Is there a more trusted brand name in entertainment than Pixar? The innovative animation studio debuted in 1995 with Toy Story, and has since released 13 feature films and collected 26 Academy Awards. Pixar has yet to make a bad movie, although they came perilously close with Cars 2. It’s the only studio in the business whose very name is its best marketing tool.
Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2, available this week in a two-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo pack and via digital download, collects 12 of the studio’s recent short films along with commentary tracks and seven student films from star Pixar directors John Lasseter (Toy Story), Andrew Stanton (WALL-E) and Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.).
Quite a few of these will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Pixar feature in the theaters the last few years. Of the many laudable traditions Pixar re-introduced to the cinemaplex in the 1990s was the exhibition of animated shorts before the feature presentation.
Probably the best short in this collection is the manic and very funny Presto, which screened before WALL-E in 2008. The five-minute bit is one brilliant sight gag after another as a Vaudeville-era magician tries in front of a packed opera house audience to wrangle an uncooperative rabbit out of his magic hat. It’s classic flop-sweat physical comedy, heightened to marvelous absurdity.
