- Journey inside the miniature world of bugs for bigger-than-life fun and adventure under every leaf! Crawling with imaginative characters, hilarious laughs, and colorful animation, Disney and Pixar's A BUG'S LIFE will "delight everyone -- young, old, or six-legged" ("People" magazine). On behalf of "oppressed bugs everywhere" an inventive ant named Flik hires "warrior bugs" to defend his co
In an anthill with millions of inhabitants, Z 4195 is a worker ant. Feeling insignificant in a conformity system, he accidentally meets beautiful Princess Bala, who has a similar problem on the other end of the social scale. In order to meet her again, Z switches sides with his soldier friend Weaver - only to become a hero in the course of events. By this he unwillingly crosses the sinister plans of ambitious General Mandible (Bala's fiancé, by the way), who wants to divide the ant society into a superior,! strong race (soldiers) and an inferior, to-be-eliminated race (the workers). But Z and Bala, both unaware of the dangerous situation, try to leave the oppressive system by heading for Insectopia, a place where food paves the streets. --Written by Julian ReischlWoody Allen as a worker ant with an inferiority complex? Sylvester Stallone as an affable soldier ant who discovers that digging tunnels is cool? The animation playground we all knew so well is turning into a theme park full of in-jokes for grownups.
Antz explores age-old topics (one person--err, insect--can make a difference, individuality and social responsibility must exist side by side, war is hell) with comic asides and Woody Allen's funniest quips this side of PG (adults will chuckle at the socialist slogans bandied about as he campaigns for workers' rights). Sharon Stone voices the rebellious princess with a fun-loving streak that doesn't quite overcome her royal bearing and court training, but she can ! learn. Gene Hackman is all teeth (ants have teeth?) and menaci! ng grins as the Army general plotting insect-icide. This bug's-eye view of life on Earth gives Allen's neurotic nonconformist an epic adventure of microscopic proportions: a devastating war with a termite colony, an odyssey to the fabled land of plenty (a picnic ground), and a race to save his fellow workers from certain death. Other voices include Anne Bancroft as the Queen, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Lopez, Danny Glover, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and John Mahoney. The computer animation isn't exactly realistic but feels as solid and contoured as puppet animation with the smoothness and slickness of traditional cel cartoons, and the character designs and animation offer a marvelous range of expressions. The PG rating includes a gritty battle sequence that may frighten youngsters.
--Sean AxmakerEarth, that shining beacon of human magnificence, of human achievement, the very birthplace of mankind itself, now falls in line for Antz invasion.
I want to thank my re! aders. I know I'm not the best writer in the world but I strive to tell a good story. I do write a few run on sentences, I'll admit, but it's to pack as much information into each line as possible. To keep the story moving along. The story is why the reader is here. My greatest achievement is when people tell me they couldn't put my book down. They couldn't stop turning the pages because they wanted to know what was going to happen next. All the way through the book. That's my greatest achievement.
You may expect to see the next installment of this series in December (this December). All further installments will be full length, as Winter is here and I will have the time to write full time.
Thank you and enjoy.Earth, that shining beacon of human magnificence, of human achievement, the very birthplace of mankind itself, now falls in line for Antz invasion.
I want to thank my readers. I know I'm not the best writer in the world but I strive to tell a! good story. I do write a few run on sentences, I'll admit, bu! t it's t o pack as much information into each line as possible. To keep the story moving along. The story is why the reader is here. My greatest achievement is when people tell me they couldn't put my book down. They couldn't stop turning the pages because they wanted to know what was going to happen next. All the way through the book. That's my greatest achievement.
You may expect to see the next installment of this series in December (this December). All further installments will be full length, as Winter is here and I will have the time to write full time.
Thank you and enjoy.Book Two of the Antz series finds mankind being swept from his own worlds, put to flight and scattered like cosmic dust. The Fleet has been routed. They can't stand toe to toe with the enemy. The only hope is that mankind can hold her worlds, but they will have to be held from the ground, and they were on their own. It has been a long time since man has been hunted by anything other than his own fe! llow men, but the instincts were still there.Book Two of the Antz series finds mankind being swept from his own worlds, put to flight and scattered like cosmic dust. The Fleet has been routed. They can't stand toe to toe with the enemy. The only hope is that mankind can hold her worlds, but they will have to be held from the ground, and they were on their own. It has been a long time since man has been hunted by anything other than his own fellow men, but the instincts were still there.Woody Allen as a worker ant with an inferiority complex? Sylvester Stallone as an affable soldier ant who discovers that digging tunnels is cool? The animation playground we all knew so well is turning into a theme park full of in-jokes for grownups.
