Home

[Anthony]

Ratatouille

From Pixar Animation Studios
Release due Summer 2007

The story is of a rat named Ratatouille who lives in a upmarket Parisian restaurant run by an eccentric chef.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Bird gets rat's tale
Monday March 13, 2006
 
Brad Bird, whose The Incredibles won the best animated feature Oscar two years ago for Pixar, has been put in charge of the studio's latest film, Ratatouille.

The film, which centres on a skinny mouse who lives in a fancy Parisian restaurant run by a famous but eccentric chef, will be Pixar's eighth animated feature but only the first to be actually owned solely by Pixar. Former hits such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo were developed under a shared costs and profits deal with Disney.

The deal was confirmed last Friday at a meeting of Disney shareholders in Anaheim, California, ahead of the firm's acquisition of Pixar. Disney execs were also treated to an early peek at Ratatouille, featuring fully rendered computer-animated characters.

The story of Ratatouille, which is due to hit screens in June 2007, is being developed by Jan Pinkava, an Oscar-winning short-film director in his own right for 1997's Geri's Game, about an elderly man who passes the time by playing chess against himself in a large park.

Pixar's next release, Cars, is expected to hit cinemas this June and is the last film produced under Disney's deal with Pixar, under which the two companies split production costs and profits.

Pixar agreed in January to be acquired by the Walt Disney Co in a deal valued at $7.4bn (£4.25bn).

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0 ... 19,00.html

[Kristof]

Sounds like we know the theme for a restaurant in Toon Studios.......  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[Anthony]

Teaser Trailer Description
from http://www.aintitcool.com

"As you probably know from recent news reports, Brad Bird is directing RATATOUILLE for Pixar after Jan Pinkava (GERI'S GAME) stepped aside.

"The trailer opens with a big table of cheese with the waiter, in heavy French accent, pointing to different kinds of cheese, describing the differences of the cheeses. We never see his face, just his hand as it gestures at the tray, with the camera focusing on each different sample of cheese as he's talking about it. Then, he says this last cheese is rare and expensive, but exceptional. The camera pans over to see a gray rat caught like a deer in headlights, a piece of the expensive cheese in his mitts. The rat is of the cute rat varieties, not the evil R.O.U.S. type ("I don't think they exist.")

"The waiter shouts, the patrons scream and the rat screams himself and runs like a bat outta hell. He runs through the kitchen, knocking pots and pans over, cheese still in a death grip. He makes a leap off of a table, kitchen knives and other utensils falling around him and then it freeze-frames, like an action movie with the hero jumping over a cliff or away from a fireball or something.

"The rat introduces himself to us. The voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it. He says that he loves good food, and it's a good thing he lives in Paris because there's a lot of it... It's just hard to get.

"It cut to our hero grey rat walking about outside, near what looked like a sewage pipe or something. He tells us about his distaste for trash and love for real food. His dad yells at him from inside the pipe (we never see him), telling him he wouldn't be hungry all the time if he just ate trash like all the other rats. A chubby rat comes along eating something... dirty. It's gray-ish/black and it could be rotting oyster... or something. The chubby rat tells the gray rat that once you get paste the gag reflex, you'd be surprised what you can eat. The gray rat asks the chubby one what the hell he is eating. Mouth full, the chubby rat just kinda goes, "I don't know."

"Then it cuts back to the freeze frame of the gray rat in mid-leap and it reiterates how dangerous it is for a rat with a taste for real good food is in Paris. The film unfreezes and the rat hits the ground running, darting into a crack in the wooden wall, followed almost immediately by the falling cutlery imbedding itself into the wood around the hole.

"So, there you go. RATATOUILLE the trailer. It was funny, looked good... It didn't blow me away or anything, but the talent involved is undeniable."

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22729

[experiment627]

The teaser trailer has hit the net!!!  :!:

Well, it's in French - but considering what the movie is about, it figures.  

 :arrow: //http://www.cinoche.com/films/2382

Can't wait 'till summer 2007!

[Anthony]

Thanks for the link!

I don't actually like the look of it at the moment.  I don't like the design of the rat himself (Ratatouille?) and the whole thing just doesn't look very interesting.  I'm looking forward to the next teaser though - Pixar have got into a habit of doing bad first teasers recently, and with Brad Bird in charge now it should be good.

It would be cool if the whole film was in French... lol

[experiment627]

Thanks to Apple ( =D>), you can now watch the trailer in glorious HD crystal clarity!

//http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/ratatouille/

Bee-au-ti-ful!  


(Though I have to say: I thought the French voices were a lot funnier  :wink: )

[Dlrpfan]

Wow well done apple!!

[Anthony]

Pixar's feature film page has been updated with what looks like the first Ratatouille poster: http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/index.html I can't find it bigger anywhere else yet...

