Thursday, January 6, 2011

THAT'S ONE BAD TEDDY BEAR:   Matt Zoller Seitz explains why The Furnace scene works so well in Toy Story 3, as part of his Best Scenes of 2010 video essay series:


16 comments:

  1. Matt B10:18 PM

    Great commentary by <span>Zoller Seitz on all of the videos here. </span>

    One quick aside though, how ugly is the Salon.com layout of this page? It feels like 30% of the page is devoted to content, 70% to ads or links.

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  2. Count me as one of the 18 people who hasn't seen it yet (i don't care about spoiler.  Personally, I prefer them).  I just couldn't stand the idea that Woody and his pals might be tortured...especially as the mother of a 15 month old who would clearly cause suffering to any sentient toys out there.

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  3. Can't watch the video at work, but I can tell you easily why that scene affected me so deeply - I am a sucker for any story that is at heart about the Power of Friendship.  Take away all the sci-fi and special effects and magic and all that, and it's why I love Buffy, Harry Potter, even The West Wing.  And it's why I loved this scene, and probably why I loved all three movies.

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  4. Loyal Reader11:54 AM

    Damn . . . now I'm crying again.

    This scene has surpassed "Oh Captain, My Captain" in being able to make me cry every time I see it - even though I know it has a happy ending.  It's the stricken looks on their faces that does it for me.

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  5. isaac_spaceman12:07 PM

    The resignation and acceptance.  That's just an unreal kind of "did they just do that" moment.  There are a lot of reasons why Toy Story 3 would not have been made without the Disney-Pixar merger, but that scene is a perfect encapsulation of why Toy Story 3 could not have been made without the merger and its guarantee of Pixar independence.  One of the odd consequences of the merger is that Pixar now has more control over its movies because its own creative head is in charge of Disney Animation.   

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  6. What it reminded me of most was that shot of the elderly couple in bed as the waters came in on Titanic.<span> </span>

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  7. The Pathetic Earthling1:25 PM

    I still haven't see TS3 -- but knew the spoiler anyway.  I was horrified at the prospect of the merger, because I knew *KNEW* that Disney would screw up Pixar for good, insisting on awful choices by adolescent girls, motherless daughters, and everything else.  Glad I was wrong.

    [Also, this is where I must insert my rant that my father-in-law, who was the first full-time CFO of Pixar, got completely screwed out of his stock options by Steve Jobs.  What a fuckhead that man is].

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  8. isaac_spaceman2:49 PM

    I'm trying to figure out if I need to give a spoiler alert before saying "the entire gang of toys do not die in agony in a fiery inferno a half-hour before the end of Toy Story 3."  Really?   

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  9. Heather K4:31 PM

    And here is where I get upset about people who cry spoiler over discussions of things that have been out in the world in multiple accessible formats for months.  Because sorry, it isn't a spoiler now, it is just a discussion.  If you have not seen/experienced the book/movie/tv show/whatever after this many months and would not like to spoil it for yourself the onus is on you to avoid those discussions, and you will probably have to ACTIVELY do so.

    It is fair to expect it for a few days for tv show or something or a few weeks for a movie out in wide release and a few months for a book, BUT the whole universe is not expected to be cautious about your choices in anything including pop culture references.  Vader is Luke's father.

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  10. Jenn.4:52 PM

    I can, at this point, make it through the furnace scene.  (Well, I made it through once.)  But starting about when Andy's mom comes into his room before he leaves for college through Andy driving away from his neighborhood?  No way in God's green earth do I make it through that with dry eyes.  This led to the following conversation, after we flew cross-country separated by a couple of rows:


    <span>The boyfriend</span>:  Did you notice that Toy Story 3 was the in-flight movie?


    <span>Me</span>:  Yes.


    <span>The</span><span> boyfriend</span>:  You watched it, didn't you?  Even knowing that you were going to end up crying?


    <span>Me</span>:  Yes.


    <span>The boyfriend</span>:  [sigh]

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  11. Adam C.6:33 PM

    NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

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  12. isaac_spaceman12:04 PM

    To be fair, nobody here has complained about spoiling.  It's just that I don't think this is spoiling.

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  13. Genevieve6:45 PM

    She does not get eaten by the eels at this time.

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  14. Genevieve6:46 PM

    The Titanic scene, yes.  But what it made me think of most was people holding hands and jumping off of the WTC.

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  15. Joseph Finn11:03 PM

    ANd I had not seen the movie until tonight, so I avoided this discussion.  And seriously thought Pixar might go for it in the incinerator scene.

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  16. J. Bowman10:57 PM

    I managed to remain largely spoiler-free about the last season.5 of BSG (from Kara's re-appearance onwards) for two years -- I knew they had gotten to Earth and that everyone had been wiped out, but it wasn't quite what I had expected. Almost all of the final season was a surprise.
    It took some effort to avoid it while the show was still on, but it gets easier to skip most spoilers as time goes on, mainly because people begin to talk about it in vague terms, as in, "it's like what happened to Anders." Eventually, your eyes just slide right over any accidental plot details.

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