Brave

Offering a timely, necessary reminder that Pixar is still motivated by original stories as opposed to Disney shareholder meetings, here’s the first quick look at Brave, the film with which the studio hopes to dominate next summer’s box-office receipts. Notable for being the first Pixar film to focus on a female lead, Brave features the voice of Kelly Macdonald as its galloping ginger heroine Princess Merida, who inadvertently curses the Scottish Highlands by defying an age-old custom, enraging various lords played by Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson, and Kevin McKidd. Not that we get much sense of that from this brief preview, unless said age-old custom is “Do not shoot bears with arrows,” which seems rather shortsighted.