Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Like an Article About Which Sky Contains the Best Clouds

Seattlepi.com takes the prize for Stoopid Article of the Day:

Pixar vs. DreamWorks: Who makes better movies?

The real answer? Two cartoon companies, both with roots over at Walt's place, make animated features of varying quality and commerciality. Some people like one studio's product; others prefer the competitor's. But there is no "better," there is only the ones that writer Eric Snider likes more.

9 comments:

Julian Carter said...

Steve, I don't think that article was meant to be taken very seriously.

But I will say that it's a waste of reading time and would have certainly benefited from a dash of wit.

And I don't think we need another Pixar vs. DreamWorks debate. Where is this guy's imagination?

Anonymous said...

ugh.. let's please not open up this can of worms..

Bob and Rob Professional American Writers said...

What's the animation community coming to? There was a time when you could just write the words Pixar and Dreamworks in the same sentence, sit back and watch the blood bath unfold!

Oh well, maybe we're actually seeing some parody much like the NFL!

Julian Carter said...

And yet I think all this "rivalry" is in our minds. Wouldn't the average artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios interest himself in or admire the work produced by other artists at, say ... DreamWorks, or Pixar? And vice-versa?

Anonymous said...

I dont think Jeffrey could do what he does if he was still at Disney. That's why he is the competition.

Anonymous said...

"And yet I think all this "rivalry" is in our minds. Wouldn't the average artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios interest himself in or admire the work produced by other artists at, say ... DreamWorks, or Pixar?"

The rivalry is absolutely a fantasy imagined and stated as fact by some fans, bloggers and "journalists".

At least among the actual animation artists making the films it's a fallacy.

The average animator is competing with the guy in the next cube and/or himself and his last scene. Above all else.

Story crews are way too busy and consumed with working out their sequences and trying to do their best to think for more than a casual second about what some other studio is doing at that moment and if they can "beat" them or will be beaten by them.

And that's exactly how it should be.

Do staffs cheer and root for their own films to do well in the marketplace? Sure.

But I've also never heard a colleague at any of the majors root for a good film from their competition to fail.

We go and watch animated films to enjoy them like anyone else. In the same exact way that, you know, the boys in the long pants working on live action feature films do with their colleagues' work on other live action films.

Anonymous said...

The rivalry is absolutely a fantasy imagined and stated as fact by some fans, bloggers and "journalists".

Although Katzenberg didn't help by firing the first pop-culture shot himself, by insisting that we wishfully BELIEVE that Shrek 1 was schoolyard "revenge" on Disney.
(And when Shrek4's anti-Disney jokes in the Lasseter era are reduced to "Give a day, get a day" jokes, times just aren't what they used to be.)

Follow that with the Disney fans' accusations of Jeffrey "stealing anything that wasn't nailed down" (like ants, horses and white lions), and, unfortunately, the popular legend takes hold.
No one ever trumped up a "rivalry" between DW and BlueSky for making essentially the same product, but JK seemed to want the mainstream public to fantasize a "Good vs. Evil" battle between studios, and, too bad for him...he got his wish.

Anonymous said...

**I dont think Jeffrey could do what he does if he was still at Disney. That's why he is the competition.**

Well, actually, the reason he's the competition is because Michael Eisner is an egotistical fathead bordering on senile. He drives out Katzenberg, nearly loses Pixar but buys the Muppets.

Senile! And Iger's just as bad...

Anonymous said...

Yeah. And Little Jeffery Katzemburg has no ego. Or taste.

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