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The announcements about Star Wars: Episode VII were made by Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn during a panel at Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television in Los Angeles on April 2. He also acknowledged that there had been problems with the script, but he’s confident in the version director J.J. Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan have worked on, which is based on a previous draft written by Toy Story 3 scribe Michael Arndt. “It’s all about the screenplay,” Horn said. “It has to be screenplay, screenplay, screenplay.”

Did you love 'Toy Story 3'? Many did, and that should have told Democrats something — that Americans may like Obama personally but they aren't buying his agenda. If indications hold true, voters Tuesday will deliver a powerful rebuke to the Obama administration and its plans to transform America. Also, "Toy Story 3" will come out on DVD. These two events are not unrelated. Last summer's Pixar blockbuster — one of the best American films in a decade — was a similar rebuke, not perhaps to the Obama White House specifically but to its underlying ideas. The fact that the...

The surprise box-office boom for the cartoon "Despicable Me" is making it clear again to Hollywood this sum mer that family films are the most likely to be top-grossing films. "Toy Story 3" is No. 1 for 2010, not only among the critics, but among the people as well. "Despicable Me" already has broken into the top 10 box-office hits for the year to date with almost $130 million in ticket sales. It happens over and over again. And still the "executives" are caught off guard. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Nobody needs a graphing calculator. Bring...

With Disney's acquisition of Pixar, Pixar President Ed Catmull was named President of the new Pixar and Disney animation studios and Pixar Executive Vice President John Lasseter is the new Chief Creative Office of the animation studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering. According to a poster at Animation Nation, Catmull and Lasseter "announced to Feature Animation employees [Tuesday] that the 'Toy Story 3' production will end effectively [Tuesday]. They said that sequels should only be made if there is a really great story that demands it, and should be the domain of those who created...

It is pretty easy nowadays to write a review of a Pixar movie. Simply write, 'Great!', and end it there...and you would pretty much hit the nail on the head. The original Toy Story movies were the coming out party for Pixar 15 years ago. They introduced America to a new kind of animation...one that once again drew adults and children. And this movie, as much as any, taps into that.