How do Pixar never fail to create such brilliant logos for their films?

[Anthony]

Very very good.

[The Butlin Boy]

Ha ha very clever

[Dlrpfan]

wow that is so cool!

[penfold12]

Have you seen this trailer?? Wow, the animation looks like a painting come to life! I know I sound biased but its fantastic. Look at this years computer animations, "over the hedge", "barnyard" and to some degree "cars", they still look computer generated, then look at this, it has a totaly different feel to it. Now I see why Glen Keane said no to reverting back to hand drawn animation for Repunzell!

[Anthony]

Have you seen this trailer?? Wow, the animation looks like a painting come to life! I know I sound biased but its fantastic.

It's definitely the most beautiful Pixar teaser ever.  Take a look back at the Cars teaser now you've seen the film - it's shocking! The animation and models are just like blocks.  So if ratatouille's teaser is this good, that bodes well.

I just found this early review on AICN via Upcoming Pixar.  Spoilers ahoy!

Got handed an invite for a "free movie screening" today at my work today (11-20), advertising a "major studio animated film coming next year" to be shown at a local theater tonight. Luckily, a gal I work with also is the assistant manager at said theater and had told me it was a Disney flick, but even she didn't know what movie it was. Obviously, Ratatouille sprang to mind, so I RSVP'd and my wife and I went to the theater (Regal Cascade 16 Cinemas in Vancouver, Washington).

After standing in line for almost two hours, we were checked thoroughly by security and ushered into the theater. Seating was about 400 people, with various sections of seating taped off for reserved seating. My wife and I were sitting halfway up the stadium seating at the end of an aisle. After the audience was seated, more people came in with notepads and recording devices and sat in the reserved seating scattered around the theater. The ushers then asked us to move to the middle of our aisle into the reserved seating to make room at the end of the aisle for more of these notepad carrying people, so we did. So we are seated dead center in the theater. Right below was about 5 more empty reserved seats. Then, a small group make their way down the aisle and sit right in front of us, and HOLY SHIT I recognize two of them immediately, Brad Bird and John Lasseter! I just about pissed my pants!

Anyway, the MC gets on the mic and says welcome, blah blah blah, we are about to see Walt Disney and Pixar's next animated film, Ratatouille! He announced that we were the second test audience to ever see the movie. The film will be in various states of completion, and to stay afterwards to fill out a survey. So the lights dim, and the movie begins.

Sorry if I spoil anything here. The movie was in a very incomplete state, with about a third of the movie being storyboards, a lot of gray-scale, then mostly incomplete animation. All the voice-work and sound effects were intact though. The few segments of nearly complete animation already looked fantastic. As far as the story goes, classic Pixar.

The main character is a rat named Remy who has a passion for good food unlike the rest of his trash-eating clan. Remy finds himself paired up with a garbage boy named Linguini in a famous Paris restaurant. After accidentally creating a soup masterpiece, the duo hide the fact that the genius behind the cooking is Remy. Throughout the course of the movie, they battle the jealous head-chef and Paris's top food critic, all the while dealing with Remy's struggle of abandoning his family to pursue his dreams of fine cooking.

The plot seems simple, but like any Brad Bird flick, it has a ton of heart and humor. Much of the action scenes were storyboards and gray-scale, but still promised to be dazzling when complete. The humor moments were hilarious and had the audience rolling. The voice acting was fantastic, with no recognizable A-list Hollywood stars to distract you from the characters, no singing in the edit that we saw either. The music was completely forgettable as it was just filler at this point I suspect. During the movie Lasseter would scribble down notes at various points.

The movie lasted a little over an hour and a half, and was greeted with resounding applause by the audience. When the lights came up I look in front of me to see John Lasseter reach over and shake Brad Bird's hand with a huge smile on his face. The small group quickly gets up and starts leaving the aisle. I worked up the courage to stand up and tap Brad Bird on the shoulder and tell him "awesome movie", he smiles very politely and responds with a "thank you".

Needless to say, my hand was shaking as I tried filling out the survey

Anyway, I cant wait to see the finished movie. Personally I liked it better than The Incredibles, the rough cut we saw tonight was right up there with Finding Nemo, my personal Pixar favorite.

Still in awe,

The Chemist

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30775

[Anthony]

Another spoiler, this time for some new characters just revealed via a piece of merchandise on Amazon:

//http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/079441284X.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V35142732_.jpg
Source: Upcoming Pixar blog

There's Remy (or Remi) in the middle, then the "fat orange rat" and possible Remy's father.  Behind are two kitchen hands and Chef Auguste Gusteau.

This definitely doesn't look anything like Flushed Away now.

[Anthony]

Ratatouille isn't released in the UK until 5th October 2007 now!!! :cry:

I remember they did this with Nemo back in 2003... bastards! :evil: