ABC brought together the "Toy Story" cast last year and premiered "Toy Story of Terror!" To nobody's surprise, it turns out that it is going to be an annual showing, sort of along the the lines of "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown."
It airs again on Wednesday, October 15 2014 on ABC 8 EST.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
ABC Television Network
PRESS RELEASE - PRESS RELEASE - -
"TOY STORY OF TERROR!," DISNEY•PIXAR'S FIRST SPECIAL FOR TELEVISION AIRS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15
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“TOY STORY OF TERROR!,” DISNEY•PIXAR’S FIRST SPECIAL FOR TELEVISION FEATURING A SPOOKY NEW TALE WITH ALL OF YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS FROM THE “TOY STORY” FILMS,” TO AIR WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 ON ABC
Tom Hanks and Tim Allen Reprise Their Roles as Woody and Buzz
Disney•Pixar’s first special for television, “Toy Story OF TERROR!,” a spooky tale featuring all of your favorite characters from the “Toy Story” films, airs WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 (8:00-8:30 p.m., ET). (Rebroadcast. OAD: 10/16/13)
What starts out as a fun road trip for the “Toy Story” gang takes an unexpected turn for the worse when the trip detours to a roadside motel. After one of the toys goes missing, the others find themselves caught up in a mysterious sequence of events that must be solved before they all suffer the same fate in this “Toy Story OF TERROR!”
The cast of “Toy Story OF TERROR!” includes Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Carl Weathers as Combat Carl/Combat Carl Jr., Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants, Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, Wallace Shawn as Rex and Kristen Schaal as Trixie.
“Toy Story OF TERROR!” is produced by Galyn Susman and directed by Angus MacLane. The special is from Disney•Pixar. This program carries a TV-G parental guideline.
Photography and video available at www.abcmedianet.com. Photography request line (818) 460-6611.
Pixar is busy preparing a new animated short featuring the "Toy Story" characters. It is due to air before Halloween 2013. Not only that, but yet another tv special featuring Buzz and the rest will be hitting the small screen early in 2014!
Here's the first trailer!
The movie will premiere on ABC just before Halloween, on 16th October, at 8pm ET. It is directed by Angus MacLane.
"Heading to the small screen before Halloween, Toy Story of Terror features the gang taking a road trip to Bonnie’s grandmother’s house before everything takes an unexpected turn. On a detour leading them to a roadside motel, one of the toys goes missing, and the others find themselves caught in an eerie turn of events that must be stopped before they suffer the same fate."
Would love to reveal more, but that is all that is known about the project right now.
Chicken Little: A Fun Little Disney Movie with the Legendary Don Knotts
Many people are familiar with the "Cola Wars" of the 1980s, when Pepsi challenged Coke's supremacy and Coke famously "blinked." Less well known is that the same thing happened in the 2000s in the context of Disney and its rivals. The result basically was the same in both cases - Coke and Disney both remained "on top," depending on how you choose to define that term. Coke went back to its original formula and retained its market share, while Disney eventually bought out its biggest competitor, Pixar.
Chicken Little and Ugly Duckling
The source of Disney's troubles was Pixar's (and eventually DreamWorks' and others) continuing perfection of computer graphics. Audiences liked the slick new animation styles being peddled by the upstart animation companies and no longer seemed as excited about Disney's combination of computer imagery and traditional hand-drawn animation. Walt Disney Feature Animation's solution was to lay off its animators and try doing what the others were doing.
"Chicken Little" (2005), directed by Mark Dindal from a script by Steven Bencich, Ron J. Friedman and Ron Anderson and story by Dindal and Mark Kennedy, was Disney's first fully computer-animated feature film, and it showed the studio still had some work to do to win back its audiences of the 1990s.
Chicken Little, he's the greatest dancer!
Chicken Little (Zach Braff) lives in Oakey Oaks. He wildly rings the school bell one day, telling people to run for their lives. Everyone panics, but when Chicken Little finally tells everyone that the reason for alerting them was that a piece of the sky had fallen on him, they all just laughed at him. Chicken Little's father, Buck Cluck, dismisses Chicken Little's fears as being caused simply by an acorn that had fallen on him. The town decides that Chicken Little is crazy and ignores him.
Chicken Little is ready to go
A year later, Chicken Little's only remaining friends are fellow outcasts like Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack), who has a crush on Chicken Little, Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn) and Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina), who wears a helmet full of tap water. Chicken Little wants Buck Cluck to be proud of him, so he joins a baseball team. The coach ignores Chicken Little until the last inning of the last game, when the coach finally calls him to bat. Chicken Little hits the ball and rounds the bases, barely making it home after some confusion. For winning the big game, Chicken Little becomes a hero.
