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US Postal Service Releasing 2011 Pixar-Related Postage Stamps

Ben Moore — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:58:05 +0000

Everybody knows that your life’s work doesn’t mean anything until there’s a US postage stamp to commemorate it. Only the Postal Service can deem a movie or cartoon worth remembering, as they have previously with the Loony Tunes and Mickey Mouse.

Now, finally, Pixar is getting its just dues. After being around since the 1980s and making the most consistently successful movies of the past decade, the US Post Office is recognizing the incredible animation company by selling Pixar-related image stamps.

I’m sure you’re wondering, as I was, which Pixar characters will be adorning these wonderful stamps. Well, wonder no longer: the image designs will include Lightning McQueen and Mater from Cars, Remy the rat and Linguini from Ratatouille, Buzz Lightyear and two of those green, three-eyed aliens from the Toy Story movies, Carl Fredricksen ...

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SR Pick: Financial Success of Pixar Infographic

Kofi Outlaw — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:12:18 +0000

[Note: The end of this article was altered after publication by the writer.]

Infographics are the popular (and digestible) way to make statistics come to life, and this latest one (beautifully rendered by the good folks over at Know Your Money) is an infographic detailing the production budgets and earnings of all the Pixar animated movies that have been released to date.

From Toy Story 1 back in 1995 to Toy Story 3 (in theaters now), this infographic shows how much money went into making each Pixar hit and how much box office cash was ultimately returned on that investment.

One interesting note about the chart: because Know Your Money is based in the UK, the chart shows both the U.S. and UK box office earnings of each Pixar film, ...

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SR Pick: Honest Oscars Movie Posters

Ross Miller — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:28:54 +0000

The Oscars were just last night and it was a solid enough show with many improvements from previous years. One of the big changes was the expansion of the Best Picture category from 5 nominees to 10, which at first I didn’t like although it actually worked well in the end.

The posters for the 10 Best Picture Nominees do what every movie poster does – sell the movie. But what if they were a bit more honest in their advertising?

Today for our SR pick we’ve turned the snark level up to 11 (on a 10-point scale) and selected a few of the funniest posters from a collection the guys over at College Humor created, which are dedicated to being entirely brutal and honest about what those Best Picture Nominees are really about.

Check out half ...

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82nd Academy Awards Winners List & Recap

Rob Keyes — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:38:40 +0000

If you missed our live-chat for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards this evening, don’t fret, we have the winners and a brief recap of the ceremony for you. In short, The Hurt Locker took home the big categories, beating out Avatar and the predictable choices won for the four acting categories.

Check out the official list of 2010 Oscars Winners and our recap of the main event!

The Hurt Locker took home the most awards

The Winners

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, for Inglourious Basterds
Best Animated Feature Film: Up
Best Original Song: The Weary ...

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Avatar Leads 2010 Saturn Awards Nominations

Ross Miller — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:03:09 +0000

Today marks the day when the nominations for the 36th Annual Saturn Awards are given out. In case you’re not familiar with them, they are given out by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (they also include TV shows and stage productions) so as a reader of Screen Rant I believe they’re right up your alley .

The awards will be given out on June 24th, so we have over four months to speculate and choose the nominees we’d give the award to. The categories range from the usual Best Film (separated into Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction etc) to Best DVD release and Best DVD Special Edition.

Keeping in line with all of the rest of the major awards, films like Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds have ...

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The Oscars: 82nd Academy Award Nominations [Updated]

Rob Keyes — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:19:59 +0000

Tomorrow morning, Tuesday February 2nd, the official nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards will be announced live. The 2010 Oscar presentation will take place Sunday, March 7, 2010, hosted by none other than the comedic pair of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

Last year’s Academy Awards saw the lovable Hugh Jackman as host and the big categories of Best Picture and Best Director went to Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. Sean Penn took home another Best Actor award and Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader.

This year we have some big competition with the biggest box office film of all time in Avatar making a run for the awards and its creator James Cameron making a big returning splash into Hollywood after his last showing being the the previous biggest film of all time ...

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2010 Oscar Race Update: Producers Guild & SAG Award Winners

Kofi Outlaw — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:06:41 +0000

This past weekend the race for 2010 Oscar got just a bit more debatable, with some surprise winners walking away from both the Producers Guild Awards (PGA) and the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG).

James Cameron walked away happy from The 2010 Golden Globe Awards,with Avatar taking the top trophies for Best Director and Best Dramatic Picture, leading everybody to think that the Oscars would follow suit. With the Best Picture category now open to ten nominees, variety and uncertainty were suppossed to be this year’s theme.

However, in the months leading up to the biggest award in Hollywood, only a handful of films seem to be popping up as the top contenders.

The names we keep hearing again and again are as follows (listed by name with the director in parenthesis).

Avatar (James Cameron)
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin ...

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2010 Golden Globe Award Winners

Ross Miller — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:05:00 +0000

I’m sure if you’re at all interested in which movies win what at each of the big award ceremonies, you caught the 67 Annual Golden Globe Awards last night on NBC. It was a fun show (as the Globes usually are compared to the Oscars), with some predictable/expected winners and some pretty major shocks.

Rickey Gervais was an absolute hoot as the host, jabbing in and out with often controversial but almost always funny gags which ranged from a Mel Gibson drinking joke (“I like a drink as much as the next man. Unless the next man is Mel Gibson.”) to one about Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler (“It’s Rachel from Friends and that bloke out of 300.”). Great stuff from a great host choice.

I won’t waste any time just now giving my thoughts on who I think should have won and ...

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The Top 10 Movie Moments of 2009

Kofi Outlaw — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:57:49 +0000

Every site you go to these days has a list of their top 10 best movies of the year. But how many time can you look at slight variations of the same lists you only semi-agree with?

Besides, ranking entire movies is a big job. After much debate on the subject, we here at Screen Rant have decided that, in the end, a year in movies is perhaps best defined by specific movie moments that are now and forever burned into our collective memory.

So, without further ado, here are our picks for those 2009 movie moments which audiences collectively remember as being unforgettably awesome, hilarious, moving, inspiring or are otherwise just plain enjoyable…

(By the way, there will be some spoilers in the items below since all the movies in ...

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10 Movie Events That Shaped the Decade (For Movie Fans)

Ross Miller — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:29:11 +0000

We’ve come to the end of 2009, so we thought we’d weigh in with a look back at the first 10 years of the 21st century in the movie world and discuss the various different “events” which shaped the decade. Obviously we can’t cover absolutely everything, but sticking true to our core movie genres on the site, we’re just going to concentrate on the comic-book, sci-fi, action (and so forth) types of movies and take a look at what films had the maximum impact over this decade.

It’s amazing to think that it’s been 10 years since movies like The Matrix, American Beauty and Fight Club (to name but a few) came out in 1999 (check out our 1999 decade highlight, if you haven’t already). A LOT of movies – somewhere in the vicinity ...

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2009 A ‘Milestone Year’ For Movie Profits

Kofi Outlaw — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:16:45 +0000

I groaned out loud back in August when I found out about the record-breaking summer 2009 box office profits. Now we’re hearing new projections stating that when New Year’s Eve rolls over into New Year’s Day, the movie industry will have crossed a box office milestone, with profits predicted to exceed the $10 billion mark.

I’m sure we’d all be happy that our favorite medium was thriving in the midst of sharp economic downturn – that is, if so many movies hadn’t turned out to be crap this year. Now, the only thing I’m wondering (and you should too) is: “What lesson will Hollywood take from this?”

Variety is the publication cracking open the profit prediction. If you go back and read our Summer 2009 box office analysis, it ...

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Poster Friday: Kick-Ass, Avatar, Green Zone, Wolfman & More!

Rob Keyes — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:59:26 +0000

Happy Friday everyone! For our first Friday of November 2009, we’ve again gathered the latest posters to come out for this week’s poster round-up. So, before you head out to see this week’s opening movies, namely The Men Who Star at goats, A Christmas Carol, The Box and The Fourth Kind, check out the latest promo sheets below.

Screen Rant’s wall this week now includes new one-sheets for Kick-Ass, The Wolfman, Conan, The Twilight Saga’s Eclipse, Clash of the Titans, Scream 4, A Single Man, Avatar, Machete, Green Zone, Let Me In, Tell Tale and The Men Who Stare at Goats.

We also ...

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GROAN… Summer 2009 Sets Box Office Record

Kofi Outlaw — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:55:02 +0000

So we just finished telling you why the Summer of 2009 was the season of bad movies. Now, as if to validate our point (sarcasm alert) Variety has just announced that the Summer of ’09 has set a new record as the highest grossing summer of all time at the U.S. domestic box office.

So there you have it, folks, it’s official: Hollywood has no reason to ever hire good writers, produce good scripts, or offer us anything better at the multiplex than what Michael Bay can half-envision.

Awesome.

The numbers of course tell a deeper tale than that, so if you’d like to find out just how the heck this summer managed to break the box office bank, here’s the breakdown:

Top earners for the season were Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($399.4 million), Harry Potter ...

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Summer 2009: The Season Of Bad Movies [Updated]

Heath McKnight — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:38:14 +0000

Well, the summer movie season is officially over, and while box office earnings are way up, it seems like the quality of the films have actually gone way down. But for every few badly-written movies (like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers 2, and G.I. Joe–though some will say it’s not that bad), there was a diamond in the rough like District 9. So why were so many movies so bad in the summer of ’09, even if they did make a lot of money? Hint: The Writers Strike!

