‘Elemental’ Review: A Rich and Vibrant Showcase of Studio Animation

There’s something particularly tragic about a boring Pixar movie, especially one that hardly carries any of the tenets that have made the animation company so legendary. It’s unfortunate when any good-willed film is bad, of course, but with all the good graces previously engendered by Pixar, watching the culmination of years of animation hardly add up to a memorable experience is a bummer.

Harrison Ford - who is reportedly worth more than $300million - never left carpentry and got into acting for the money. 'No one ever believes this, but I never wanted to be rich and famous,' he told People this week. 'I just wanted to be an actor.

Marta Balaga It’s time to finally “humanize” the workplace, argued Oscar-nominated director Nora Twomey at Annecy. And women are leading the way. “There was a point when I wanted to prove myself and would spend long hours immersed in animation. It took me until I had kids to start working smarter,” she said.   “Then I got sick in the middle of making ‘The Breadwinner’ and that also made me think about working in a way that could empower people around me. Now, I really don’t give a fuck anymore,” she added to thunderous applause. During her “fireside chat” with Ramsey Naito at the Women in Animation (WIA) World Summit, Twomey – co-founder and creative director at Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon – also underlined the importance of representation. 

Callum McLennan In the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, the Canary Islands is rapidly becoming a global animation force.   “Tara Duncan,” has charmed audiences via the Disney Channel, “Arcane,” which also uses a Canary Islands service studio, is one of the biggest shows on the planet, and the merchandise of “Miraculous Ladybug,” is seen everywhere.  All three hits share a common thread: the unmissable imprint of talent from this dynamic archipelago.  What began with a small community of digital artists and small studios has now burgeoned into an entire ecosystem of homegrown and international talent making some of the biggest and most innovative projects in the world, either as service studios or true-blue producers.

It is always an occasion for celebration when Jon Hamm and Tina Fey are back together on screen — big or small — having shared credits on various 30 Rock and SNL episodes (and the upcoming film version of Fey’s Mean Girls). But their latest collaboration is a clear departure, as well as a rare chance to see Fey out of her comedic zone.

Kelis has finally responded to rumors that she and comedian Bill Murray are dating. The two were seen at London's Mighty Hoopla Festival earlier this month, sparking discussion about the two seeing each other among media outlets.

Kelis is keeping things on the down low.

Karen Idelson While debates about the use of A.I. take center stage across the entertainment industry, the technology has been quietly assisting animation and visual effects crews for years. It had made some of the most astonishing visual images possible when artisans have been asked to do what was previously thought impossible. When helmer Peter Sohn wanted characters based on the elements of fire, water, air and earth for his new film “Elemental,” VFX supervisor Sanjay Bakshi and his team at Pixar looked to A.I. to make the process smoother. The look of the characters depended on adjustments that would align them with Sohn’s vision. “We used A.I. for a very specific kind of problem, and we used a machine learning algorithm called neural style transfer,” says Bakshi. “Our animation is so highly scrutinized. We go through so many review cycles for every shot and the animators are really handcrafting it and there’s not a lot of places where machine learning is applicable in the current form.

McKinley Franklin editor Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson and Zoë Chao are gearing up to solve another murder mystery in the trailer for Season 2 of “The Afterparty” on Apple TV+. After showcasing a refreshing, genre-blending format in Season 1, “The Afterparty” is back for a second season and — you guessed it — someone dies, again. The first season was highly acclaimed, with standout characters like Haddish’s Detective Danner and Richardson’s Aniq quickly catching audiences’ attention.  Season 2 will premiere on Wednesday, June 12, with two brand new episodes, followed by one weekly episode every Wednesday through Sept. 6.

A brand new clip for Disney Pixar’s upcoming animation/comedy “Elemental” was unveiled by its stars at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival during a photocall on Friday.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter There were more than a few misty eyes in the audience at the premiere of Pixar’s animated adventure “Elemental,” which closed out this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The sweet opposites-attract love story proved charming to attendees, closing out the festival with a five-minute standing ovation. At least one grown man in the orchestra was wiping away his cascading tears as the credits began to roll. It’s safe to assume he wasn’t alone in his emotional response to the film. “My heart is about to explode,” said ”Elemental” director Peter Sohn. “This film has been about the richness of diversity. Our lives are better when there are different points of view.”