Antz explores age-old topics (one person--err, insect--can make a difference, individuality and social responsibility must exist side by side, war is hell) with comic asides and Woody Allen's funniest quips this side of PG (adults will chu! ckle at the socialist slogans bandied about as he campaigns fo! r worker s' rights). Sharon Stone voices the rebellious princess with a fun-loving streak that doesn't quite overcome her royal bearing and court training, but she can learn. Gene Hackman is all teeth (ants have teeth?) and menacing grins as the Army general plotting insect-icide. This bug's-eye view of life on Earth gives Allen's neurotic nonconformist an epic adventure of microscopic proportions: a devastating war with a termite colony, an odyssey to the fabled land of plenty (a picnic ground), and a race to save his fellow workers from certain death. Other voices include Anne Bancroft as the Queen, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Lopez, Danny Glover, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and John Mahoney. The computer animation isn't exactly realistic but feels as solid and contoured as puppet animation with the smoothness and slickness of traditional cel cartoons, and the character designs and animation offer a marvelous range of expressions. The PG rating includes a gritty battle sequence that! may frighten youngsters.
--Sean AxmakerMankind has expanded unimpeded across the Galaxy. Expansionist and Imperialistic before space travel, one nation against the next, later the corporations, but man was many more times so after. After space travel. First men fought over the moon and mars, and then quickly onward as fast as the fuel of greed could compel them. The Corporations owned space.
Corporate expansion into the Galaxy didn't last long. It only lasted long enough for them to have the first alien contact, and a devastating financial loss, and mankind suddenly found itself under attack by the first alien race it had made contact with.
Since that time man has marched across the Galaxy and over every sentient race he encountered, exterminating them down to specimens and even less in most cases. Man has grown strong and numerous and now sits quiescently in control of all he purveys. Until the day an unknown intruder exits Jump without warning and bre! aks through the Protected Zone.
Mankind has always been! the mos t industrious, the most technological, the fiercest, the most numerous, whatever it took to prevail, but this new enemy outnumbers man millions to one and mankind finds itself in the unusual position of having either to prevail, or face complete annihilation.
The Hswgi have been marching across the Universe for millions of years. The Hswgi are vegetarian, but their larvae required meat. No longer planet dwellers, truly the nomads they had been designed to be, they continued to raid as they always had. Mankind seemed an an easy meal.
P.S. This book has received a new full edit as of 10/27/2011.
The next installment of this series will be coming in December 2011.
Thank you and enjoy!Mankind has expanded unimpeded across the Galaxy. Expansionist and Imperialistic before space travel, one nation against the next, later the corporations, but man was many more times so after. After space travel. First men fought over the moon and mars, and then quickly onwar! d as fast as the fuel of greed could compel them. The Corporations owned space.
Corporate expansion into the Galaxy didn't last long. It only lasted long enough for them to have the first alien contact, and a devastating financial loss, and mankind suddenly found itself under attack by the first alien race it had made contact with.
Since that time man has marched across the Galaxy and over every sentient race he encountered, exterminating them down to specimens and even less in most cases. Man has grown strong and numerous and now sits quiescently in control of all he purveys. Until the day an unknown intruder exits Jump without warning and breaks through the Protected Zone.
Mankind has always been the most industrious, the most technological, the fiercest, the most numerous, whatever it took to prevail, but this new enemy outnumbers man millions to one and mankind finds itself in the unusual position of having either to prevail, or face complete annihilation.!
The Hswgi have been marching across the Universe for mill! ions of years. The Hswgi are vegetarian, but their larvae required meat. No longer planet dwellers, truly the nomads they had been designed to be, they continued to raid as they always had. Mankind seemed an an easy meal.
P.S. This book has received a new full edit as of 10/27/2011.
The next installment of this series will be coming in December 2011.
Thank you and enjoy!Woody Allen as a worker ant with an inferiority complex? Sylvester Stallone as an affable soldier ant who discovers that digging tunnels is cool? The animation playground we all knew so well is turning into a theme park full of in-jokes for grownups.
