Posts filed under ‘John Lassetter’
Artefact 6 – The Pixar Story (2007)
Ed Catmull wanted to be an animator and artist but just felt he wasn’t good enough. When he took up Physics and Computer Science, he fell in love with Computer Graphics. Ed’s animation “Computer Animated Hand” featuring his own left hand was years later used in the film FUTUREWORLD (1976) and thus went down in history as the first use of 3D-Computer Animation in a feature film.
Artefact 5 – Walt – The Man Behind the Myth (2001)
This documentary directed by Jean-Pierre Isbouts and with Dick van Dyke as the narrator, opens with the premiere of MARY POPPINS in 1964, showing Walt Disney at the very height of his career.
In many ways MARY POPPINS is a culmination of Walt’s achievements in family entertainment, blending live action and animation in the way Walt experimented with it in the beginning of his career.
The 120 min. long WALT – THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH extensively features footage from the Disney Archives, early cartoons, interviews and a form of comical short films invented by Walt Disney in the beginning of his career which he called “Laugh-O-Grams”.
Artefact 2 – Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1979) – Hiyao Miyazaki’s Directorial Feature Film Debut
In the Miyazaki-Lassetter-Video-Letter we come across a scene in which Pixar Vice-President John Lassetter describes the time when Miyazaki first showed him LUPIN III aka RUPAN SANSEI: KARIOSUTORO NO SHIRO and how thrilled he was when he saw it. He felt this is exactly what had to be done and what he wanted to do too: Animation as entertainment not just for children, but for everybody. It also shows the European comic-tradition which influenced Miyazaki strongly and the way Japanese animators used to adapt French graphic novels for an European market.
According to Lassetter nobody directs action better than Miyazaki and this 1979-film is so packed with car chases, fist fights and an enthrilling story that it proves this point quite well. Lupin III is the grand-son of Maurice Leblanc‘s fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Conan Doyle‘s creation Sherlock Holmes. Lupin III has been the hero of various films and a TV series on which Miyazaki worked before directing this film.
Artefact 1 – The Lassetter-Miyazaki-Video Letter (2002)
Long live Toshio Suzuki!!!
Who is Toshio Suzuki? That he is the producer behind Studio Ghibli-classics like PRINCESS MONONOKE, SPIRITED AWAY and HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is a fact commonly known to animation fans. Less known is the mysterious video letter titled “Thank You, Lassetter-san!!”, released in – I believe – Japan only, which is credited to him as well.
This video letter captures the visit of Hiyao Miyazaki and team to North America attending the premiere of SPIRITED AWAY in several cities in US and Canada in September 2002. While the guests from Japan visit the Disney and Pixar Studios as well as Lassetter’s home and other locations, we become witness to the unique friendship between John Lassetter and Hiyao Miyazaki which seems to have had a very significant role for both Disney/Pixar as well as Studio Ghibli.
The most inspiring about this letter is to see Lassetter’s as well as Miyazaki’s sheer enthusiasm for their own and each other’s work. It is obvious that they both have remained very much children inside although the size of the sandbox has slightly grown. This enthused madness and reference for each other’s insanity is what makes this small film so thoroughly enjoyable. This guys just looooooove what they do.
