Customer Reviews

Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(87)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This is a perfect DVD for kids and families alike. Pixar's theatrical shorts are some of the best -- if not THE best -- cartoons produced in the past two decades. This DVD has all 12 of them released to date, as well as an early short by John Lasseter from his days at the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project. Here's the list:

1. "THE ADVENTURES OF ANDRE AND WALLY B." (1984, Lucasfilm). After blue humanoid André is awakened in a forest by a pesky bee, he tries to escape. But the bee (named Wally B.) chases after him, and both characters run off screen. Finally, Wally reappears with a bent stinger. Interesting only for its historical value

2. "LUXO JR." (1986). When a large desklamp watches a smaller, younger desklamp play with a ball, he can't quite manage to do it himself.

3. "RED'S DREAM" (1987). Propped up in the corner of a bicycle store, Red the unicycle dreams about a better place.

4. "TIN TOY" (1988). When a wind-up one-man-band toy sees just how destructive a baby can be, he does everything he can to flee -- until the baby gets hurt.

5. "KNICK KNACK" (1989). A snowglobe snowman wants to join a party of other travel souvenirs in a hot party, but his glass dome gets in his way. (This is the well-known version with the less-endowed bathing beauty.)

6. "GERI'S GAME" (1997). A man plays a game of chess against himself, 'becoming' each player by moving to the other side of the chessboard and taking his glasses on and off.

7. "FOR THE BIRDS" (2001). A group of small birds perched together on a telephone wire reject a larger, awkward-looking bird, and pay the price for it.

8. "MIKE'S NEW CAR" (2002). When Mike (from "Monsters Inc.") shows Sulley his new six-wheel drive car, everything that can go wrong does.

9. "BOUNDIN'" (2003). A shearing leaves a dancing sheep humiliated until a jackalope passes by and demonstrates that it's what's inside that counts.

10. "JACK-JACK ATTACK" (2005). Baby Jack-Jack is thought not to possess the superpowers of his siblings or parents (Mr. and Mrs. Parr of "The Incredibles") until an outsider is hired to watch him.

11. "ONE MAN BAND" (2006). Two one-man bands vie to win the attention of a young peasant girl.

12. "MATER AND THE GHOSTLIGHT" (2006). A mysterious blue light haunts the "Cars" town of Radiator Springs and its residents.

13. "LIFTED" (2007). A bumbling young alien student tests the patience of his instructor as he attempts to abduct an innocent farmer.

Bonus features include a terrific documentary featurette on Pixar and some brief segments the company produced for "Sesame Street."

Only "The Adventures of Andre and Wally B." and "Red's Dream" are not already included with some other Pixar feature length film DVD. Although the 13 short films run a total of just under an hour and all but two are on other Pixar DVDs, you might want this collection for the extras and the fact that you'll have all 13 shorts on one DVD so you don't have to go digging through your collection to find them. A previous reviewer gave the year of production and a brief synopsis. I give a brief synopsis too, but I also give the length of each short, its rating by a popular film database, and on which previous Pixar DVD, if any, you can find each short.

"The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. (2 minutes) - 5.5/10 - Interesting animation experiment at the dawn of the age of CGI, but not much of a story.
Included on the "Tiny Toy Stories" VHS tape.

Luxo Jr. (2 minutes) - 7.7/10 - The first computer animated short nominated for an Academy Award. Just a couple of lamps playing ball, but somehow Pixar manages to bring "life" to the lamps with the larger lamp acting as parent to the smaller in spite of a lack of any real physical features with which to add expression.
Included with the Toy Story 2 DVD.

Red's Dream (4 minutes) - 6.6/10 - Red is a unicycle that is the only item in the bargain bin at a toy store. He copes with his surroundings by dreaming of better things. Like Luxo, you are made to care about the main character even though he has limited ability to express himself. Shows Pixar experimenting with more complex forms than in previous films.
Included on the "Tiny Toy Stories" VHS tape.

Tin Toy (5 minutes) - 7.1/10 - Kind of an early proof of concept of Toy Story. A curious baby is after a wind-up toy. The baby appears monstrous and frightening to the toy until he realizes what the baby wants. Shows you the world - and the baby - from the toy's point of view so you understand his fright.
Included with Toy Story DVD.

Knick Knack (4 minutes) - 8/10 - A Knick Knack from Alaska - a snowman in a snowglobe - wants to join two Knick Knacks from a warmer climate. Only problem is that he is stuck in his snowglobe and must try to find a way to get out. Shows some ideas that look like they gave birth to "Finding Nemo".
Included on the DVD for "Finding Nemo".

Geri's Game (4 minutes) - 7.6/10 - Won Oscar for best animated short film of 1997. Geri is an elderly man who plays chess with himself and tries to outwit his opponent. It's interesting as he changes sides on each move. Geri's character also appears as the cleaner in 'Toy Story 2'.
Included with "A Bug's Life" DVD.

For the Birds (3 minutes) - 8.1/10 - Won Oscar for best animated short film of 2001. A big jovial bird is rejected by a clique of smaller snobby birds. However, their plan to eject him from his perch backfires when they ignore some of the basic laws of physics.
Included in disc 2 of the Monsters Inc. DVD set.

