FINDING DORY

We ranked every single one of Pixar’s movies dating back decades. Which one came out on top?

This awesome video collects over 20 years of Pixar Easter eggs.

January’s almost over, and when the calendar rolls over to February, there will be a whole new batch of movies and TV shows coming to Netflix for your streaming pleasure. This month’s highlights include a few big recent premieres (like Pixar’s latest hit, Finding Dory), and a few big Netflix Originals (like the new series Santa Clarita Diet starring Drew Barrymore). The recent Sundance hit I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore shows up next month, and if you’re looking for something to watch on Valentine’s day there’s also a “big, sexy” special starring Michael Bolton. There’s no way that could work out badly for you.

This past summer's Finding Dory made a big splash at cineplexes (pardon me while I self-immolate), enchanting kid- and adult-aged viewers alike while running up the year's highest domestic gross. On the unfortunate side, however, the de rigueur short runtime of children's programming meant that some bits of the film had to be left on the cutting room floor like so many discarded fish eyeballs. Today, one lost sequence from Pixar's latest smash has been recovered and brought to the viewing public's attention.

Talking animals, man. The kids love ’em. They love ’em.

I have a dream job. What could be better than watching and talking about movies for a living? Nothing; the answer is nothing. But lately my job has been a lot less fun than normal, because the movies themselves have been a lot less fun. Quite frankly, this summer sucks.

An audience of children and their parents out for a day of family fun at a movie theater in California were horrified to watch the red-band trailer of Seth Rogen's Sausage Party film before the airing of Finding Dory.

It took 20 years for Roland Emmerich to deliver a sequel to Independence Day, a film that’s largely responsible for the modern summer blockbuster season. Unfortunately, it looks like most audiences didn’t think it was worth the wait. As predicted in recent weeks, Resurgence crash-landed in theaters with an underwhelming opening weekend that was no match for Pixar’s Finding Dory.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Finding Dory opened at number one at the box office this week and did enormous business, but the folks at Disney and Pixar must be breathing a sigh of relief. After all, last year’s The Good Dinosaur was the first film to come out of the venerable animation studio that could be considered a legitimate box office disappointment, especially since it came in the wake of the massively successful Inside Out. The massive opening weekend for the sequel to Finding Nemo repositions Pixar in its rightful place on the top of the animated movie food chain.

We’ve seen the trailers. We’ve met several of Dory’s new aquatic co-stars. But now Pixar is backing things up just a bit to show us how Finding Dory made the leap from page to screen, with some gorgeous new concept art from the long-awaited sequel to Finding Nemo. The artwork primarily features Ellen DeGeneres’ lovably absent-minded Dory and Hank the octopus — a new character voiced by Ed O’Neill — as well as some landscapes and beautiful underwater scenes.

People love to speculate about Pixar movies. There’s even a whole “Pixar Theory” about how every movie exists in the same shared universe (one with humans and talking toys and talking ants and a gigantic menagerie of horrors when you think about it). Then there are the famous Pixar Easter eggs; in jokes and references to other Pixar movies, both past and present, that litter the backgrounds of every single Pixar movie.

A new international teaser for Pixar’s Finding Dory has arrived online, and though it does not really offer any new footage from the long-awaited Finding Nemo sequel, it does feature the endearingly clueless Dory stumbling upon something that looks quite familiar. The film hits theaters this summer, and while it’s not a new trailer, this teaser should hold you over until more footage properly arrives.