Saschka Unseld, the writer and director of Pixar Animation Studio’s latest short, The Blue Umbrella, was walking down a rainy San Francisco street when he found a broken umbrella on the side of the road. “I stopped because it looked like such a sad thing, and rain was pouring on it,” he recalled. “I was feeling sad for an umbrella; I think that stuck with me.”

This random moment inspired a short that follows an emotive umbrella, which makes its theatrical debut on June 21, preceding Pixar’s Monsters University. “Rain is a magical place,” the director said. “I wanted the soul of the film…

It won’t be long now before we get to see Superman back in action on the big screen in Zack Snyder’s and Christopher Nolan’s grand super-hero vision. In fact we’re only two weeks away from the June 14 premiere. And of course the promotional campaign is working overtime now. I have several TV spots to share with you, and the fun thing is that each of them have something new to offer that we have not seen yet. Obviously it’s mixed in and around things we have already seen before.

So, will Superman defeat General Zod? Will he save the world? Well I mean, come on, you never know, they may mix…

Alright, one more thing for The Wolverine today:

On November 1st 2012, I visited the set of The Wolverine in Sydney, Australia. To give you an idea of the timeline of my visit, Hurricane Sandy had just wreaked havoc in New York, and I woke up early one morning from the constant noises coming from my computer because I was getting so many notices of the breaking news that Disney had purchased LucasFilm and was making more Star Wars movies.

It is five in the morning and I’m standing in a street lined with Japanese houses covered with snow. The elaborate set was  built in a huge parking…

While on the Sydney set of The Wolverine we got an opportunity to sit down and interview the film’s producer/star Hugh Jackman. After the jump you can read a transcript of our roundtable interview (conducted alongside two other online journalists).

I posted a link to a tiny sliver of this interview yesterday, but I just saw the whole interview and thought it would be worth pointing out to you guys. Stuff like this is always fun to me. So go read the whole Q&A session if you are so inclined.

I’ll admit, I went into the theater to watch this film with low expectations. Maybe it’s the fact that the production company and guys behind the story were also behind the likes of Ice Age, Robots, Rio, and more. It did not instill confidence. And the trailers failed to inspire me. Couple those things with the entirely lackluster promotional campaign and one did not get the sense that this film would be any more than a bit of drivel peppered in amongst the big summer tent polls.

I was therefore exceedingly shocked to walk out of the theater at the end of the credits having thoroughly…

I don’t know what it is exactly, I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it, but it is not possible for me to care less about this upcoming film from Disney.

I think part of it is this trailer seems to have no heart, and does not hint at a cohesive story. And I have yet to be convinced that I want to go exploring the world of Cars without Lightning McQueen, Sally, Mater, and the others. It just doesn’t fit for me. Why do I care? Something seems to be missing here.

A quote in the linked article from Hugh Jackman:

You know, obviously we have people from—one of the great things about this movie is that a lot of people from Marvel are here and it seems a lot more inclusive than it has been in the past. I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, but I think it’s fantastic. I actually just asked the other day, I said, ‘I don’t know what the legal situation is, but why don’t these companies come together? Why isn’t it possible?’ Because personally, I would love to mix it up with Robert Downey Jr. and Iron Man and kick his ass. It’d be great.

How…

Award-winning composer Carter Burwell was all set to score Marvel‘s Thor: The Dark World. It would have marked his first superhero project to date. The studio even printed his name on the first official poster last month. But Deadline now confirms that Burwell is off the project altogether in what Marvel’s camp diplomatically describes as a creative split.

Huh. That’s kind of odd this far down the road. Patrick Doyle scored the first Thor film and it wasn’t great, which in my book is normal for Doyle, though I have to say I didn’t hate Thor‘s score as much as I have other work from…

Director James Mangold isn’t really interested in making a comic book movie. Not in the traditional sense. He’s not really interested in explosions or bombastic action sequences or 3D. He’s not interested in quip-spouting super heroes or nudging his audience in the ribs with a sly wink.

What he is interested in, is character. Mangold, whose previous works include Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, is an actor’s director. He’s the man responsible for Angelina Jolie’s Lisa Rowe, Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash and Christian Bale’s Dan Evans. Mangold is unequivocally sincere…