Via “Wired“:

Here’s “Presto”, the Pixar short written and directed by Doug Sweetland with a Chuck Jones-Hanna Barbera groove to it, that’s playing in front of “Wall-E”:

Download it here.

And because I’m guessing the Disney/Pixar people will be all over this post in mere hours, I want to attach here a letter I tried sending through Pixar’s public relations but never got a notice as to whether it was received and read.

The subject: how is it possible that “Wall-E”, the best reviewed studio movie of the year so far, is getting released in Israel tomorrow WITH ZERO REVIEWS, due to negligence of the Israeli distributor.

Dear John and Andrew,

Great news about “Wall-e” opening the Jerusalem Film Fest, over at my English blog I couldn’t get enough of the Jerusalem “wall” and “wall-e” wordplay. I’m sure seeing the movie on an outdoor screening, on a huge screen, beneath the ancient walls of Jerusalem, less than a mile away from the Western Wall, will be as spectacular as you can imagine.

But as a film critic and film scholar who adores the Pixar product (I’ve interviewed John in Hamburg for “Toy Story 2″, I’ve added the “Ratatouille” script to my “Great Screenplays” classes in the Jerusalem Film School and the Film Department at Tel Aviv University) I’m miffed at the way Israeli distributors release your films here: ever since “Cars”, critics have been banned from preview screenings of Pixar movies (and Disney movies). Your movies come out over here without any reviews.

You might say that Pixar doesn’t need critics to succeed and you’d be absolutely correct: “Ratatouille” was the number 1 movie in Israel in 2007. So this habit by local distributor Forum Film, to ban critics, may not hurt your business, but it sure does hurt the image, the brand. Critics start the write-up with a mention of the ban, explaining the belated review, instead of focusing on the film. Some may even watch movies on downloaded cam copies, just to make the deadline and bypass the ban. And the general notion is that the ban is in place because they have something to hide, a bad movie worth hiding from the press. That may be true of non-critic-friendly movies, but couldn’t be wronger when it comes to Pixar. I have a feeling that if it were up to you, you wouldn’t authorize such a ban on journalists. I hope you take this into consideration and make them stop this behavior.

Read my related posts:
http://cinemascopian.com/2008/06/17/wall-e-set-to-open-the-jerusalem-film-festival/

http://cinemascopian.com/2008/05/10/critics-banned-from-reviewing-hancock-wall-e-narnia-sex-and-the-city/

Hope to see you guys sometime in Israel.

All the best,

Yair Raveh
Tel Aviv

Film Critic, “Pnai Plus”
Film Blogger, cinemascopian.com

Addendum: Regardless of this post I was informed that “Wall-E”’s Israeli distributor has decided to momentarily lift the ban and invite a handful of friendly critics and allow them to post their review on opening day. Four reviews were up. I added my online Hebrew review after seeing the film’s matinee showing.