TOY STORY 3 SERIES

The film's initial $109m haul was the biggest ever opening weekend for the company two weeks on, its North American takings stand at nearly $236m, and over $340m worldwide, with the film yet to open across most of Europe. It only opened in US cinemas a fortnight ago, but already space ranger Buzz Lightyear and his ragtag assortment of toy pals have already trashed box-office records in that seemingly effortless Pixar way. Toy Story 3 is the 11th feature from the studio, which began life in 1984 as the computer graphics division of George Lucas's Lucasfilm Ltd, before Steve Jobs bought it for $10m two years later. Take it from me: my family's copies of titles by rival outfits such as DreamWorks Animation (Shrek, Madagascar) or Blue Sky Studios (the Ice Age trilogy) have mysteriously vanished to the back of the DVD collection, while The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up remain on constant rotation. Add to that the studio's sparkling wit, manifested in gags or allusions often accessible only to older viewers, as well as a wealth of incidental detail that positively demands repeated study, and it's no wonder that Pixar's movies can withstand tens, even hundreds, of viewings by any age group. Among Pixar's contemporaries, only Japan's Studio Ghibli (much beloved of the Pixar crowd, who even pay tribute to the Ghibli classic My Neighbour Totoro in Toy Story 3) has been more consistently groundbreaking in animation, and even it has floundered somewhat with its last two films.ДЇrom the first frame of the original Toy Story, 15 years ago, the marriage of eerily realistic computer animation and old-fashioned, emotionally plausible storytelling was a bountiful one.

TOY STORY 3 SERIES

With the imminent UK release of Toy Story 3, the apparently final instalment of the groundbreaking series that began Pixar's reign in 1995, the question of how one studio has maintained such incomparably high quality control remains intriguing. That word is Pixar, and you don't have to be a shareholder in Disney, which bought the computer animation studio in 2006, to feel reassured when you hear it.

I n the notoriously precarious film industry, where nothing is certain and no one knows anything, there is one word that functions simultaneously as talisman, balm and kitemark.

Toy story 3