Ahoy, squirts! Quint here from my first night of stuff at ShoWest. My flight got in with time to spare, but I was misdirected to where I could register a couple dozen times, so by the time I ran into the "you might not have a seat, but go ahead and take a look" sold-out screening of CARS, director John Lasseter was being presented some ShoWest award. He told the audience that we were seeing the film digitally projected and it must have been a 4k projector or something new because the projection was absolutely gorgeous.

Anyway, he also said that he had a couple surprises for the audience before CARS ran. CARS had just been finished, with Pixar having just thrown the cast and crew completion party 2 days prior, so that was a treat. But the special thing we were seeing was the RATATOUILLE trailer, the very first people outside of the Pixar shareholders to be shown this trailer.

As you probably know from recent news reports, Brad Bird is directing RATATOUILLE for Pixar after Jan Pinkava (GERI'S GAME) stepped aside.

The trailer opens with a big table of cheese with the waiter, in heavy French accent, pointing to different kinds of cheese, describing the differences of the cheeses. We never see his face, just his hand as it gestures at the tray, with the camera focusing on each different sample of cheese as he's talking about it. Then, he says this last cheese is rare and expensive, but exceptional. The camera pans over to see a gray rat caught like a deer in headlights, a piece of the expensive cheese in his mitts. The rat is of the cute rat varieties, not the evil R.O.U.S. type ("I don't think they exist.")

The waiter shouts, the patrons scream and the rat screams himself and runs like a bat outta hell. He runs through the kitchen, knocking pots and pans over, cheese still in a death grip. He makes a leap off of a table, kitchen knives and other utensils falling around him and then it freeze-frames, like an action movie with the hero jumping over a cliff or away from a fireball or something.

The rat introduces himself to us. The voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it. He says that he loves good food, and it's a good thing he lives in Paris because there's a lot of it... It's just hard to get.

It cut to our hero grey rat walking about outside, near what looked like a sewage pipe or something. He tells us about his distaste for trash and love for real food. His dad yells at him from inside the pipe (we never see him), telling him he wouldn't be hungry all the time if he just ate trash like all the other rats. A chubby rat comes along eating something... dirty. It's gray-ish/black and it could be rotting oyster... or something. The chubby rat tells the gray rat that once you get paste the gag reflex, you'd be surprised what you can eat. The gray rat asks the chubby one what the hell he is eating. Mouth full, the chubby rat just kinda goes, "I don't know."

Then it cuts back to the freeze frame of the gray rat in mid-leap and it reiterates how dangerous it is for a rat with a taste for real good food is in Paris. The film unfreezes and the rat hits the ground running, darting into a crack in the wooden wall, followed almost immediately by the falling cutlery imbedding itself into the wood around the hole.

So, there you go. RATATOUILLE the trailer. It was funny, looked good... It didn't blow me away or anything, but the talent involved is undeniable.

I have been forbidden from reviewing CARS, but I am allowed to tell you that I have seen it and yes, I did like it. I really liked it a lot. If I say any more, Walt Disney himself will bust open my hotel room door and his disembodied head, floating in a jar filled with a mixture embryonic fluid and Mountain Dew, will tell his robotic limbs to tear me apart. I can't have that. I hope you understand.

I'm still working on nailing down some interviews while out here. It looks like my follow up with Natalie Portman has fallen through and Wolfgang Peterson is jetting out right after he shows whatever he's showing from POSEIDON. Still the chance for some super-interviews, though.

Keep an eye out for that, plus random pictures from ShoWest. 'Til then, this is Quint bidding you a fond farewell and adieu.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com