Monday, June 09, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Pixar Pulls Another Rabbit out of its Hat I saw Pixar's newest film Finding Nemo with the 3 boys on Friday. I liked it a lot. It was much better than Monsters Inc. and perhaps as good as Toy Story. I didn't have high hopes for Nemo before the film came out. Just how entertaining can fish be? Really? No hands. No technology. Well, I was wrong. Fish can do a lot of entertaining things even without hands. More importantly, Nemo has a lot of heart. It is a great combination of humor and drama. Without a doubt Dory, the fish with a mental problem is one of the best characters Pixar has created, right up there with Buzz Lightyear and Woody. The moment late in the film when Dory begs Marlin to stay with her and he doesn't is a scene more filled with pathos than any scene I can remember for years. Chris Suellentrop writes a very well done analysis of what this means for Pixar at Slate.com. I think he is correct, this is the moment when Pixar becomes recognized as one of the greatest artists of our time. I remember seeing all of Pixar's early works from Luxo Junior (in 1987) to Tin Toy to Knicknack. I wish I could say that I recognized John Lasseter's genius from the begining. I didn't. I thought they were neat demonstrations of what could be done with computer animation but not much more. It took seeing Toy Story (in 1995) to make me realize how great Lassester was. 2:08:09 PM     [Colin Glassey] The Future of France It doesn't look good. Steve Den Beste has a very good post about the problems France is up against. This is part of a long set of posts and e-mails. Bottom line: France is at this time committed to paying more money out to its retired citizens than it will make by any reasonable projections. The problems are: retirement age is too low (55 for many union members) and pensions that are too high (90% of their final pay level for many workers). Given France's demographics they are litterly expecting two workers to pay for every one non-worker. So far as anyone can tell, this can't work. So the French government projections about future expences and revenues are worse than bleak, they are a train wreck waiting not far down the time track. I wish I had some handy solution for this but the obvious solution: turn France into a country more like the U.S. where the state is not the solution for all problems, seems even less likely than the resumption of power by a member of the Bourbon family. 1:40:18 PM

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