Outside of John Lasseter, Pixar's two biggest creative forces are arguably Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird. Stanton worked on the screenplays for several Pixar films before taking the helm on Finding Nemo and Wall-E, while Bird was responsible for Ratatouille and The Incredibles. Personally, I've always preferred Stanton's films to Bird's: There's a beautiful emotional purity to Finding Nemo and Wall-E that has no peer. (And for all the talk of how dazzlingly kinetic Bird's Pixar movies are, Stanton's are no slouch in the visual department, either.)
Both men have just completed their live-action debut, Bird going first with the impressive Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Now it's Stanton's turn... and it's John Carter, the movie that's been plagued with bad buzz for months. Unfortunately, the finished film is a bit of a mess: ambitious but also kinda dull. My review is up at Screen International.
(By the way, in that above image, that's Stanton on the left palling around with his John Carter star Taylor Kitsch. See? The movie was a pleasure to make. Laughs all around! Publicity stills are so weird.)
