Latest news with #MadelineSharafian
New York Times
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Who Directed ‘Elio?' It's Complicated
After the emotionally resonant final moment of Pixar's new outer-space adventure 'Elio,' the names of directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian pop up onscreen — typical for any feature film. But if you stick around until after the mid-credits tag, you might find something curious. Once the crawl starts, another person is also listed as director: Adrian Molina. The discrepancy hints at some of the behind-the-scenes shake-ups involving the film about an orphaned boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens. Midway through production, Molina, the original director, was replaced by Shi and Sharafian. All of the listed filmmakers have history with the company. Molina was one of the screenwriters and the co-director of the hit 'Coco' (2017). Shi directed the red panda puberty story 'Turning Red' (2022), while Sharafian was behind the Oscar-nominated short 'Burrow' (2020). During an interview with The Wrap last summer, Pixar's chief creative officer, Pete Docter, said that Molina was moved off 'Elio' and onto a 'priority project that we're not ready to talk about yet.' (Molina is reportedly working on a 'Coco' sequel due out in 2029, though it's unclear whether that's what Docter was referencing.) Docter, in the same interview, explained that Shi and Sharafian were crucial to figuring out story beats involving the awkward Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), who ultimately gets his wish and is beamed up to an intergalactic summit by kindly extraterrestrials who believe he is Earth's leader. 'I think they've made some major discoveries on him that really helped the audience to connect and to move forward with the character into the second act,' Docter said. On animated films, one person often assumes the title of co-director, a role the Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton once described as a 'jack of all trades.' That's the part Molina had on 'Coco.' But on 'Elio' none of the listed directors have the 'co' prefix. 'Elio' has had a lengthy journey to the screen. The project was announced at Disney's D23 conference in 2022 and was originally scheduled for release in 2024. America Ferrera appeared at that event and revealed that she was playing Elio's mother. That in itself offers some clues as to what changed. In the finished film, Elio's mother is dead and Zoe Saldaña voices his overwhelmed aunt living on a military base.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
In Pixar's ‘Elio,' Easter eggs are literally written in the stars — will you be able to spot them all?
When Elio launches into theaters on Friday, audiences will discover more than just a heartwarming sci-fi adventure about a young boy navigating the cosmos. They'll also be treated to one of Pixar's favorite traditions: Easter eggs. Since its earliest days, Pixar has delighted fans with hidden references — some nods to past films, others teasing what's ahead. And Elio is no exception. Directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina, and starring Yonas Kibreab as 11-year-old Elio and Zoe Saldaña as his aunt, Olga, the film follows an imaginative boy who is mistakenly identified as Earth's leader in outer space. Keen-eyed viewers will notice the universe around him is filled with winks to Pixar's legacy. More from GoldDerby 'Hope for the best, prepare for the worst': 'Overcompensating' breakout Wally Baram on making her acting debut, defiling prop toilet The case of Leslie Abramson vs. Marcia Clark: Ari Graynor and Sarah Paulson on 'defending' their characters 'The messier, the better': How 'Andor' created the epic, heart-shattering Ghorman Massacre One of the most iconic Pixar Easter eggs is the Pizza Planet truck. First seen in Toy Story, the yellow delivery vehicle has made an appearance in nearly every Pixar film since. Elio continues that tradition. 'The Pizza Planet makes an appearance,' confirms production designer Harley Jessup. Elio also carries heartfelt connections to Coco, reflecting Elio's own cultural heritage.'We were trying, because it is his Hispanic family, we're trying to add a couple things from Coco,' shares lighting art director Ernesto Nemesio. 'There's a couple of Easter Eggs in his house where there's some posters that Frida Kahlo painted in Coco that are in the background.' But Elio doesn't just look to the past — it also gives a sneak peek of what's to come. Pixar often drops hints about upcoming projects in their current films, and Elio takes that to the next level. 'There are a few Easter eggs — or more than Easter eggs — where with our next film, a full-on character shows up,' says animation supervisor Travis Hathaway, referring to Hoppers, the studio's upcoming feature. 'There might also be a Luxo lamp outline in the stars. I think somebody tried to fit those in,' he says, referring to the desk lamp that serves as the mascot of Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar Even the stars themselves, which Elio often gazes up at, hold a special meaning. 'The stars in Elio are the stars in the sky in real life,' explains visual effects supervisor Claudia Chung. 'That is really what the stars would look like from Northern California in the summertime.' One of the film's more playful and inside joke-type Easter eggs is a striped blue shirt Elio wears. 'Our lighting DP has a Zoom screen with this striped blue shirt, and we put that shirt on Elio,' says Chung. Jessup adds with a laugh, 'We didn't tell him.' Chung continues, 'It just showed up and he was like, 'Funny guys.'' Best of GoldDerby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.
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First Post
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- First Post
Elio movie review: Pixar's space adventure about loneliness & vulnerability is a visual spectacle
Directors Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina of Elio have beautifully combined the beautiful and wildly imaginative space adventure tale with the theme of family and friendship, which explores the dynamics of vulnerability and loneliness read more Director: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina Star cast: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon, Brad Garrett, and Jameela Jamil During our childhood, almost every individual had curiosity about space, aliens and an imagination of transporting to another universe or planet. Elio Solis (voiceover by newcomer Yonas Kibreab), an 11-year-old boy who has just lost his parents, stays with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) on a military base. To get connected with her nephew, Olga takes Elio to the local air and space museum. Elio gets attracted to the idea of contacting aliens from other galaxies as he feels lost on Earth. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD However, his obsession puts him at odds with Olga and his peers, but Elio is least concerned. He goes to the beach daily with his suitcase and ham radio with a message, 'Aliens Abduct Me!' His wish gets fulfilled as he gets transported to the Communiverse, which is the home to the brilliant and sharp aliens. Elio feels like his dream has been fulfilled as they are ready to make him a member of the Communiverse after he misleads them, telling them he is the leader of Earth. However, his lie gets caught when he comes in front of Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a robotic-like warlord, who threatens to destroy the communiverse after they don't allow him to become a member of their planet. Will Elio win over the hearts of the Communiverse's aliens, or will he go back to Earth? Directors Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina have beautifully combined the beautiful and wildly imaginative space adventure tale with the theme of family and friendship, which explores the dynamics of vulnerability and loneliness. The movie impactfully shows the underlying message that parents or guardians need to show the soft side to their kids and hits the right emotional notes without being loud or preachy. The beautiful and sparkling shades of Communiverse and its fancy extra-terrestrial creatures, and the realistic Earth make you want to explore the unknown with open arms and heart. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD On the whole, Elio is a delightful family watch, which will be loved by kids and adored by adults. Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars) Elio is playing in cinemas
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Just like Inside Out, Pixar's Elio takes on real epidemic children face
Pixar has always had a strong message at the heart of their movies, and in recent years films like Inside Out and Turning Red explore the personal struggles that children face with Elio tackling one of the toughest subjects at all: loneliness. The movie centres on Elio (Yonas Kibreab), a young boy desperate to make contact with alien life, not because he is fascinated by the prospect of discovering life outside of Earth but because he thinks he will find a place for himself with them. Elio has just lost both his parents, has no friends, and feels like a burden to his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), so being with aliens feels like a better option — and then he is abducted by them. Exploring loneliness and grief felt incredibly important to the team behind the film, co-directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, and producer Mary Alice Drumm, because it is a real-life issue. Shi tells Yahoo UK: "I think with all of our movies we kind of start from with ourselves and our own kind of experiences with feeling lonely. we had like lots of writing sessions, brainstorming sessions, where we all shared stories. "And also, paired with that, Pete Docter [Pixar's chief creative officer] encouraged us to talk to a lot of experts as well, child psychologists, the US surgeon feneral doctor Vivek Murthy who is leading this global campaign on talking about the epidemic of loneliness in a lot of our youth. I think it was just something that we all realised as we were talking that we're all experiencing [it], or crew members were noticing that their kids were experiencing post-pandemic this struggle to connect with other kids and other people. "And and one of the things that we found out was that when you do feel alone a lot of the times people, especially kids, are too ashamed to admit that they feel alone. It's kind of like you feel guilty, like there's something wrong with you if you're feeling