Don Knotts plays Mayor Turkey Lurkey
Later that night, though, Chicken Little is hit in the head again. He discovers that it not the sky that hit him, though, but something else that he does not recognize which blends into the background. Chicken Little's friend Fish Out of Water fools around with the piece and pushes a button on its back. It turns out to be a hexagon that flies off into the sky and was hiding a UFO. Once again, Chicken Little rings the school bell to warn the town, but the aliens quickly leave. Nobody believes Chicken Little, and once again he becomes a figure of fun.
Ugly Duckling "is the babe"
The next day, though, Chicken Little and his friends discover an orange alien child that the aliens left behind. The aliens return in a fleet of spaceships, looking for the lost child. They destroy the town with their ray guns. Chicken Little finds his father and manages to show that he is not crazy, and that he can stop the aliens. Buck helps fight the aliens, but they all get vaporized, which actually sends them into the alien space ship. Once they get the child back, the aliens restore everything to normal, and Chicken Little again becomes a hero for averting a catastrophe.
Chicken Little, Fish out of Water and Ugly Duckling
The voice cast of "Chicken Little" is chock full of old and new television comedy veterans. Don Knotts, who had been an animation pioneer 40 years earlier as Henry Limpet in "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," voices the Mayor of Oakey Oaks, Turkey Lurkey. Garry Marshall plays Buck with his usual comic flair. Fred Willard, Wallace Shawn, and Amy Sedaris are well-known comics who round out the cast. Having such amiable actors portraying the characters in this fable was a wise move, making the rote script come alive and enhancing the amusement of "Chicken Little" by letting the audience reconnect with old friends once more time. This was one of Don Knotts' final films, and he is his usual amusing self as the mayor.
Chicken Little and the orange alien baby
While this was a feature animated Disney movie, with a top-notch voice cast and all the trimmings, in essence it was the equivalent of a small, experimental Disney movie. Trying to unshackle itself from dependence on Pixar, this Disney movie has a good technical animation presentation but is completely lacking in its story. Everyone knows what a "chicken little" is, as it is a catchphrase for an alarmist, and this Disney movie did not expand on that concept at all. It has a lot of bright colors and constant chaos, with amusing dialogue and the types of one-liners you would expect from the cast of comedy pros. The father-son relationship is emphasized, which you also would expect in a Disney movie and is in line with Disney's efforts at the time to win over boys. All of this makes "Chicken Little" a very suitable film for small children. Anyone else, though is likely to be only mildly amused at hearing Don Knotts one more time, before quickly growing tired of the succession of clichés and paint-by-numbers plot turns.
Ugly Duckling and Chicken Little watching the sky
The soundtrack is fairly idiosyncratic, including numbers by Barenaked Ladies, Spice Girls, Joss Stone and Patti LaBelle, and R.E.M.John Debney did the score, which is okay. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of "Chicken Little" for older audiences is the parade of cultural references that the animators include to spice things up a bit. The false opening parodies "The Lion King," and there are nods to "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Independence Day" and "War of the Worlds."
Chicken Little always the center of attention
If you are watching "Chicken Little" with your child, you might be able to stop your mind from drifting off by catching the numerous throw-away references - some fairly subtle - to high-profile television shows and films like "90210" and Ridley Scott's "Alien."
Chicken Little with reporters after saving everyone
Overall, "Chicken Little" is a sweet, inoffensive film for little children. There are DVD, Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray versions available. Perhaps the most lasting impact of "Chicken Little" is that its mere production showed Pixar that Disney meant to compete in the computer-animation field, thereby perhaps nudging it toward accepting Pixar's takeover by Disney shortly after this film's release. Disney, on the other hand, saw by "Chicken Little's" problems that it might be able to learn a thing or two from its young rival. Disney blinked, all right, but then it opened its big, wide, toothy jaw and swallowed its main competitor whole. Hey, that would make a good animation scene....
Toy Story 3: The Toys Think They May Be Given Away
Animated films exist on their own continent, perhaps even in their own dimension. Stars you haven't seen in a live-action major Hollywood film in decades, or whose last television series got cancelled in the '70s, find eternal youth voicing characters drawn by others. It has to be the easiest gig in acting, perhaps in any type of employment. Come in, read for a few days, get called back in a year or three later to do a few more lines, and that's it. Nice work if you can get it.
Toy owner Andy, who once again makes only the briefest of appearances.
The beauty of the entire process is that the sequels are almost automatic. Unless an animated film really dies at the box office or has some kind of Mysterious Problem at actually putting together a quick sequel (cough cough "Finding Nemo" cough cough), the studios can spit these out whenever they want.
Woody, front and center!
The character become our friends, helped by long-ago associations made when the voice actors were still major players in other productions. Controversial or edgy actors tend not to last long in animated films, it is the laid-back, feel-good types that prosper.
