Book excerpt: A major icon of cinema and pop-culture more widely, Pixar Animation Studios has played a vital part in reminding audiences of animation's capacity as a major artform. Hugely popular, and recognised as a real force in the imaginative lives of its audience, Pixar's movies have attained critical mass. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio offers the reader and animation enthusiast a one-stop handbook to the studio's work, discussing each film in great detail. Each Pixar feature film is explored in terms of creative choices made by the films' producers, writers, directors and animators from the first bright idea through to final realisation. The book also makes connections between the studio's aesthetic and the wider realm of animation history, the blockbuster movie and the enduring examples of folk tales.