Wow. It’s been 5 years since Pixar Short Film Collection Volume 1 has come out. While a number of new shorts have been made, the jump in technology might not be as discernible to the casual observer as opposed to the how it is with the first collection. This isn’t to say computer animation has reached a plateau, but instead to illustrate in a small way how in the last 5 years Pixar has consistently turned out high quality animation with incremental advancements, rather than the high quality animation that improved by leaps and bounds in the studio’s formative years.
At this point it is standard practice to have a Pixar produced short before every Pixar feature film, then to have a new short produced for the home video release. Now we have many of those together here, such as “Presto” and “Burn-E” – and while a number of these shorts were available elsewhere, it is nice to have this collection of shorts as a comprehensive compilation of the studio’s output.
Well, almost complete and comprehensive. The most recent, “Legend Of Mor’Du” (available on Brave Blu-ray) isn’t here, but “La Luna” which appeared on before Brave theatrically is. “Partysaurus Rex” is also absent. We do get two recent “Mater’s Tall Tales” – but not all of them (the earlier ones had their own home video release).
Here’s what we get:
Your Friend the Rat
Presto
BURN-E
Partly Cloudy
Dug’s Special Mission
George & A.J.
Day & Night
La Luna
Hawaiian Vacation
Air Mater
Small Fry
Time Travel Mater
Most of these are already available, but Pixar fans still won’t mind. To sweeten the deal this time around we are getting several student films from some of Pixar biggest names.
Nitemare
The Lady & the Lamp
Somewhere in the Arctic
A Story
Winter
Palm Springs
Next Door
These are the real treasures in this collection. John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton all provide insight to each of these shorts and it is a great look at not only animation as an art form but also these people as creative individuals. Additionally, each of the main shorts have audio commentaries. Mostly it is with the director, but some of them have a second or even third person in the booth as well.
This collection might be more readily enjoyable for fans of Pixar or animated shorts than the previous one, but completist will cry foul. Still, it’s hard to argue against the quality of all the shorts that are included on here.