this way or you can't make friends, there must be something wrong with you." "But really the step towards connection and to not feel as lonely is to admit that you're struggling, that you are feeling alone," Shi adds, saying of the film's exploration of Elio's friendship with alien Glordon: "That's kind of what we do in the movie with Glordon, Elio's first real friend. There's this moment where they are vulnerable with each other and I feel like it that is the moment where their friendship truly cements." When Yahoo remarks how Elio feels like a good companion piece to Inside Out as a result of its subject matter, Drumm adds: "We would talk about that." Kibreab tells Yahoo UK that he was impressed with the way in which the writers explored the subject matter, because it's important for children to understand how they might be feeling: "They really did a good job on getting those points across, I feel like with any Pixar movie there's always a big message that helps you with life in general, and I think there's a lot of them in Elio and they they touched up on every one of those [issues]. "But I think the best [message] is how important friends and family are because you see that bond with Glordon and Aunt Olga." Brad Garrett, who voices villain (and Glordon's dad) Lord Grigon, added that the movie also aptly explores important subjects for the adults watching too, namely the fear that one might not be a good parent: "Parenting, you can always do better and there's no manual to it. I love that connection that Elio was able to bring to Glordon and Grigon in the end." "It's the first villain I've ever played, so that was really kind of cool," the actor adds. "But I loved how he did have that other side to him. Most villains have trouble tapping into that side." Elio has a deeply moving story at its heart but it's also a stunning film to look at, with creative worlds and characters for the character to meet along his journey. This meant that the animators at Pixar needed to be as inventive as possible to imagine a world we have seen before on-screen, which led them to the Communiverse — a congregation of all alien life. But there was a lot of pressure to make the film stand out, Sharafian says: "We were very aware of the fact that Pixar has already made two sci-fi movies, and sci-fi is just a very popular genre in general, so our production designer Harley Jessup really wanted to make a very unique fresh take on space. "He tried to do the opposite of a lot of things we've seen before, instead of being cold and dark and sort of a metallic, hard lines, scary space he wanted a warm, soft glowing world. Even the technology has a softness and a gooeyness to it and, of course, the aliens themselves do too. "While they're diverse and they have a different number of legs, arms, eyes, they all were designed to be friendly and beautiful so that when Elio sees the Communiverse he's just enchanted by it and wants nothing more than to stay there, and our hope was that the audience would feel the same way. That it's just this gorgeous, glittering jewel hanging in the sky, and I'm so proud of how it turned out. I think it's a really cool interpretation of what space could be." Kibreab, for one, was very impressed by Pixar's take: "I'm a really bad drawer, like I'll mess up on stick figures. But the fact that they can just come up with that in their head and just put it down on paper it's so crazy to me, and I think their goal was to create something that's never been seen before and the Communiverse has never been seen before. "It's such a magical place and I think they did also just an amazing job creating these aliens, I saw early storyboards of Glordon and Elio, they wrote it and then they just drew it and it's crazy to me because, like I said, I'm not a very good drawer." And of course it wouldn't be a Pixar movie without a few Easter eggs, the studio are well known to hide things like the Luxo Ball, the Pizza Planet truck, and A113 in all of their movies, as well as nods to the next project that the studio is working on. For Sharafian, Shi, and Drumm it was a delightful experience to see where and how the animators would hide these references. "I think every film has Easter eggs, but we love Easter eggs so there's actually a spreadsheet of them and we actually don't know where they are because we encourage crew to put them in," Drumm says. "But we do have the classics, we have the Pizza Planet truck, A113, we have the Luxo ball and then we have small ones for Maddie's short [film] Burrow, and there's a small, very abstract one for Turning Red which is a piece of graffiti. "So yeah, there's quite a few and to find some you're gonna have to watch the film a little bit more slowly, over and over again, to catch them. But they're there!" Detailing their favourite easter eggs, Shi says: "I like that we snuck the Luxo ball onto Elio's boxers." "That was a fun one," Sharafian adds. "Because they put in the Easter eggs and they don't tell us they're coming, so I didn't know that the sunscreen that Elio uses has the rabbit from Burrow on it. And it says 'Sunny Bunny' and I thought it was so cute. I want that, I want that bottle." And Drumm adds: "I love when Jude [Brownbill], our supervising animator is animating Olga typing and the scene was changing a little bit so she had to do it again, and I just was like, 'what are you having her type?' And she's like, 'oh, Pixar!'" Elio is out in UK cinemas on Friday, 20 June.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Pixar's ‘Elio' Shines With Sci-Fi Sincerity and Heart
