More The Merrier: Second Teaser/Short for 'Coco' Arrives

Well how about that? Another look at Pixar's upcoming original story Coco has been released!

A sort-of teaser/short film, it's a fun watch. There's lots of classic cartoony slapstick here, though I wonder if the movie itself will have that kind of humor. Maybe, maybe not.


Now this was actually shown in other countries. Someone leaked it onto YouTube (it was a recording in a movie theater, and it was in Spanish) a couple weeks back when the American teaser was released, so it's cool to see that Disney's marketing and Pixar have released it here.

Just a month in, and this campaign is pretty strong so far. Definitely a real 180 from how they marketed The Good Dinosaur, which like Coco, was a fall release in 2015 that came off the heels of a summer Pixar event - Inside Out. Coco is the fall Pixar movie this year, Cars 3 is the summer release. Looks like the same mistakes won't be made again.

Now, will they attach this to something in theaters? The next family-friendly Disney release is the Disneynature film Born in China, it could show up before that, but there's already a great teaser out so maybe not. Or maybe they'll combine the two, for Cars 3's first extended look combined the teaser and new footage. (And that "extended look" is rolling in theaters, I catch it frequently at the theater I work at.)

Who knows what they'll do.

UPDATE: I'm hearing it was shown before Beauty and the Beast. I didn't get to catch the preview reels for that at work.

What did you think of the short?

Rock-Solid: 'Early Man' Teaser Debuts

Alrighty! A teaser for Aardman's next stop-motion animated picture has arrived!


As expected, the teaser displays Aardman's wit, their sense of humor, and some lovely visuals. It's a nice little poke at how some trailers for big blockbusters are, and I especially liked the little Monty Python and the Holy Grail hat-tip. From everything we've seen plus this new teaser, I think the movie looks like it'll be a fun, eccentric good time.

Of course, I'm a rather impatient American. No American distributor has picked this one up yet, and it's due out in Europe in January. Will it get a US distributor soon? Or will we have to wait like last time? Aardman's previous film was Shaun the Sheep Movie, when that entered production they had ended their partnership with Sony Pictures Animation. Sony, like former partner DreamWorks, would release the films around the same time they were released in Europe. Shaun the Sheep Movie didn't land a US distributor until after its European debut in February 2015, Lionsgate picked up the film and then dumped it that following August.

Something tells me that this one will get picked up before it comes out overseas. Shaun the Sheep Movie was based on a fluffy little TV series (made by Aardman themselves, of course) that was barely shown here in America, whereas this is an original movie. Perhaps distributors will find this one to be an easier sell? Plus there's dialogue, Shaun the Sheep Movie was mainly silent.

Who knows. Aardman only scored one domestic smash hit, and that was their first feature-length film: Chicken Run. For a little while, it was actually the highest-earning non-Disney/non-Pixar animated feature until the release of Shrek. Wallace & Gromit did okay business here at best, the rest of their films did even worse. Overseas totals and low budgets keep the future features afloat... But I myself would like to see Aardman score another good-sized hit here in the states. Maybe Early Man is it, maybe it isn't.

What say you?

A New World: Teaser for 'Coco' Surfaces

It is finally here! The teaser for Pixar's new original tale, the Day of the Dead story Coco!


What a teaser this was!

Not only does it successfully establish the concept *and* some of the storyline itself, it also has a great atmosphere, a very nice retro vibe (VHS and LPs!), and lots of little subtleties. Pixar's take on the Land of the Dead is a country mile from The Book of Life's depiction of it. While Book of Life's was a painterly, visually amazing city... This is like a forest of town neighborhoods and highways, they almost look like individual trees with buildings wrapped around them. It's big, complicated, and stunning.

The music also sounds great, and also boosts the atmosphere. I think the teaser really shows how songs will be worked into the picture, and how the film won't be a more traditional break-out-into-song musical, as that has been emphasized long before this teaser was put together. I'm quite fine with this direction, though one day it would be cool to see Pixar take their crack at the classic "singing" musical.

The teaser is definitely a nice change of pace from jokes-jokes-jokes.

In fact, Pixar's teasers have been rather different as of late. Pixar actually sort of pioneered the gag-based animated movie teaser.

For their second feature, 1998's A Bug's Life, they made a teaser composed of animation made just for it that wouldn't be used in the film itself. Ever since that film came out, Pixar has done this for almost every subsequent picture of theirs. Now, for a long while, these were also very humorous teasers. WALL-E's teaser broke the mold a bit and Up's was a little cryptic, but it was back to the funny teaser after that. Then the teaser for Brave showed up. Not a joke in sight in that one, it was rather serious and it ended on an intense moment, not a gag.

Now... The current trend we're seeing began with, oddly enough, The Good Dinosaur. That film's teaser showed the film's opening minute with the asteroid missing Earth, and then a montage of clips from the actual movie - not special animation made just for the teaser - set to some pretty epic music, no dialogue at all. Finding Dory's teaser was an alternate version of a scene from the movie, this very version was going to be in the movie before the filmmakers decided that it wasn't up to snuff. (You can see this on the Blu-ray's selection of deleted scenes.)

Cars 3, their next feature, had a teaser that had maybe one line of dialogue... It was just shots of a race, and then Lightning McQueen crashing and flipping over in slow-motion. The race is also in the movie itself, though it was re-lit for the teaser. McQueen's climactic crash is actually going to take place at nighttime.

Now we've got this. This has got to be footage from the movie itself, all of it. If it isn't, I'll be surprised. There's very little humor in here, and it's all about story, Miguel's character, the atmosphere, and the premise itself. This is one of Pixar's best teasers yet...

What say you?

Nut That Bad: 'Nut Job 2' Teaser Sorta Surfaces

Forgive the pun, but yes... The Nut Job 2... That animated sequel not too many folk want. The teaser is here.

You're probably wondering... Where? It's not online, that's for sure... But I saw it. Some other folk saw it, too. Where? If you're new here, fun fact: I've been working at my local movie theater since August of 2015, and when I'm an usher, I get the time to check on the movies and see trailers.

So when popping into a screening of Monster Trucks, I saw the very beginning of The Nut Job 2's trailer. Then I thought, "The trailer for this thing isn't out yet. At least not online..." So I stayed in the empty theater and gave it a watch, figuring that it may not pop up online for a while because of the recent release date change (Originally set for May, it's now set to open in mid-August) and the general quietness surrounding this movie. We also have the poster at the theater, which we got before the delay.

Honestly, the teaser wasn't all that bad. The Nut Job is currently viewed as one of those smaller and not-so-good animated flicks that tend to come out in January or so. I've actually never seen the film, I've seen the short that it's based on, but the movie? No. The trailers for it give me little incentive to check it out, and so did the pretty sour critical reception. How does The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature look?

Well... Tolerable.

Not funny or exciting or anything, just tolerable. Definitely slapstick-heavy, too. It looks very run-of-the-mill, and the plot is the tired "greedy human wants to develop on an area that the animals inhabit" slop. I guess no one learned from Norm of the North. All's okay until the final second, where the pug character farts for no reason.

That's basically it. You're not really missing much, but I figured I'd share my thoughts on it anyways. Not sure if or when it'll go online, but it's rolling before Monster Trucks, if you - for some reason - check that thing out.

UPDATE: A day later, it's online.

Big Vroom!: 'Cars 3' Teaser Goes an Unexpected Route

After quite a wait, the teaser trailer for Pixar's next is finally here!

For a while, we've heard that Cars 3 was not going to go the route of its maligned predecessor. It would go back to racing and the road and everything that worked about the first film. The teaser confirms that racing is indeed the main focus, and we get some glimpses of new characters of like Jackson Storm, the new sort-of antagonist of the picture.


Just look at it... The muted colors, the rather dramatic tone, the ending. This is far away from most Pixar teasers, this puts it more in line with Brave's humorless teaser. Pixar teasers are normally fun little skits with a few jokes here and there, these two are real anomalies, as is the teaser for The Good Dinosaur, which was a set-up of the premise followed a dialogue-less montage of scenes from the movie. I love this, it's to the point, and it establishes nicely in 50 seconds what it will be about: Lightning McQueen might not be to able stack up against all the new competitors in the field...

As I've said before, I love the first Cars, I don't mind the second one, and I'm looking forward to this third installment because of what's been said about it over the last few months. Now that the teaser is out, I'm in!

What say you?

Nothing to Cry Over: Teaser for 'The Boss Baby' Debuts

We reckoned the teaser for DreamWorks' first 2017 picture, and their second-to-last film of theirs to be distributed by 20th Century Fox, would surface sometime this month in time for the release of Trolls. It is finally here...



Surprisingly... It looks like it could be fun.

The teaser isn't noise and ping-ponging between jokes and story points, it actually takes the time to set up the premise and work in some fun gags. I don't mind the look they're going for, it has a very soft, almost 50s feel to it, but the art direction in general is not dissimilar to the cartoonier CG stuff we've seen for over 10 years. What the trailer doesn't quite show is something reports touched upon: Apparently the baby only talks and acts like an adult in the older brother's imagination. I wonder how much they can get out of that for a roughly 90-minute movie. I've got some hope for it, for Austin Powers scribe Michael McCullers wrote it, and DreamWorks has made a few pretty good comedies before.

Ever since DreamWorks officially revealed this one, the opinions were either "it looks decent" or "it looks horrible". Yes, it's too safe and probably something DreamWorks shouldn't have blown $120 million on when much cooler projects languish on the wayside. I would've easily taken Bollywood Superstar Monkey and Me and My Shadow over this, but if it succeeds at being a very fun comedy that I'll want to watch again, I can't complain too too much. DreamWorks is now under the Comcast umbrella now, so it probably won't matter too much if this film flops, but it should still be a major concern because it's the animators who could get affected by this... And it has happened many times before at the studio. Not sure how things will flow with Comcast and changed management.

What say you? Did you enjoy the trailer? Do you think this film could be decent? Sound off below!

Better Blue: Teaser for 'Smurfs: The Lost Village' Debuts

Well, we now have a real look at Sony Animation's upcoming Smurfs: The Lost Village...

Before we start, I didn't bother with the US trailer, which apparently uses an unfitting song during the final half... Watch the international one instead:


Well, it's nothing special, and I could do without some of the gags here, but... Visually it looks pretty darn good, just like the teaser poster from yesterday and the other images. I've said it before, but I really like the look that Sony Animation is going for with this feature. Not only does it eschew the hyper-real CG of the live-action hybrids, it aligns more with The Peanuts Movie and the scrapped Genndy Tartakovsky iteration of their still-in-the-works Popeye film. I like the environment it's set in, and the animation has that painterly, more 2D-esque quality to it.

A teaser's a teaser so I won't say too much about the forced humor and such. I'll wait for the official trailer before I can say anything, but how do I feel about it right now? The way I've felt since the day they announced the project. I hope it's what Sony and director Kelly Asbury are making it out to be: A fun adventure that takes cues from the original comics by Peyo, and not the Hanna-Barbera TV show adaptation.

What do you think of the teaser? Are you looking forward to this film? Sound off below!