Mike's New Car (4 minutes) - 7.3/10 - Brings over our favorite characters from Monsters Inc. as Mike tries to show off his new car to Sully. Problem is he hasn't gotten the controls down yet. Not that innovative, but still cute and definitely entertaining.
Included on the Monsters Inc. DVD.

Boundin' (5 minutes) - 7.1/10 - A little preachier than I'm accustomed to from Pixar. A sheep is humiliated after his first shearing, but a jackelope teaches him to think otherwise. Good animation, good music, but the moral tale was just a little too obvious and heavy-handed for Pixar.
Included in the Incredibles DVD set.

Jack-Jack Attack (5 minutes) - 7.7/10 - Uses characters and situations from The Incredibles to show how Jack-Jack first begins exhibiting his extraordinary powers and the babysitter's reactions. Quite funny and quite possibly a deleted scene from the original film.
Included on Disc two of The Incredibles DVD set.

One Man Band (4 minutes) - 7.9/10 - A girl wishing to make a wish in a fountain using a coin finds that her coin is the object of desire for two competing street bands. They do everything under the sun to get her coin - except play exceptional music. Ironically this was a dig at the big studios of the film industry of which Pixar is now a part since their sale to Disney.
Included on the Cars DVD.

Mater and the Ghostlight (7 minutes) - 6.8/10 - The longest of the Pixar films in this set was one of the less amusing. Mater, the tow-truck from Cars, is set up for a practical joke by the other cars. They tell him a story about the GhostLight apparition and then go about making sure that such a ghost appears to him to teach him a lesson about scaring the others.
Included on the Cars DVD.

Lifted (5 minutes) - 8.1/10 - An alien trainee attempts to abduct a sleeping human. Unfortunately, he isn't familiar with the spaceship's equipment yet, and to make matters worse he's getting a job evaluation at the same time. Rather like the X-Files meets Monsters Inc.
Included on the Ratatouille DVD.

Each of these short films is brilliant. That said, they aren't exactly new. All have been released as bonus features on Pixar's previous DVD releases, from Toy Story on forward to Cars and the forthcoming Ratatouille. From the first to the most recent, Pixar animators get better and better at the technical demands of creating images in the computer...these videos, especially the last few, are amazingly lifelike.

Most of these are personal projects or experiments by staff animators, and they are labors of love. If you already own the "Pixar collection" up to this point, you have these movies. If you only own a few Pixar movies, this is the way to catch up. Highly recommended for newbies and collection completists.

The real value in this collection isn't so much the collection itself, which sadly is too small, or too short, and is over before you know it (which may make you sad if you buy this disc with the wrong expectations). The value is really in the history of all of these animations and of Pixar itself.

Each individual short is entertaining in some way, though they are short films and aren't intended to last more than a few minutes each. Many times the credits roll on seemingly longer than the shorts they accompany. But... if you recognize the history of computing and computer animation that is involved here, you realize just how much work went into these shorts and how truly amazing they are given the technology available when most of these shorts were created.

Perhaps the most 'priceless' (to borrow from the credit card commercials) portion of this collection is the included documentary: The Pixar Shorts: A Short History. It looks at the players involved, the hardware involved, and the work that went into creating these classic works. How Pixar Animation Studios came to be, and why they were creating these shorts.

Taken in context with the shorts themselves, you realize just how far we've advanced when it comes to computer animation and animated film. Technology that shows up in video games, movies, virtual reality for training purposes and more.

Pixar was on the forefront of the tech and this collection does a good job of introducing viewers to all of that great history. Worth a full price purchase? Probably not so much. On sale or discounted through an Amazon marketplace purchase? certainly worth consideration.

Version: U.S.A / Region A, B, C
Title: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running time: 0:55:26
Movie size: 15,04 GB
Disc size: 31,89 GB
Total bit rate: 36.18 Mps
Video bit rate: 25.30 Mbps
LPCM 5.1 24-Bit/48kHz/6.9Mbps English
DD AC3 5.1-EX 640Kbps English / Spanish / French
Subtitles: English SDH / Spanish / French
Number of chapters: 16

Special Features
**************

#Audio Commentaries
#The Pixar Shorts: A Short History (HD, 23 minutes)
#Sesame Street Clips (SD, 6 minutes)

13 shorts included

# The Adventures of Andre and Wally B (1984)
# Luxo Jr. (1986)
# Red's Dream (1987)
# Tin Toy (1988)
# Knick Knack - Remastered (1989)
# Geri's Game (1997)
# For the Birds (2000)
# Mike's New Car (2002)
# Boundin' (2003)
# Jack-Jack Attack (2005)
# Mater and the Ghostlight (2006)
# One Man Band (2005)
# Lifted (2006)

An informative and historical look at the progression of computer animation, the Pixar Short Films Collection is an entertaining gathering of all the Pixar short animated projects, several winning Academy Awards and other prestigious recognitions.