Elio is Pixar at its most original, delivering an extraordinary journey filled with wholehearted sci-fi wonder. Director Domee Shi and co-director Madeline Sharafian craft a timeless coming-of-age adventure that's a solid follow-up to their fan fave Turning Red, marking a new standard for Pixar stories. Through its main character's close encounter, the film cleverly broaches the resonating experience of feeling alone against a backdrop of imaginative visuals illustrating the universe's enormity. It captures the desire we have to find meaning not just across the stars but in the face of loss, which can feel just as isolating as being lost in space. It's what Elio (Yonas Kibreab) feels when he's taken in by his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) as he goes through the unimaginable pain of losing his parents at a young age. His existential trauma plays into his hyper-fixation with aliens and getting beamed away from his troubles on Earth, which include a few bullies and being made fun of for making crop circles in the sand. Meanwhile his aunt, who works on military base as a space debris tracker, masks her grief by throwing herself into work to provide for her nephew. Elio's life takes a turn when his dreams are realized and he makes first contact with aliens through his prototypical radio signal device. It's very endearingly Amblin in that way, having kids on a base running around and getting their hands on government tech to get inventive while bored. It's how Elio almost befriends a fellow military kid, but he just happens to get beamed up alone before they get in trouble. It's from here that Elio kind of gets everything he wanted: he's transported to the hub of the Communiverse, a galactic alliance of the most peaceful lifeforms in space that has mistaken Elio as Earth's representative petitioning membership. However, an encounter with the domineering Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) sees Elio whisked into an adventure he could never have imagined, forced to stand up against Grigon's hostile attempts to join the Communiverse by force. Finding himself making friends with Grigon's estranged son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), Elio has to save the day and learn how to form a bond with his unlikely new friend—and realize that some traumas are universal experiences, whether it's for humans or aliens. The developing bond between these two young kids from literally different worlds is what gives Elio its excellent heart, one that shines alongside the spectacle of its lush imagining of a sci-fi universe. The film is filled with gorgeous details, but one of the best visual gags has a touching resonance with the film's wider themes, in a scene where clones of Elio and Glordon are returned to their loved ones to take their place, hoping to go undetected. This best-laid plan falls hilariously apart as the guardians re-evaluate their own journeys through grief opposite the impostor kids, mirroring their own experiences to the young boys. That said, it's also paradoxically a moment that features a quick move to something that feels legitimately spooky and gross for a Pixar movie—perhaps a genre the studio could explore at a later date. Shi and the animator's choices to really emphasize and stylize the way Elio's characters convey raw emotions through a fuller range across their faces, which we first saw in Turning Red, that shines on full display here. Glordon doesn't even have eyes and I was sobbing at his pure innocence. The character designs have really evolved and continue to elevate Pixar's signature expressiveness, and Kibreab and Edgerly's chemistry anchors the film to deliver a heartwarming tale of grief and friendship. Elio ties it all together culminating in a powerfully moving and awe-inspiring reminder that life with those we love is such a worthwhile experience. Yes, you will shed those Pixar tears, but mostly in a feel-good way because of the sheer abundance of wonder the movie evokes. Elio traverses a universe of overwhelming vastness that's presented as both beautiful and hard to feel a part of no matter how old you are. And that at our core anyone deserves to find community; whether it's near or far, people just have to reach out to each other. Elio opens in theaters June 20.
