This weekend, Brave became Pixar’s 13th feature film, the latest addition to an impeccable body of work that started nearly twenty years ago with Toy Story.  Given the storied history of everyone’s favorite animation studio, I think this is the perfect opportunity to try out a new feature, By the Numbers.  Essentially, I will go one by one through each of the Pixar movies and provide a numbers-based snapshot of its place in the filmography by looking at the box office, critical reception, and miscellaneous facts.  Four thousand words later, I hope you’ll agree this is a comprehensive review of Pixar’s work over the last two decades.

Hit the jump for a detailed look at Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Toy Story 3, Cars 2, and Brave.

This weekend’s box office turned out to be pretty predictable. Brave, the thirteenth feature from fan-favorite Pixar studios, came out on top with an estimated $66.7 million from 4,127 locations. Easy to see that one coming. More of a question mark was Fox’s R-rated counter-programmer Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Many expected the film to crash in epic fashion; and while $16.5 million from 3,106 locations is not great, it is better than Rock of Ages and That’s My Boy managed last weekend so… yay?

It’s a Pixar extravaganza!  We’ve got some exciting news to share regarding everyone’s favorite animation studio.  First up, a new clip from the excellent-looking Brave has gone online.  It skews towards the comedic side of the film, and I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that the triplets may or may not steal the show when the film hits theaters.  Additionally—and excitingly—Pixar will be re-releasing a few of their classics exclusively in AMC theaters this Memorial Day weekend.  Wall-E, Up, Ratatouille, and Toy Story 3 will return for a limited engagement from May 25 – 28th.  Moreover, tickets will run at the family friendly and affordable price of $6.

Each screening will be accompanied by a behind-the-scenes look at Brave, and Toy Story 3 and Up will be running in 3D (the 3D in the latter is gorgeous).  This is excellent news, and I’ll most definitely be taking advantage of the chance to see Andrew Stanton’s masterwork Wall-E on the big screen once more.  Hit the jump to watch the new Brave clip and to watch the trailers for the aforementioned Pixar films set for re-release.

Last year’s Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival included screenings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan & J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, a Jon Favreau-hosted double bill of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, and Warren Beatty opened the festival with his 1990 film Dick Tracy.  The event sounded like a lot of fun and proved more than insightful with some truly swell panels.  The line-up for this year’s iteration of the festival has been announced, and as expected it’s a fun mix of old and new films with special guests galore.  Hit the jump for more info.

After its enormous opening last weekend, The Lorax continued to impress – capturing its second number one title with an estimated $39.1 million, or a week-over-week decline of just 44%.  For once, however, people seem more interested in the film that didn’t make it to number one than with the film that did.

After posting a strong start on Friday, Cars 2 went on to finish the weekend with an estimated $68 million from its 4,115 locations.  That was more than double what its closest competitor, Bad Teacher, took in; but not quite enough to get the sequel higher than fifth place on the list of All-Time Pixar Studio champions.

Pixar Animation Studios classics like Toy Story, Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille, and Cars will soon be commemorated with their own unique stamp designs in 2011.  Citing Pixar’s “exciting, contemporary characters and strong themes involving family and friends,” the United States Postal Service will begin circulating the “Send a Hello” stamps on August 19th, 2011.

To check out the official USPS release and to catch a glimpse of the five designs, hit the jump.

Now here’s a subway we’d all like to take.  It seems a website called Vodkaster has created “The Best Movies Of All Time Map” much in the vein of those Lord of the Rings Flow Charts/Maps that circulated around the web a few months ago (we missed it).  It’s incredibly cool and detailed, even if the stops along the way don’t exactly make the most sense.

Starting with a series of “Universally Acclaimed Masterpieces” in the middle, such as Seven Samuari, Star Wars and Citizen Kane, it then branches off into sub genres such as the broad “Drama” and “Comedy,” to more specific ones like “Masterpiece about show business” and “Drama about tolerance.”