Antz explores age-old topics (one person--err, insect--can make a difference, individuality and social responsibility must exist side by side, war is hell) with comic asides and Woody Allen's funniest quips this side of PG (adults will chuckle at the socialist slogans bandied about as he campaigns for workers' rights). Sharon Stone voices the rebellious! princess with a fun-loving streak that doesn't quite overcome her royal bearing and court training, but she can learn. Gene Hackman is all teeth (ants have teeth?) and menacing grins as the Army general plotting insect-icide. This bug's-eye view of life on Earth gives Allen's neurotic nonconformist an epic adventure of microscopic proportions: a devastating war with a termite colony, an odyssey to the fabled land of plenty (a picnic ground), and a race to save his fellow workers from certain death. Other voices include Anne Bancroft as the Queen, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Lopez, Danny Glover, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and John Mahoney. The computer animation isn't exactly realistic but feels as solid and contoured as puppet animation with the smoothness and slickness of traditional cel cartoons, and the character designs and animation offer a marvelous range of expressions. The PG rating includes a gritty battle sequence that may frighten youngsters.
--Sean AxmakerThey came 34,000 years ago. They came to claim Earth. They c! ame to c laim mankind.
Excerpt;
Steel rang on steel as both my blades danced intricately amongst the weaving, slashing blades of the Others. For the moment I could think of them as nothing else. The name by which I have called them for thirty-four thousand years. In the heat of the battle they were the Others, my old hated rivals, and I could think of them in no other vein.
Those around us were all juvenile to us by many degrees. It was like slaughtering incompetent novices. They were all well trained, even Masters, within the art of the weapon each carried, but they could not perceive the blinding speed with which we attacked. I parried an attack from my left and then stabbed the Palag through its neck before it realized its blade had even been deflected. Then I quickly yanked it free, coated in black blood, before the Palag I had stabbed in the neck even began to fall, dead, parried another blade among the mass either chopping or stabbing at me, and anothe! r and another and another, much faster than the thought, operating on muscle memory alone, before finding the barest sliver of a moment to strike back. While my Cumosachi Katana wove a defensive ring of steel around me to my right, and my cane sword danced the same caper to those on my left, as I swung the cane sword back to parry yet another attack I let my arm slip out to its farthest reach and the tip of the blade opened the great black teardrop shaped eye of one of the Palag whose blades I had just parried there. As the Palag staggered back my cane sword cavorted on, and the opening the Palag had left in the ring around us was filled with the next eager attacker. They came blithely on.
My Cumosachi Katana, though longer and heavier, moved with a grace that seemed to be animated by the blade itself. The balance of the Cumosachi was unmatched by any weapon I had ever held, excepting only possibly, the blade I had given my son, and it moved as with a life of its own,! floating, weaving and buoyant among the blades besieging me, ! occasion ally darting out to sever hands, nick the great black tear drop shaped eyes, or even liberate completely their overlarge heads with a deft slice at their thin, scrawny appearing necks.
Sonafi, smaller and more nimble than I, and fighting with her shorter weapons, was often away from my back as she literally danced among the attacking Palag, I trying to maintain our proximity only to find her once again beside me and expecting me to parry blades that were descending on her as she slipped under one or another of my arms to slice the unsuspecting Palag in front of me.
No two humans could have fought the way we did. We could not view all of our attackers all at once. They came from everywhere all at once but not in a coordinated attack that we might fight them in a systematic manner. We picked our targets on a most imperative basis, but it was all instinctual, autonomous and reflexive. We did not have time to think, to calculate. We had to act in the now. Their blade! s fell from every direction, and we fought them like the demented beings that we were.
This was a chaotic time and words are unequal to the task of fully describing the events which occurred herein. Even though I was a participant myself, I was purely acting and could not recount every blow that fell within the heat of that battle. It was even to me little more than a blur of swinging blades, splashing black blood and Palag corpses piling up around us and Sonafi was now forced to remain at my back rather than moving freely at her will, but the corpses....They came 34,000 years ago. They came to claim Earth. They came to claim mankind.
Excerpt;
Steel rang on steel as both my blades danced intricately amongst the weaving, slashing blades of the Others. For the moment I could think of them as nothing else. The name by which I have called them for thirty-four thousand years. In the heat of the battle they were the Others, my old hated rivals, and I could thi! nk of them in no other vein.
