tagged w/ Disney/Pixar
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Marvel is suing the family of the late artist Jack Kirby in a bid to retain copyright to some of the company's best-loved comic book characters.
Legal action, filed in New York, sought to invalidate 45 notices sent by his heirs, claiming rights to characters would revert to Kirby's estate in 2014.
Marvel maintains Kirby's illustrations, published between 1958-1963, were "for hire" making the heirs' claims invalid.
Kirby's family vowed to "vigorously defend" their case.
Among the titles cited in the notices, apparently authored or co-authored by Kirby, were Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and The X-Men.
Marvel Entertainment, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, sought a judge's order that the Kirby notices have no effect.
'Compensation'
Marvel lawyer John Turitzin said, in a statement, that the heirs were trying "to rewrite the history of Kirby's relationship with Marvel".
He added: "Everything about Kirby's relationship with Marvel shows that his contributions were works made for hire and that all the copyright interests in them belong to Marvel."
"It is a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers, and other talent of all rights in their work," said Kirby's lawyer, Marc Toberoff, in a statement responding to Marvel's action.
"The Kirby children intend to vigorously defend against Marvel's claims in the hope of finally vindicating their father's work.
"Sadly, Jack died without proper compensation, credit or recognition for his lasting creative contributions.Marvel is suing the family of the late artist Jack Kirby in a bid to retain copyright... more
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If you’ve not been following news on the film, it has been fairly well-known that the story would follow what happens to Woody, Buzz and the other toys when Andy goes to college and his old box of toys is donated to a day-care center. That’s the basic thrust of this trailer: we get a nice little time-capsule montage of the toys’ life with young Andy, and then a cut to a really beautifully animated version of young adult Andy. (Still voiced by original actor John Morris.)
But after that opening segment, which is set to a sugary bit of Randy Newman songcraft, the trailer kicks into gear. “Let’s see what we’re going for on Ebay,” is the first line that suggests this will be both a casually entertaining and sharp flick. Then there’s the requisite montage of misuse by rugrats at the day care center, and a little problem with Buzz’s language settings that will obviously generate a big series of jokes. Who doesn’t dig a flamenco dancing astronaut?If you’ve not been following news on the film, it has been fairly well-known... more
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Disney and Pixar re-open the toy box and bring moviegoers back to the delightful world of Woody, Buzz and our favorite gang of toy characters in "Toy Story 3."
In theaters June 18, 2010Disney and Pixar re-open the toy box and bring moviegoers back to the delightful world... more
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In the new Pixar film Up, a crotchety old man named Carl ties thousands of balloons to his house and proceeds on an awesome flying adventure to South America. This left several Explainer readers wondering: Just how many balloons would it take to lift a house?
Between 100,000 and 23.5 million. The lower figure comes from the Wired Science blog, which took a crack at the calculation last week. After consulting with a house mover, Wired estimated that Carl's home in Up would be about 100,000 pounds. (Most houses weigh between 80,000 and 160,000 pounds.) Given that 1 cubic foot of helium can lift 0.067 pounds, it would take 1,492,537 cubic feet of helium to lift the house—or about as much as would be contained in 105,854 balloons, each 3 feet in diameter.
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This figure doesn't account for the weight of the balloons themselves, however. A 3-foot latex balloon—which is bigger than your average party balloon but smaller than the ones used in the extreme sport of cluster ballooning—might weigh about 1 ounce. So 105,854 of them would add 6,615 pounds to the weight of the house. The weight of the strings also needs to be taken into account. (A Wired Science commenter estimates that "non-optimal rigging" would require about 1,800 pounds of rope.) The Wired piece noted that it would take more balloons to lift Carl's house above the cloud cover, but according to experienced cluster balloonists, that's not necessarily true. If the balloons are made out of an elastic material like latex and haven't been fully inflated beforehand, they'll expand as they rise into the thinner atmosphere, which should keep the house rising steadily.
If Carl were trying to use regular old party balloons to fly his house, he'd need a whole lot more. A typical party balloon—11 inches in diameter, with 26 inches of curling ribbon—can lift 4.8 grams, or about 0.17 ounces. Assuming these flimsier balloons could withstand the strain—and not counting the extra string that would be involved—it would take more than 9.4 million balloons to lift Carl's house.
Meanwhile, Up co-director Pete Docter recently told Ballooning magazine that technicians at Pixar estimated it would take 23.5 million party balloons to lift a 1,800-square-foot house like Carl's, though it's unclear exactly what size balloon they were using to make their calculations. (In the film, the animators used 20,622 balloons for the liftoff sequence, but most of the other floating scenes have just 10,297.)In the new Pixar film Up, a crotchety old man named Carl ties thousands of balloons to... more
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The Disney/Pixar cartoon epic, Up, is that about an old guy’s house being attached to a bunch of helium balloons which lift it up out of the city and on a wonderful adventure.
Could that actually work? And if so, how many balloons would you need?
Wolfe House Movers, which specializes in moving old structures and had Kendal Siegrist, a manager, take a look at the images from the movie to see how much the house might weigh.
“A building like that, you’d figure right around 100,000 pounds,” Siegrist suggested.
The caluation for this to possible would be the following: Air weighs about 0.078 pounds per cubic foot; helium weighs just 0.011 pounds per cubic foot. As Wired magazine suggests helium balloons experience a buoyant upward force that is equal to the air it displaces minus its own weight, or 0.067 pounds per cubic foot of helium balloon.
A simple calculation is that 100,000 pounds divided by 0.067 pounds per cubic foot — and you’ve got that it would take 1,492,537 cubic feet of helium to lift the house. Of course, you’d need some more balloons to keep getting it higher, but that’s our minimum.
Which would mean 112,000 balloons in there.The Disney/Pixar cartoon epic, Up, is that about an old guy’s house being... more
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