10 Best Pixar Shorts That Play Before The Movie

1. Day & Night

Plays Before: Toy Story 3 Cuteness Level: The ending of every Pixar movie where the characters get together and celebrate When I went to go see Toy Story 3 in theaters, I was excited. I enjoyed the first two movies, maybe not as much as Up, The Incredibles, or Finding Nemo, but still a considerable amount. But after I saw Day & Night, I immediately thought "I should leave now, because I'm only going to be disappointed with anything that follows that." Thankfully Toy Story 3 was also great (though probably not quite AS great). Day & Night is shockingly the only short on this list that wasn't nominated for an Oscar (even though they can make nine right decisions, the one they got wrong is the most egregious error possible), but it is the best Pixar short the animation giant has made to date. A story about two figures, aptly standing in for night and day, that experience what the area they inhabit is experiencing during its night and day respectively. It's a concept that is difficult to put in to words but as soon as you see it, it makes perfect sense (Pixar is great at taking a dream-like concept and making it practical and purposeful). There are too many brilliant things going on here to count, but I want to focus on the short's ingenious use of sound. The only sound comes from what is being experienced inside the body of the day and night figures: when night fights day each punch landed coincides with a lumberman's axe hitting a tree (as seen in the screen shot above), when night visits a casino the noise of slot machines and loud parties come out, and when day stands in front of a radio tower an amazing speech by Dr. Wayne Dyer is heard over the airwaves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRuURW_UXfw The contents of the speech encapsulate not only the ideas of this short, but perhaps the central idea in all of Pixar's movies "Fear of the unknown. They are afraid of new ideas. They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but based on € if something is new, I reject it immediately because it€™s frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar. You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe are the most mysterious." As day and night learn from each other they experience the world in a different way, and join together in the twilight. Teddy Newton directed the short, which blends together both 2D and 3D animation expertly in the thrilling, thought-provoking, and stunning Day & Night.