Lightning McQueen

Lightning McQueen, typically referred to by his surname McQueen, is an anthropomorphic racecar in the animated Pixar film Cars (2006), its sequel Cars 2 (2011), and TV shorts known as Cars Toons. He is based on Toyota NASCAR vehicles, but with design influences from the Mazda Miata and Dodge Viper. Late in the original film, he is painted much like the Chevrolet Corvette C1.

Characterization

During the initial research for the film, John Lasseter met with General Motors designers to discuss the new Corvette design but subsequent changes to the storyline left both Lightning McQueen and rival Chick Hicks as generic.

In order to create a cocky but likable character for McQueen, Pixar looked at sports figures like boxer Muhammad Ali, basketball player Charles Barkley, and football quarterback Joe Namath, as well as popular musician Kid Rock.

The end result is a character which, despite the usually-meticulous approach to "truth to material" in which each car's animation is mechanically consistent with its respective model's capabilities, can occasionally bend the rules to move more like an athlete than a motorcar.

Goes

Goes ( pronunciation ) is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on Zuid-Beveland, in the province of Zeeland. The town of Goes has approximately 27,000 residents.

History

Goes was founded in the 10th century on the edge of a creek: de Korte Gos (the Short Gos). The village grew fast, and in the early 12th century it had a market square and a church devoted to Mary Magdalene. In 1405 Goes received city rights from William, Duke of Bavaria, by his right as count of Holland, and in 1417 it was allowed to build town walls. The prosperity of the city was based upon the cloth industry and the production of salt. In the 16th century Goes declined. Its connection to the sea silted up and in 1554 a large fire destroyed part of the city.

In Autumn 1572, during the course of the Eighty Years' War, Goes, in the Spanish Netherlands, was besieged by Dutch forces with the support of English troops. The siege was relieved in October 1572 by Spanish Tercios, who waded across the Scheldt to attack the besieging forces. In 1577 the Spanish soldiers who occupied Goes were driven out by Prince Maurits of Nassau. The prince built a defence wall around Goes, which is still partly standing. From the 17th century Goes did not play an important role, except as an agricultural centre. In 1868 a railway was constructed through it, but this did not lead to industrialisation. Agriculture remains the most important economic activity.

Cars (film)

Cars is a 2006 American computer-animated comedy-adventure sports film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed and co-written by John Lasseter, it is Pixar's final independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney. Set in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic cars and other vehicles, it features the voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman (in his final non-documentary feature), Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt, Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin, Michael Wallis, George Carlin, Paul Dooley, Jenifer Lewis, Guido Quaroni, Michael Keaton, Katherine Helmond, and John Ratzenberger. Real life race car drivers Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Mario Andretti and Michael Schumacher, and car enthusiast Jay Leno (as "Jay Limo") voice themselves. It is also the second Pixar film—after A Bug's Life—to have an entirely non-human cast. The film was accompanied by the short One Man Band for its theatrical and home media releases.

Cars premiered on May 26, 2006 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina and was theatrically released on June 9, 2006, to positive reviews. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. The film was released on DVD on November 7, 2006 and to Blu-ray Disc in late 2007. Related merchandise, including scale models of several of the cars, broke records for retail sales of merchandise based on a Disney·Pixar film, bringing an estimated $10 billion in 5 years since the film's release. The film was dedicated to Joe Ranft, who was killed in a car accident during the film's production.

Pixar

Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑːr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its Stop Motion as well as CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot for the studio.

Pixar has produced 16 feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), and its most recent being The Good Dinosaur (2015). Toy Story was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. All 16 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences. The studio has also produced several short films. As of December 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide, with an average worldwide gross of $593 million per film. Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with Toy Story 3 being the third all-time highest animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen (2013) and Illumination Entertainment's Minions (2015), which grossed $1.276 billion and $1.157 billion in their initial releases as of 2015. Thirteen of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films.

Green Lantern

Green Lantern is the name of a number of superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. They fight evil with the aid of rings that grant them a variety of extraordinary powers.

The first Green Lantern character, Alan Scott, was created in 1940 during the initial popularity of superheroes. Alan Scott usually fought common criminals in New York City with the aid of his magic ring. The publication of this character ceased in 1949 during a general decline in the popularity of superhero comics, but the character saw a limited revival in later decades.

In 1959, to capitalize on the booming popularity of science fiction, the Green Lantern character was reinvented as Hal Jordan, an officer for an interstellar law enforcement agency known as the Green Lantern Corps. Additional members of this agency, all of whom call themselves Green Lanterns, were introduced over time. Prominent Green Lanterns who also have had starring roles in the books include Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and Simon Baz.