When Microsoft made Forza Horizon official earlier this year, all we got was a trailer of people and cars — not in game cars mind you. But now hey — look an in game screen shot — and there’s a car!

We’re expecting to hear more about Forza Horizon at this year’s E3 convention in L.A., which is less than three weeks away.

Also, I’d just like to point out, the screen looks awfully familiar to a certain automobile themed Disney movie…I’m just going to leave this right here…

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Pixar is getting scientific with its upcoming films; they are set to explore the land of dinosaurs and delve into the human mind.

Filmmakers announced the projects at the D23 Expo 2011 on  Saturday while executives promoted all of the Disney/Pixar work.

The dinosaur film, still untitled, will be released during the holidays of 2013.   Bob Peterson, who co-directed and did a voiceover for the Pixar hit Up, will direct the film.

The dino flick was inspired by Peterson’s trip to the World’s Fair in New York when he was a kid.  There, he saw animatronic dinosaurs created by Walt Disney and they “made a big impression on [him],” he said.

The film explores what may have happened if the asteroid missed Earth and the dinosaurs continued to live.

The other half of Up‘s direction, Pete Docter will take on the other Pixar film about the brain.

The film will attempt to explain in humorous terms how the brain works in various ways.

“Most of us have had the experience of being around someone and thinking what is going on in their head,” said Docter. “This film will attempt to answer that question.”

This flick is expected to be in theaters by 2014.

When “Toy Story” appeared in 1995, seemingly out of nowhere, it immediately presented itself as the future of children-oriented cinema. It was Pixar’s first, and crowning, achievement; a breathing, gorgeous rendition of a child’s reality. I remember seeing it at 10 years old and being fascinated with the curve of the figures, the computer-generated shadows, and the cartoonish representations of some of my favorite childhood toys.

The story wasn’t half bad, either. “Toy Story” was first and foremost about the power of imagination. It described a universe where toys not only came to life, but yearned to be friends and loved ones to the children who possessed them. It’s a beautiful sentiment.

I didn’t see “Toy Story 2,” or if I did, I don’t remember it at all. Chances are it has faded into the mists of my own childhood, buried under memories of birthday parties and fights with my little brother. But “Toy Story 3″ does not list the first two movies as prerequisites. It is its own man, so to speak, and the remarkable thing is it stands very well, and very charmingly, on its own.

The first chance they took with the film was keeping the story in real time. In this episode, Andy has grown from a doe-eyed boy to a 17-year-old on his way to college. His toys, led by cowboy Woody (Tom Hanks) and spaceman Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), haven’t been played with for years. Their demeanor is that of long-time employees facing possible layoffs — will they be safe in the attic, or are they relegated to the garbage bag? “Toy Story” has always been good at farce-style mishaps, and it’s through a series of mistakes that the toys end up at a day care center, run by Lotso Love (Ned Beatty, a genial-seeming pink bear).

The whole abandoned-toy shtick is a little melodramatic, but it’s lightened immensely by the characters. Lotso runs the day care much the way a mob boss runs a corrupt trade union (the new toys are relegated to the Caterpillar Room, to be mauled and dented by the smaller children, while the veteran toys get to lounge around in the older kid’s playroom.) There’s a sexually ambiguous Ken doll (Michael Keaton, in his best work since “Beetlejuice”), and a method actor porcupine aptly named Mr. Pricklepants (Timothy Dalton? What are you doing here?!) Though written by four different people, the lines are consistently funny and touching by turns. Is it weird that I really care what happens to Jessie? Because it feels so right.

Because I wear glasses and have an unfortunate predisposition to mind-bending migraines, I’m not the biggest fan of 3D. That said, these are some of the least-offensive 3D effects I’ve seen — the animators seem more intent on shaping the scenes rather than simply having them pop out at you. The animation, as usual with Pixar, is gorgeously rendered, with a meticulous eye for perfection I can’t even begin to comprehend. I envy these animators gift to create space, depth and proportion, with little details that just make it better, like Rex the Dinosaur’s delicately worn tail, slightly bent from too many hours being played with.

This is the film that meets the grown-ups who originally loved “Toy Story” as children. It’s funny, sweet and slightly sad to be facing adulthood. But there’s a new generation that will also love “Toy Story 3.” The smartest thing the creators did was make sure that those who hadn’t seen the first two films could follow the third with little difficulty. The ending of “Toy Story 3″ seems to address this head on in the conclusion of the film. The world only spins forward, it seems to say. But in terms of this movie, there’s certainly no harm in looking back.

SAN DIEGO — “Toy Story” was landmark upon its release, which was already more than 10 years ago. Today, Disney introduced “Toy Story 3″ at Comic-Con.

Disney’s Lee Unkrich revealed little during a panel discussion. While most of the information is still a secret, he did allow audience members to find out about the new character to the franchise, Ken (Barbie’s counterpart) who will be voiced by Michael Keaton.

“We were not interested if it would have been simply an adventure on the road,” Unkrich elaborated on the motivations of this latest volume to the series in a round-table interview with Blast.

Unkrich elaborated that the film was personal to all involved and they wanted to create something worthwhile for audiences to enjoy as well as themselves.

“So much had past since the first film … all of us involved have had children, some of them have graduated,” he said.

And with the real passage of time, a new plot element unfolds.

Andy, the human boy character in the original film, is off to college in “Toy Story 3.”

This tidbit of information may be enough to offer fans an idea of how the film may go. With recent films such as “Up” it is possible Disney may attempt to include more serious themes into its films.