It's a wild and crazy group
"Toy Story 3" (2010) has one of the best such voice casts in the business. Mr. Nice Guy himself, Tom Hanks, reprises his role as Woody, while Tim Allen once again is Buzz Lightyear. These guys may not be quite the fire-eaters they were fifteen years ago, but they are amiable and fit the friend-mold perfectly. Comfortable Don Rickles, who was entertaining all of our parents when they were young, is Mr. Potato Head, and "Mr. Cheers" himself, John Ratzenberger, is along with a lot of his trademark seen-it-all quips as well.
The toys with Andy
In this one, the toys are mistakenly delivered to a day-care center. They think they have been abandoned by Andy (their owner) and his family, but Woody knows that Andy (John Morris) is a nice boy and wouldn't do anything like that. Does it all work out well in the end? With all these friends around, what do you think?
We come in peace
In my opinion, the plot doesn't really matter anyway. We get to spend some time with our old friends, who once again are facing a common problem as a group which they must overcome, and that is enough right there. It's the simplest, sweetest theme in show biz, and it works like a charm every time it is used, whether it be in Rickles' own "Kelly's Heroes" or "Lost" or the entire "" franchise.
Woody looks happy with this sequel
These sequels do not exist in a vacuum. While you don't need to have seen "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" in order to understand this film, it sure helps. Besides, you miss out on all the camaraderie if you don't watch the previous instalments. It is fine being friends for one film, but don't you want to get the full experience? Who wants to be the late transfer into high school, with everyone else already friends and in their well-established cliques? Better to join the ride at the beginning, not half-way through.
The toys love their home
As usual, in a trend that began long ago but matured only with Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," which begat the hit Broadway show of the same name and many other spin-offs, "Toy Story 3" was nurtured into a cottage industry. Aside from the obvious toy sales it drives, "Toy Story 3 On Ice" toured the country. Mel Brooks must have had a lot of fun thinking about that! Just amazing how these guys respect the power of synergy.
A postcard from Carl and his wife of "Up!" on his bulletin board
Pixar, of course, also created the award-winning "Up!." There is a hidden reference in "Toy Story 3" to "Up!" Andy has a postcard sent from them on his bulletin board.
Yes, it's Toy Story 3 On Ice!!!!!!!!
Watch the first two "Toy Story" films before you try this one, and you'll have a lot more fun. Oh, it was the top-grossing film of 2010 for a reason, and currently the second-highest grossing animated film of all time. It's a great film, probably the best in the entire "Toy Story" series and the entire Pixar library, and well worth your time.
Toy Story 2: Yard Sale Day Means Terror for Woody and Buzz!
"Toy Story 2" (1999) is a terrific sequel to the original animated 1995 "Toy Story." As of this writing, "Toy Story 2" is the tenth-highest grossing animated film of all time. Fast-paced and entertaining, "Toy Story 2" is well worth your or your child's time. The "Toy Story" series is the cream of the crop of animation, blazing the trail that many others have followed, and it is led by the engaging duo of Tim Allen and Tom Hanks.
Unlike the first "Toy Story," which was confined to little Andy's room and the dreaded neighbor's house, this film expands its horizons. At the beginning of the film, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) battles the evil Emperor Zurg (Andrew Stanton) for dominion.
Everything seems to have changed in the "Toy Story" world, but appearances are deceiving. It all turns out to be just a video game, so everything is back to normal.
It turns out that it is yard sale day, and the toys are worried that they will wind up being sold. Woody (Tom Hanks) in particular is worried because his arm was torn by Andy's dog, and he worries that Andy now may be willing to get rid of him for a newer toy.
The rest of the film, directed by John Lasseter, Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, involves who gets sold at the sale, and how they are saved. A greedy collector, Al McWiggin (Wayne Knight, perhaps better known to some as Newman from "Seinfeld"), is attempting to make a deal with a Japanese museum which would break up the gang forever! It is a fun romp, and we get to learn a great deal more about Buzz and Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles).
Pixar, of course, always does a great job with the animation. Some great new characters (such as Wheezy, voiced by Robert Goulet) are introduced. There are a few scenes that might disturb younger viewers, such as a nightmare sequence involving Woody, but nothing too extreme. The film has undeniably sad moments - growing up takes on a whole new meaning when seen through the eyes of a suddenly outgrown toy.
The supporting roles (Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog (voiced by Jim Varney) have much larger roles this time, so if you are fans of theirs, this is a must-see film.
Well worth your time, this has a top-notch voice cast and is a quality production. Watch the trailer below to get a feel for this entertaining experience. The follow-up, "Toy Story 3," did even better and also is well worth your time.
