 and The Dark Knight that are praised for their themes featuring individuals fighting against a terrorist, invading hoards, and a chorus of naysayers (sound familiar?). But the rest of the list isn't so obvious, and there are some weird selections in the bunch. Juno was noted for being pro-life (but punished for its heroines "unrealistic level of self-confidence"), Brazil for its tale of bureaucracy run amok, Groundhog Day for promoting small town values, and The Incredibles was even noted for bringing a little Ayn Rand back to the kiddie set. Personal politics aside, I have to wonder just what, exactly, some of these people were on when they included Ghostbusters on the list (I know, I know, an EPA guy is a bad guy, but c'mon, leave Dr. Venkman out of this).

Not long ago we brought you a pretty damn good mash-up featuring Toy Story footage cut to the audio behind The Dark Knight trailer. Well, a dude by the name of Justin Niemeyer has gone and created a similar (in style) mash-up in honor of the new James Bond flick Quantum of Solace, and this time the Pixar companion film is The Incredibles. While some of the dialogue doesn't exactly match up just right, this is still an impressive attempt for a trailer that runs almost two and a half minutes. Watching this also reminds me that it's been way too long since I've taken in a screening of The Incredibles, and seeing as the brand new WALL-E Blu-ray DVD just arrived in the mail, I may just have a delicious double feature ahead of me this weekend. Check out the video below and let us know what you think.

I wanted to call this a Fan Made post, and I suppose you can technically say artist Lou Romano is a "fan" of the designs he produces, but it's a weird line and so we're not attaching any labels. Romano, of course, is a member of the art department over at Pixar Studios, and over on his blog he's just thrown up a slew of early concept images for The Incredibles, Jack-Jack Attack and Mr. Incredible and Friends. Romano introduces the enormous set by saying they're "some other samples of Incredibles work I did between 2000-2004. Development/color styling/and dvd bonus materials." The image above (one of my personal favorites), he calls "more of a gag drawing."

The Incredibles happens to be right up there with my favorites of Pixar -- and with the popularity of superhero movies and the popularity of The Incredibles, I'm real surprised Pixar isn't looking to make a sequel -- and, instead, is churning out a Cars 2 and a Toy Story 3. Bogus, I say! Check out a few of Romano's images in the gallery below, then head over to his page to see a ton more. Would you be down for an Incredibles sequel? Or are you happy with more Cars and Toy Story?



[via Super Punch]