I remember loving Lifted when I saw it play before Ratatouille six years ago, but I've not seen it since. It may actually be better than I had remembered.

What makes it so brilliant is the inspired twist that the alien abduction is some kind of training exercise or "abductor's test". As soon as we cut to the spaceship and see the alien with the clipboard, we understand exactly what is taking place. I've long espoused the virtues of short films in large part because they dispense with narrative clutter out of necessity. Everything we need to know to understand the who, what, where, how and why of this premise is conveyed in that one shot. (When it happens isn't particularly relevant, though even at that we know from the foliage and the open window that it must be during a warm time of year.)

The comedy itself is fairly routine, but what makes it work is that our sympathy lies not with the oblivious, sleeping human subject but with the hapless trainee. That kind of rookie frustration is universal. We get it. We've been there. We know his pain, and it's probably even more crushing than the pain inflicted on the human being. We don't wince because the human is being treated like a rag doll. We wince because this well-intentioned alien just can't seem to get it right. We identify with him. We root for him. And when it's all over, we exhale with him as it's just finally behind him.

Lifted was re-ranked on my Flickchart to #370/1539

Ratatouille is very nearly a self-allegory. It's possibly the most under-appreciated Pixar feature to date, and almost certainly the most daring. though WALL-E gives it a run for its money in that respect. Sometimes I try to imagine the pitch meetings that take place at Pixar.

JAN PINKAVA: You guys! There, I was, vegged out in front of the Food Network all day, right? And then I had this idea out of, like, nowhere. You ready? What if we make a movie about a French restaurant?

EVERYONE ELSE: ...

JAN PINKAVA: But the chef...is a rat.

EVERYONE ELSE: Go on.

I didn't realize that Ratatouille even originated with Jan Pinkava until now, having always assumed it was Brad Bird's project from the beginning. Instead, he came to it after it had already been in development and production for a few years. It's a testament to Bird that he inherited someone else's fresh and original idea and managed to turn in such a solid film.

This is the sort of idea that seems on paper at best suited for a short film. How much storytelling mileage can there really be to a rat who controls a chef? How interesting will the standard Pixar audience even be in such things as the oakiness and nuttiness of ingredients? His eye on the prize, though, Bird gives us a buddy story predicated on the dual themes of one character striving for the seemingly unattainable and the other listlessly in search of his own identity.

The two universal themes complement one another smoothly, aided in large part by Bird's refusal to allow Remy to speak verbally to Linguini. It seems a peculiar storytelling decision to say that, yes, the rats are capable of abducting and tying up two different people but not capable of holding a verbal conversation. Somehow, though, restriction allows the conceit of the film to function with more legitimacy.

Also daring is the subplot concerning Linguini's parentage. Never did I anticipate encountering in a Pixar film a character whose conception was kept secret even from his father. It's kind of a murkily told aspect of the narrative, enough so that I can imagine younger viewers not quite getting it but I can also envision more than a few "Wait, what?" reactions similar to my own. It's contrived, but it's so unexpected that it emboldens the film overall.

I would be remiss were I not to make mention of Michael Giacchino's score. Sure, it's at times appropriately "French" (i.e., features an accordion), and often light but it's the action music that stood out to me this time. Specifically, I was caught by the scene early in the film in which Remy and his brother Emile are caught by the old woman in her kitchen. There was something about that music that felt very John Williams-esque, specifically straight out of Williams's Indiana Jones work. It's particularly interesting because that aesthetic is not dominant in the rest of the score, but it's conspicuous there.

"Fine Food and Film: A Conversation with Brad Bird and Thomas Keller" featurette (13:57) **
I was a bit disappointed that this "conversation" doesn't have Bird and Keller actually together. Rather, it's cut together from separate on-screen remarks each made about their respective crafts, backgrounds and work philosophies. The chief flaw is that while the point is to emphasize the parallels between animation and cooking, at just under 14 minutes it stops being parallel and just becomes redundant to have one articulate the same point as the other.

Deleted Scene - Chez Gusteau (3:57) ***
Bird rightly justifies excising this introductory shot of Gusteau's on the basis that it isn't from any particular character's perspective and therefore doesn't connect to anyone in the story. I would have added that the lavish entrance through the front door is inconsistent with the back of the house story being told. Ratatouille isn't about the Gusteau's that the world would see; it's about Remy and Linguini's story there.

Also: I never realized until this deleted scene that the doors leading to the kitchen were designed to look like the face of The Iron Giant, which of course was also written and directed by Bird.

Deleted Scene - Meet Gusteau (5:57) ***
I didn't realize until Bird's comments on this deleted scene that he came to the film after it had already been conceived and partly developed. It was he who made the decision to have Linguini's hat be translucent, rather than have Remy peer through the hat (a wise choice).

I do like one key thing about seeing this scene: It establishes for me how a bottom-line-minded totalitarian like Skinner could ever rise to a position of prominence under Gusteau in the first place. I wish some version of this scene had survived into the final film, because that's one of the key glaring areas for me.

Deleted Scene - First Day (5:12) ***
This scene was largely intact in the final film, though with the two obvious changes that Remy lost a lot of his autonomy and the rest of the cooking staff became deemphasized. I would have liked to have seen them placing bets on Linguini, but its absence doesn't detract from the scene.

Ratatouille was re-ranked on my Flickchart to #231/1539

I'd not previously seen Your Friend the Rat, since my Ratatouille DVD had remained neglected all this time. In Internet parlance, "Pixar should teach all the history!" I got a kick out of this 11 minute short history of rats. It clearly evokes memories of "Sherman & Mr. Peabody" segments from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, and that's never a bad thing.

Your Friend the Rat entered my Flickchart at #842/1540