January 24th, 2000

[6:00 AM] Toy Story 2 Takes Golden Globe Award For Best...Comedy? by Bryan Chaffin The Golden Globe Awards were held last night. Normally, that would not be a subject that would make headlines at The Mac Observer, but last night was an exception. Toy Story 2 won one of the awards for Best Film, but not for the category you may be expecting. Toy Story 2 was named Best Comedy! The film was made by Steve Jobs' other company, Pixar. For those who may not have been keeping score of late, Steve Jobs is the CEO of Pixar, in addition to his role as iCEO of Apple. The movie had some stiff competition from the likes of Analyze This with Robert De Niro, Being John Malkovich with John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and John Malkovich, Man On The Moon with Jim Carrey (who won Best Actor in a Comedy), and Notting Hill with Hugh Grant. There are no slouches in that list. This may mark the first time an animated film has won Best Comedy in a major film award. Congratulations to Steve Jobs and the team at Pixar! You can see the entire list of winners at The Golden Globe Awards web site. The Golden Globes are often heralded as hint of what will happen at the Academy Awards, the film industry's most prestigious awards, later in the year. The Mac Observer Spin: We in the Mac community often tend to be focused on the desktop when we think of computing paradigms, but there is this whole other world out there. Animated films have been taken more seriously during the last few years coinciding with their comeback at the box office. Disney has led the way with this return, as they have with the entire animated industry from the get-go. The end result (i.e. the bottom line) is that The Lion King has grossed over US$312 million since its release making it the highest grossing animated film of all time. Toy Story 2 is next in line, having grossed some US$220 million in its first two months of distribution! A staggering amount that almost matches the amount that Steve Jobs has gained in his stock valuations at Apple during the last 10 days. But that's another story... Our point is that computers are having a profound impact outside of the desktop. While Toy Story 2 is counted in the same category as The Lion King, there is major difference between the two, that being that Toy Story 2 is entirely computer generated. The movie certainly looks like it is computer generated, but in our opinion, winning a "Best Comedy" award is simply the precursor to an animated, or computer generated, film winning "Best Drama," or "Best Action" award too. That's because we just aren't that far away from being able to make a computer animated film look like a "real" film. This kind of paradigm shift may still take years to come, but computer animated films are sure to play an increasingly large role in the way entertainment dollars are spent, and Pixar is likely to have a big part to play in that too. Hopefully with the power of the G4 and Mac OS X, the Mac might also have a big part to play in that future. Note that while Macs are certainly used with the Pixar organization, much, if not all, of the rendering is done with other platforms such as SGI workstations. Golden Globe Awards - Pixar