Ratatouille
Laura Flippin's latest blog post:
Do you ever just want to watch a great children’s cartoon film and not feel guilty about it even if there are no kids to watch it with you? I once watched the Pixar film “Up” (without 3-D animation and without sound due to malfunctioning headphones) on a cross-country flight from Washington DC to San Francisco, and nearly started weeping when Ed Asner’s alter ego, the main protagonist, Carl, finally lands at home in Paradise Falls. I watched it on the return flight with sound and was no less moved. Great film is great film – as indicated by the fact that “Up” was then only the second animated film in history to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
Hence, on a recent Saturday night, exhausted from a particularly edge-of-your-seat day of SEC football and multiple soccer games with kids, Chris and I sprawled on the sofa watching “Ratatouille,” the 2007 Pixar/Disney film about a rat in Paris who is also a great chef. Now, we’ve seen the film so many times we’ve practically memorized it but we still love it. Why? Because it’s about Paris, it’s about great food, and it’s a sweet story. But it’s also amazing to see from an artistic standpoint – the animation is so detailed and so far beyond the old “Tom and Jerry” cartoons that you are mesmerized by the depth and technical skill. Plus, the voice of Remy, the aforementioned rate, is that of Patton Oswalt, great comedian and William & Mary alum to boot! And Peter O’Toole as Anton Ego, a restaurant critic who nearly ruins and then comes to the rescue of the amazing rat and his culinary triumphs (n.b. this won’t change my view that Peter O’Toole’s work in “The Lion in Winter” will never be surpassed, but he still does a great character voice here).
Moreover, every time we watch the film, we are mesmerized by the presentation of the rat’s best dish – the titular ratatouille, reimaged and served as the recipe invented by Thomas Kellar (who gets a nice animated character of his own in the film, albeit as a restaurant guest). We then talk about how dinner at the French Laundry (Kellar’s Napa Valley restaurant) is on our bucket lists, and fantasize about eating this dish. All from an animated film – the power of Disney!
Ratatouille (/rætəˈtuːiː/; French pronunciation: [ʁatatuj]) is a 2007 French-American computer-animated comedy filmproduced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the eighth film produced by Pixar, and was co-written and directed by Brad Bird, who took over from Jan Pinkava in 2005. The title refers to a French dish, “ratatouille“, which is served at the end of the film, and is also a play on words about the species of the main character. The film stars the voices of Patton Oswalt as Remy, an anthropomorphic rat who is interested in cooking; Lou Romano as Linguini, a young garbage boy who befriends Remy; Ian Holm as Skinner, the head chef of Auguste Gusteau’s restaurant; Janeane Garofalo as Colette, a rôtisseur at Gusteau’s restaurant; Peter O’Toole as Anton Ego, a restaurant critic; Brian Dennehy as Django, Remy’s father and leader of his clan; Peter Sohn as Emile, Remy’s older brother; and Brad Garrett as Auguste Gusteau, a recently deceased chef. The plot follows Remy, who dreams of becoming a chef and tries to achieve his goal by forming an alliance with a Parisian restaurant’s garbage boy.
Development of Ratatouille began in 2001 when Pinkava wrote the original concepts of the film. In 2005, Bird was approached to direct the film and revised the story. Bird and some of the film’s crew members also visited Paris for inspiration. To create the food animations used in the film, the crew consulted chefs from both France and the United States. Bird also interned at Thomas Keller‘s French Laundry restaurant, where Keller developed the confit byaldi, a dish used in the film. Ratatouille premiered on June 22, 2007 at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California, and had its general release on June 29, 2007 in the United States. The film grossed $623.7 million at the box office and received critical acclaim. The film later won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, among other honors.
from Laura Flippin http://ift.tt/13MBkBs