As far as the technology, “Toy Story 3″ is designed for a 3D audience. An exclusive clip of the film entertained audiences with visuals of Rex’s tail whipping around and the memorable little alien toys grasping their cute fingers outside the screen toward the audience. The clip even began with Buzz Lightyear walking into frame as if coming out from the corner of the screen and into the forefront.

Finally, while the third flick is far off, “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″ are currently being configured for 3D as well — illustrating Disney’s continued dedication to the format.

THQ has published games based on everything from the silly cartoon antics of SpongeBob, to the more serious yet ultimately just as funny Drake and Josh television series. ‚ Joystiq.com calls the publisher the “unparalleled master of licensed gaming adaptations.”‚  THQ’s presence is undeniable, and their target audience is thirsty for more.

THQ aims to quench that longing with “Up,” a game in development for every imaginable gaming platform, based on the hotly anticipated Disney Pixar feature film by the same name.

Up will follow the exotic adventures of main character Carl Fredricksen and his young sidekick Wilderness Explorer Russell as they trek through the undiscovered jungles of South America. Treacherous jungle terrain, dangerous creatures and the slippery slopes of the Amazonian Tepuis await you in this latest film to game title.

Up will feature both single player and co-op game-play with an additional multiplayer component containing four player aerial combat.

Development of Up is being handled by Heavy Iron Studios, creators of the video game renditions of Ratatouille and WALL-E, the former earning a “Best Animated Video Game award” from the International Animated Film Society.

I was lucky enough to view a portion of the film at Comic Con and without giving any spoilers, I really think the varying character personalities coupled with the extravagant locations will for make a great video game if executed properly.

This spring Up will release on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Games for Windows, and Mac.

If you just cannot wait, a free playable demo is available on Up the video game’s official site here.

More information regarding Up the film can be found here.

“WALL-E,” quite simply, is the animated work of genius we have all been waiting for.

The art is beautiful, the landscapes breathtaking, the characters unquestionably loveable, the breadth of the plot awe-inspiring and the message eerie. The trailers were only a hint at the story that lay behind the binocular eyes of one lonely robot with a developed personality, but the final piece lived up to the expectations.

The first half of the movie takes place on Earth, or what is left of it, as WALL-E continues to do the job that his class of robot, Waste Allocation Load Lifters, Earth-class, and clean up the mess we humans left behind. This monotonous daily routine is broken by the arrival of EVE, an Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, and the first company WALL-E has had in a very, very long time.

We see through advertisements and signs as WALL-E traverses his way around the garbage dump Earth has become that seemingly everything is owned by a company called “BnL”, be it the all-you-can-buy superstore or the ocean-liners sitting in the empty basin that was once the sea.

After Earth became uninhabitable for humans to live on, BnL created a gigantic cruise spaceship that was equipped with everything that Earth’s population would need for their five-year sojourn into space while a massive team of WALL-Es cleaned up the Earth. Well, it’s 700 years after the launch of the cruise ship and WALL-E is the last functioning clean-up robot on Earth.

The plot shoots off into space once WALL-E presents EVE with a plant he found as a gift to try to win her affections. As it turns out, this is the first sign of life on Earth that has been detected in the 700 years since the humans left Earth.

The giant BnL spacecraft that had brought EVE to Earth reappears to take her back to the cruise ship, and WALL-E tags along in an attempt to save EVE from her apparent abduction. Enter here gorgeously choreographed animation sequences that involve WALL-E wave-surfing around the rings of Saturn and gazing dog-eyedly into a nebula.

The sight that awaits WALL-E as the spaceship returns to the cruise ship is far more horrifying for the adult viewer than it is comical. Commercials for the cruise back on Earth depicted it being a fun place for the whole family; you can even bring Granny, because no one needs to walk! The hover-chairs shown in the commercial to help Granny have been adopted by every human being in the ship as the only way of transportation. Babies are taught by robots as they sit in bouncer hover-chairs and there is no face-to-face interaction as everyone communicates via a digital screen located in front of their faces that does everything they should have been doing themselves.

Most horrifying of all is what has become of the human figure. Pictures and advertisements show fit men and women standing proudly in their replacement home, but the real humans have degenerated into fat, ungainly creatures that drink their food out of plastic soft-drink cups and use robots to do everything they should. A flow-chart of the progression of the human body (picture from apes to humans) shows that while our bodies kept getting rounder and rounder, we lost more and more of our bone mass due to lack of exercise or even movement at all.

Of course it is WALL-E who unwittingly sheds some light onto this situation. As he zooms around the BnL cruise ship after EVE, he shuts down one woman’s do-it-all screen and asks her if he can get by her so he can stand next to EVE. She politely lets him by; she hadn’t even realized he was there before. Then she looks around her in horror as though it was the first time she had really seen what they had become. Even though she had lived on the ship her entire life, she whispers softly, “I didn’t know we had a pool.”

The story is kid-safe, as far as it goes. They will laugh as WALL-E falls all over himself and as a group of dysfunctional robots wreak havoc around the ship. But WALL-E is far from being just another kid’s movie. It has a cautionary message of where our dependence upon mass culture and technology with no attention paid to the mess we left behind will lead.

In ways it is a modern day “1984″ with a touch of comedy, hidden under the guise of a kiddie movie. Pixar made a daring leap with this movie, and they made a safe landing. WALL-E is a work of art in every way, even as the BnL CEO (Fred Willard) chillingly orders the robotic auto-pilot Auto to “stay the course” after those left on Earth realize there is no chance of recolonization.

If you are looking for mindless comedy, go take the kids to “Kung Fu Panda”. But if you are looking for intelligence, wit, and an important warning about what we are drawing out world closer to each day, take your kids to WALL-E, the greatest movie of the year by far.