Before the summer began, I wrote an article about how the 2007 Writers Strike might affect the summer 2009 movies. I speculated that back in 2007, studios were nervous about how long the writers strike could last, leaving them with ...

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2009 Scream Award Nominations

Ross Miller — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:37:08 +0000

The nominees have been announced for the fourth annual Scream Awards, held every year by Spike TV. The decisively more “fan-friendly” award ceremony (compared to the Oscars) honors films from the sci-fi, fantasy, horror and comic-book genres of movies, TV shows and comic books. The awards are described as, “the first and only global event of its kind,” to honor those genres.

The Scream 2009 nominees were chosen by the Advisory Board of Hollywood and Genre Leaders, a list which this year includes the likes of Wes Craven, Roland Emmerich, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Eli Roth and Zack Snyder, plus many more. The event will be taped on Saturday, October 17th this year at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles, and will air on Spike TV ten days later on Tuesday, October 27th (check for local times).

Along with ...

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SR Picks: Pixar Makes a Little Girl’s Dying Wish Come True

Rob Keyes — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:42:49 +0000

When the world seems full of doom and gloom, there are always those special people that step up and make you feel good about life. When I hear stories about these heroes, I feel compelled to share them. Not long ago, I wrote about such a thing happening when Somchai Yoosabai, a Bangkok firefighter, single-handedly saved a young autistic boy with the help of his Spider-Man costume.

Today, we have another story of people doing something special for someone out of the goodness of their hearts.

Colby Curtin, a 10-year old girl described as fun, active and mature for her age, was diagnosed with a rare vascular cancer nearly three years ago and since then she has been fighting strong against it. For the last month or so however, her condition got worse and she would not ...

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Why Is Pixar’s ‘UP’ Using Bait-and-Switch Advertising?

Kofi Outlaw — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:45:50 +0000

A week ago I wrote a post about how the Weinstein Company supposedly tampered with the trailer for The Road, in order to “help” the film – which is essentially a meditative look at the bond between a father and son traveling across the ruins of America – reach a (supposedly) wider audience.

The post caused a tiny stir and even inspired a response post from Alex Billington over at First Showing, who claimed (echoing the sentiment of many readers) that I was crying foul about something that is by now a banal topic: Hollywood using bait-and-switch advertising to lure us into theaters under false pretenses.

Well, this week I find myself “crying foul” about bait-and-switch advertising once again, this time in reference to a movie I actually saw and loved. I’m talking ...

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Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: May 31, 2009

Niall Browne — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:34:07 +0000

In the Wrap Up this Week:

The box office is UP; Robert Downey Jr might still saddle up for Cowboys and Aliens; Lucy beats Nicole Kidman to the Punch; Natalie Portman, Danny McBride and James Franco salute Your Highness; Seann William Scott and Adam Brody are A Couple of Dicks and Chevy Chase dips his toes in the Hot Tub Time Machine and he may return as Fletch.

BOX OFFICE:
The summer season is now well and truly here. Pixar’s Up shows that family films and the Pixar brand are hugely profitable. The animated film banked a huge $68 million over the weekend. For a film that sells most of it’s tickets in half price matinees that’s a lot of attendance.

Last week’s champion Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian had to settle for the runner up spot with a weekend take of $25 million. With ...

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‘UP’ Review

Kofi Outlaw — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:11:37 +0000

Short Version: UP is arguably Pixar’s finest achievement to date, and is surprisingly mature (and moving) in its subject matter. Oh, and the 3D visuals are pretty awesome too.

Screen Rant Reviews Pixar's UP (in digital 3D)

There’s nothing better than an easy review: Pixar’s latest summer offering, UP, is a fantastic film. Simply fantastic. Seriously, if Ratatouille and Wall-E deserved to be in the running for Best Picture of the Year (as many said they did at the times of their releases) then UP certainly does.

It’s that good.

The film – which was written by Bob Peterson (Finding Nemo, Ratatouille) and directed by Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.) – delivers all the things we’ve come to expect from a Pixar animated feature: gorgeous visuals, a strong story rife with ...

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Pixar’s ‘Brave’ is Actually ‘The Bear and the Bow’

Carl Lee — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:24:34 +0000

With Up coming out this weekend (May 29th), you might have guessed that director Pete Docter has been doing lots of interviews and other press. In a discussion with Coming Soon, an intriguing slip lead to massive amounts of speculation. We tried to stay out of that mess until some clear(er) details were available. So what exactly is Brave you ask?

Apparently, it’s Pixar’s 2011 winter feature The Bear and the Bow.

‘Brave’, it turns out, is Pixar’s internal name for The Bear and the Bow. Writer and director Brenda Chapman (Cars, Prince of Egypt) is ‘behind the lens’ of Pixar’s first fairy tale, which stars Reese Witherspoon. The Pixar Blog reports the story is of a Scottish princess Merida, who would rather be known as a great (and brave) archer. Against her mother’s wishes, she ...

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