Those around us were all juve! nile to us by many degrees. It was like slaughtering incompetent novices. They were all well trained, even Masters, within the art of the weapon each carried, but they could not perceive the blinding speed with which we attacked. I parried an attack from my left and then stabbed the Palag through its neck before it realized its blade had even been deflected. Then I quickly yanked it free, coated in black blood, before the Palag I had stabbed in the neck even began to fall, dead, parried another blade among the mass either chopping or stabbing at me, and another and another and another, much faster than the thought, operating on muscle memory alone, before finding the barest sliver of a moment to strike back. While my Cumosachi Katana wove a defensive ring of steel around me to my right, and my cane sword danced the same caper to those on my left, as I swung the cane sword back to parry yet another attack I let my arm slip out to its farthest reach and the tip of the blade opened the! great black teardrop shaped eye of one of the Palag whose blades I had just parried there. As the Palag staggered back my cane sword cavorted on, and the opening the Palag had left in the ring around us was filled with the next eager attacker. They came blithely on.
My Cumosachi Katana, though longer and heavier, moved with a grace that seemed to be animated by the blade itself. The balance of the Cumosachi was unmatched by any weapon I had ever held, excepting only possibly, the blade I had given my son, and it moved as with a life of its own, floating, weaving and buoyant among the blades besieging me, occasionally darting out to sever hands, nick the great black tear drop shaped eyes, or even liberate completely their overlarge heads with a deft slice at their thin, scrawny appearing necks.
Sonafi, smaller and more nimble than I, and fighting with her shorter weapons, was often away from my back as she literally danced among the attacking Palag, I trying to main! tain our proximity only to find her once again beside me and e! xpecting me to parry blades that were descending on her as she slipped under one or another of my arms to slice the unsuspecting Palag in front of me.
No two humans could have fought the way we did. We could not view all of our attackers all at once. They came from everywhere all at once but not in a coordinated attack that we might fight them in a systematic manner. We picked our targets on a most imperative basis, but it was all instinctual, autonomous and reflexive. We did not have time to think, to calculate. We had to act in the now. Their blades fell from every direction, and we fought them like the demented beings that we were.
This was a chaotic time and words are unequal to the task of fully describing the events which occurred herein. Even though I was a participant myself, I was purely acting and could not recount every blow that fell within the heat of that battle. It was even to me little more than a blur of swinging blades, splashing black blood and Palag corps! es piling up around us and Sonafi was now forced to remain at my back rather than moving freely at her will, but the corpses....Journey inside the world of bugs in this epic of miniature proportions. Crawling with imaginative characters, hilarious laughs, and colorful animation, Walt Disney Pictures Presentation of A Pixar Animation Studios Film, A BUG'S LIFE, will "delight everyone -- young, old, or six-legged." (People Magazine) In this 2-disc set you'll step behind the scenes for a look at the innovation and teamwork that resulted in this ingenious film. Loaded with bonus features â€" including animation not seen in theaters, abandoned sequences, and multiple surprises â€" A BUG'S LIFE COLLECTOR'S EDITION offers something for everyone from families to film lovers!There was such a magic on the screen in 1995 when the people at Pixar came up with the first fully computer-animated film, Toy Story. Their second feature film, A Bug's Life, may miss the bull's-! eye but Pixar's target is so lofty, it's hard to find the film! anythin g less than irresistible. Brighter and more colorful than the other animated insect movie of 1998 (Antz), A Bug's Life is the sweetly told story of Flik (voiced by David Foley), an ant searching for better ways to be a bug. His colony unfortunately revolves around feeding and fearing the local grasshoppers (lead by Hopper, voiced with gleeful menace by Kevin Spacey). When Flik accidentally destroys the seasonal food supply for the grasshoppers he decides to look for help ("We need bigger bugs!"). The ants, led by Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), are eager to dispose of the troublesome Flik. Yet he finds help--a hearty bunch of bug warriors--and brings them back to the colony. Unfortunately they are just traveling performers afraid of conflict.
As with Toy Story, the ensemble of creatures and voices is remarkable and often inspired. Highlights include wiseacre comedian Denis Leary as an un-ladylike ladybug, Joe Ranft as the German-accen! ted caterpillar, David Hyde Pierce as a stick bug, and Michael McShane as a pair of unintelligible pillbugs. The scene-stealer is Atta's squeaky-voiced sister, baby Dot (Hayden Panettiere), who has a big sweet spot for Flik.
More gentle and kid-friendly than Antz, A Bug Life's still has some good suspense and a wonderful demise of the villain. However, the film--a giant worldwide hit--will be remembered for its most creative touch: "outtakes" over the end credits à la many live-action comedy films. These dozen or so scenes (both "editions" of outtakes are contained here) are brilliant and deserve a special place in film history right along with 1998's other most talked-about sequence: the opening Normandy invasion in Saving Private Ryan.
The video also contains Pixar's delightful Oscar-winning short, Geri's Game. Box art varies. --Doug Thomas