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic I reckon there are more ideas per second of screentime in “Elemental” than any other Pixar movie to date. So why does this imagination-teasing opposites-attract rom-com feel like a misfire? No one can accuse director Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”) or his team of under-thinking the ultra-creative studio’s latest high-concept feature, which takes the four elements as identified by various ancient cultures — Fire, Water, Earth and Air — and reimagines them as uneasy neighbors in a crowded modern metropolis. But fun as it can be to soak in the movie’s cheeky sense of detail (from flame-retardant costumes to blink-and-you-miss-them background puns), the whole scenario seems forced: so much world-building to tell a story better suited to flesh-and-blood human characters.

What has fallen flat at Pixar? This is the innovative animation studio that pushed all before it in the first decade of this millennium, that invented a way of turning the plastic finish of digital animation to its advantage in the towering Toy Story, that was prepared to start a film with a 20-minute scene with no dialogue in Wall-E – and revealed that kids didn’t care – and that would make an adventure film with a hero aged 78 years young in UP!. Kids didn’t care about that either, as it turned out, because Carl Fredricksen was a grumpy-gramps adventurer who also didn’t care what others thought of him. Pixar always had something new up its collective artistic sleeve. And yet here they are, coming out with a film as dull-witted and syrupy as Elemental. 

The stars of Disney’s upcoming Elemental just debuted a brand new clip at 2023 Cannes Film Festival!

Terry Flores Pixar vice president and creative director Peter Sohn will talk about his new animated film “Elemental” at the VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy, which runs from Oct. 15-20. Sohn will attend the conference in person to discuss the creative journey he took to bring the story to the screen.   “I’m so excited to welcome Peter Sohn to VIEW Conference 2023,” says conference director Maria Elena Gutierrez. “Peter is a true force of nature – a multi-talented storyteller, film director, animator, actor; you name it. In bringing his unique energy and wisdom to VIEW Conference, he is certain to leave our global audience feeling energized and inspired.”

“Elemental” are not looking good, as the original title about a city full of fire, water, plant and air beings is tracking for one of the worst opening weekends in Pixar history. Currently, “Elemental” is projected for an opening weekend of around $40 million.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon to Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny.The biggest prize is the Palme d’Or, which was originally introduced in 1955. Past winners have included Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite and Jane Campion’s The Piano.This year’s festival runs from Tuesday May 16 to Saturday May 27.

Cannes Film Festival, Henry (Jude Law) is away in France with his army and Catherine takes the opportunity to ride off to a mossy forest for secret meetings with Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), a childhood friend who is now preaching revolt against a new law that has banned English-language Bibles and returned authority to Latin-reading priests. Compared to her radical friend, Catherine appears to be a cowed, abused wife.

David Benedict Canny casting of Mike Faist (“West Side Story”) and Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”) and abundant efforts to honor Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain,” immortalized in Ang Lee’s screen version, are all in place. Above all, the sincerity underpinning director Jonathan Butterell’s premiere of a stage version is never in doubt. But despite a live soundtrack of bluegrass and country songs, the production only proves you can have too much fidelity. Sticking so doggedly to the original, the production fails to find anything approaching a satisfying theatrical form. Staged in-the-round in London’s 602-seat Soho Place theater, Ashley Robinson’s notably sparse adaptation of Proulx’s story confuses literary with literal. Borrowing the story’s introductory paragraphs, Robinson provides a cliched framing device, showing the older version of Ennis (Paul Hickey) waking up besieged by difficult memories. From his bedside radio, we hear the first of Dan Gillespie Sells’ original country songs welling up. The pedal steel guitar sets the scene, but its title and chorus “Don’t Let the Years Get You Down” is an immediately worrying indication that the production will be telling as well as showing.

The family life! Nicole Richie and her husband, Joel Madden, began dating in 2006 — and became first-time parents two years later.