Early on, the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project developed a short computer animated sequence to demonstrate that a story could be told with simplistic 3D characters. That project was The Adventures of André and Wally B., a rather uneventful film about an oddly Donald Duck-like blue creature that has a run in with a wide-eyed bumblebee. Despite its current undistinguished and archaic animation, it wowed audiences at that year's SIGGRAPH expo (a convention on the advancements of computer graphics).

Still sporting the old Pixar logo, Luxo Jr. introduces the world to the new icon that now precedes every Pixar film. Luxo, nothing more than a common desk lamp, is able to show a wide assortment of emotions through head movements and body language, the very staple of animation.

Red's Dream, about a unicycle dreaming of performing at a circus, makes excellent use of Pixar's trend of personifying inanimate objects. A dark and gloomy atmosphere makes this short reminiscent of film noir, which allowed the animators to show off rain and beautifully dusky lighting.

Tin Toy experiments with a human baby character, attempting more realistic movement and character modeling, despite the fact that the child turned out to be absolutely hideous. Knick Knack sweeps us into the predicament of a snowman stuck in a snowglobe desperately trying to join other ornaments basking in the sun on a nearby shelf. Ending in a great and sad punchline, Knick Knack is one of the cleverest of the animated shorts.

Geri's Game features an old man playing a devious game of chess... against himself. Slowly but surely, he gets up from his seat in a park to pose as his own opponent who appears to be more sinister and a superior chess player. Zero dialogue makes this film a masterly examination of expressions and movement. Reaching a new high in animation realism, Pixar's next short, For the Birds highlights fur and feather effects in a funny skit about an outcast bird.

Mike's New Car, Jack Jack Attack, and Mater's Ghost Light are extensions of their animated features counterparts and show further episodes with familiar characters. These shorts have reached an amazing level of picture perfect lighting and movement realism, despite their overly cartoonlike character designs. One Man Band is about two "one man bands" facing off against each other for the coin of a small child who is about to throw it into a wishing well. Lifted debuted in front of Ratatouille theatrically and is also included on that DVD, and is a delightfully funny short about inept space aliens.

Special features include Sesame Street clips and The Pixar Shorts: A Short History, which is actually a fairly in-depth look at the evolution of Pixar and computer animation. While almost all of these films can be found on various other Disney DVDs, it's about time that audiences can view all of Pixar's finest animated short film achievements in one convenient place.

- Mike Massie

This is classic Pixar. Exquisite animation. Very funny. "Lifted" just about had me in tears. If you like Pixar than this is a must buy. Couldn't be more satisfied.

This compilation would probably be better suited for someone interested in the history of computer animated shorts. While it did contain the beloved shorts I was looking for, the others the disc included left much to be desired. It might be good for keeping young kids entertained. If you are simply a Pixar short fan like me, stick to only buying the movies you like with the shorts on them. It's not worth the money for the two times you'll probably watch this DVD.

There are two bounteous DVD buffets on sale at the same time - Ratatouille and this superb DVD assemblage of Pixar shorts that literally takes you through its history and astonishing progress from 1984's "The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.," produced when the small group was basically an experimental arm of Lucasfilm Ltd. to 2007's "Lifted," released in theaters with Ratatouille.

It does become clear, watching one short after another, that no matter how much more detailed and eye-popping the techniques become, the core is still the story and the characters. You really do know you're watching a Pixar film no matter when it was made. That's pretty rare nowadays.

It's also fun to pick out your favorites, or debate the strengths or weaknesses of your picks with your friends and family. It's also nice to have all the audio commentaries accompanying each short (except Jack-Jack Attack, which has that great "Jonny Quest"-like title music stab that never fails to make me smile.)

This is probably also the first time we've seen Sesame Street materials on a Disney DVD - there are a handful of appealing concept segments starring Luxo, Jr. as special features. And there's also a mini-documentary to tie all the films together.

This makes a really nice companion to the TRON Special Edition DVD, which includes a lot of material by those who pioneered computer animation (there are even a parallel scenes of a digital juggler). John Lassiter himself appears on the disc, commenting about TRON's influence on everything that came after it.

I became a huge fan of Pixar and their short films after seeing "Luxo, Jr." in a film festival in the 1980's. Each successive effort broke new ground and gave us hints of the wonderful full-length features to come.

So, why the 1 star? I am hopping mad at the censors at Disney. One of my favorite pieces, "Knick Knack" was edited (or remastered by Pixar, presumably at Disney's request) to make two of the female characters flat-chested. Sheesh! The protagonist in this short is a licentious, over-confident, and determined snowman trapped in his snow globe knick knack. He is surrounded by a number of other tacky souvenirs but one in particular, featuring a (very) buxom beauty in a skimpy bikini, sends him on his adventure to escape his hemispherical world. The object of his affection, with her very curvy shape, helps provide a key insight into our character. Not any more! The new "child-friendly"/"politically correct" flat-topped lady has replaced her.

What is the problem, Disney? Too edgy?

Pixar makes great films with likable, believable characters with depth and a personality. Knick Knack was a clever short film; now it is just a Disney cartoon.

Unless you like bland second-best, and versions of Star Wars where Han doesn't shoot first, give this a skip.