Ratatouille Movie

WHEN Brad Bird was brought in to take over "Ratatouille," a new movie about -- \o7sacre bleu!\f7 -- a rodent in a five-star Parisian restaurant, he immediately took issue with the rats. They were all wrong. To begin with, they were walking around on two legs. And they had short tails. "They were trying to \o7deratify\f7 the rats," Bird said of the animators who were working on the Pixar/Disney film before he came on board.

Show up and be yourself -- and get paid to do it. That's the job description Patton Oswalt accepted when he was cast as the lead voice in the new Pixar/Disney film, "Ratatouille." The film revolves around a rat named Remy (Oswalt) who dreams of becoming a master chef at a five-star restaurant in Paris. The voice of Remy had been difficult to cast, but then one day writer-director Brad Bird heard a routine of Oswalt's on the radio. "I was talking about the Black Angus Steak House....

We get the box-office concept of the penguin, we do. It's the rat movies we don't get. Penguins can be sweet little buddies struggling to survive in a harsh world ("March of the Penguins"); they can giggle and then dance like Savion Glover ("Happy Feet"). And boy, can they surf ("Surf's Up"). Last weekend brought "Ratatouille," about a rat living in the walls of a Paris bistro who wants to be a chef. Julia Child: rolling in her grave. Perhaps there are other cinematically underserved animals?

\o7C'est la vie, \f7Remy. The Mouse has decided that Costco's wine aisle is no place for a cartoon rat. Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it had abandoned the wine business -- even before its first bottles of Ratatouille Chardonnay were scheduled to hit the big-box store's shelves in August. Bottles of the French 2004 vintage white Burgundy were to carry labels featuring Remy, the haute-cuisine-loving rodent who stars in "Ratatouille," the latest movie from Disney's Pixar Animation Studios.

PARIS -- Remy is an ordinary rat in Paris. Except that he can talk and has dreams of becoming a chef. It's not so surprising: Remy is the star of "Ratatouille," a new animated film. Remy is shown a pest-control shop by his father, who tells him that humans can't be trusted and do nasty things to rodents. To eerie background music and in the light of a street lamp on a wet night, the father points to the scores of dead rats hanging by strings in the window.

The rodent tale "Ratatouille" leads contenders for the Annie Awards honoring animation, picking up 13 nominations, among them best picture and voice-acting honors for Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm and Janeane Garofalo.