Hit the jump to look at the huge image.

The Simpsons is still plenty capable of putting together a very entertaining half hour over two decades into its run, and this Sunday’s episode “Stealing First Base” was particularly suited for film geeks.  First, the episode’s delightfully gruesome “Itchy & Scratchy” short serve as an extended parody of the Philip Glass-scored Koyaanisqatsi as well as a brief mocking of 3D.  Later, a Bart kiss inspired a montage of famous romantic scenes in film history–including Spider-Man, WALL·E, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek among others–which itself was a take on a reminiscent scene in Cinema Paradiso in borrowing Ennio Morricone’s beautiful “Love Theme” from the film.

Hit the jump to check out the clip and a list of the movies referenced. [via Upcoming Pixar]

Now this is just awesome.  Someone at penneydesign has imagined what modern movies and TV shows would have looked like as video games if they had been made back in the late ’70′s.   While they designed the game covers for a fake system called the CVS 2600  Cartridge Video System, it’s clear the covers are designed for the Atari 2600.  The fake games are Batman: The Dark Knight, Cloverfield, James Cameron’s Avatar, Lost, Prison Break, Snakes on a Plane, The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift and Wall-E.

What’s also great about the covers is the way they’ve added fake stickers, price tags and writing.  On The Dark Knight cover the writing says:

David & Mary Merry XMas ’78.  This is to share! Love Aunt Julie

If you ever played the Atari 2600 or just want to see some awesome fake video game covers, hit the jump.

Kung Fu Panda may have knocked out Wall-E at last year’s Annie Awards, but Pixar got its revenge Saturday night with Up taking the top two awards, for Best Animated Feature and Directing in a Feature Production for Pete Docter.

However, Henry Selick’s Coraline and Disney’s The Princess and The Frog (both of which this writer liked more than Up – hate if you must) topped Up‘s total, taking home three Annies each. And the most deserved award of all? In my opinion it’s certainly Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach for Writing in a Feature Production for the wildly witty Fantastic Mr. Fox.

And Up, of course, is up for an impressive two-fer when the Oscars are handed out March 7, being nominated for both Best Picture and Best Animated Picture (only the second animated movie to score a Best Picture nod, after Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.) There’s always a chance the two could cancel each other out, but I wouldn’t bet against Pixar in at least the animated category.  Hit the jump to see a full list of winners at the Annie Awards.

To celebrate the release of Pixar’s “Up” on DVD and Blu-ray on November 10^th, eight gorgeous retro-style posters for the film have been released.  Your wall space and my wall space crave them.  I’m assuming these posters were also done by Eric Tan (who did these retro-style posters for “Wall-E” as well as other movies which you can see on his site), since I know he did the one featuring Muntz’ evil pups.

While the one I want the most is not included in this set, I still want all eight of these.  Sadly, I have no idea where you and I can buy them.  You can check out the full set after the jump. [UPDATE! You can buy the posters here.  Also--they're signed.  I'm going to dig through my couch cushions to see if there's the $145 I need to get the Dug poster.] [2nd UPDATE! It's been brought to my attention that Eric Tan did "Journey into the Wild", Craig Foster Did "SAA: South American Air", Erik Evans did "Paradise Falls", and the other five are by Paul Conrad.  Only Eric Tan's posters (including ones not in this set) are available at Acme Archives Direct]

At last week’s Saturn Awards, I was able to speak with Pixar’s Angus MacLane after “Wall-e” won for Best Animated Film. In case you’re not familiar with Angus’ work, he’s been an animator on eight of Pixar’s movies. Also, he’s directed a short (“Burn-E”) and been a storyboard artist on a few other films as well. Basically, he’s worked on many films that you love.

Anyway, after “Wall-E” won, I was able to speak with Angus backstage and we talked about “Wall-e”, “Toy Story 3″, why Pixar makes such great films, and a lot more. Also, he told me where you can get some very cool and very limited “Wall-e” posters…so take a look: