Disney/Pixar reveals the new characters in the upcoming animated adventure “Cars 2,” the highly anticipated sequel to 2006’s blockbuster “Cars.”

Below are the images and the individual character descriptions. “Cars 2” hits the track on June 24, 2011, and will be presented in Disney Digital 3D™ and IMAX® 3D in select theaters.

Finn McMissile is a master British spy. Though charming and eloquent, it’s his stealth maneuvering, intelligence and years in the field that enable him to thwart unexpected attacks from bad guys, making quick daredevil escapes.. Finn’s design is sleek and timeless, but he’s also prepared for any tricky situation with an arsenal of ultra-cool gadgets and weaponry, including front and rear grappling hooks, a missile launcher, deployable magnetic explosives and a holographic disguise emitter.

Holley Shiftwell is a beautiful young British desk agent, turned spy-in-training who’s stationed in Tokyo. Well-educated and sharp, she knows every trick in the book—or rather, she relies on every trick in the spy manual. She’s armed with the latest state-of-the-art spy equipment imaginable, from hidden cameras and concealed weapons to a telescoping utility arm and a holographic pop-up display. Holley is a highly motivated agent, but is fresh out of the academy, so her experience is based on lessons learned in school rather than real-life situations.

World Grand Prix contender Carla Veloso hails from Rio de Janiero, Brazil. The sweet but powerful Latin diva can dance the night away at “Car-nival,” but spends most of her time on the racetrack. After setting a new track record at the local Interlagos circuit, she was drafted to join the 24-hour endurance racing team in Europe, where she posted a consistent series of podium finishes.

Known as the “World’s Greatest Rally Car,” #6 Raoul ÇaRoule was born in Alsace, France. A restless soul, Raoul joined the famous ‘Cirque du Voiture’ French circus where he learned Gymkhana – a graceful, drift-filled motorsport that taught him pinpoint timing and an unparalleled ability to navigate tricky courses with ease. He’s the first car to ever win nine consecutive rallies.

Shu Todoroki is a Le Motor Prototype racer representing Japan and bearing #7 in the World Grand Prix. Shu was raised at the base of the active Mount Asama volcano in Japan, and soon became a champion on the Suzuka Circuit. His sleek design sports a fiery red Ka-Riu dragon, which Shu borrowed from Japanese legend because he relates to the small, yet fierce nature of the dragon.

Grem is a dented, rusty orange AMC Gremlin. After years of being dismissed for his design, even being called a “lemon,” Grem has a big chip on his fender that has led him to the underworld of international espionage.

Acer has always felt like an outcast in the car world. The beat-up green AMC Pacer joined forces with fellow “lemon” cars as henchmen for the devious Professor Z, whose clandestine mission is to wreak havoc at the highly visible World Grand Prix.

The star-studded cast of “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” is led by multi-faceted actor Jim Carrey who portrays the lead character Ebenezer Scrooge at various ages old and young, as well as the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

Director Robert Zemeckis called on several gifted actors to join Jim Carrey.  Gary Oldman stars as Scrooge’s beleaguered employee, Bob Cratchit, his young and ill son Tiny Tim, as well as the ghost of Joseph Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner. Colin Firth stars as Fred, Scrooge’s cheerful, good-hearted nephew, while Robin Wright Penn stars as Belle, who long ago stole Scrooge’s heart.

Talking about Gary Oldman, Zemeckis remarks, “We hired a great actor who himself is a master of disguise.”

“Gary Oldman is one of the most brilliant actors working today and to have him come and do these characters that require different aspects of personality and experience, it’s amazing to watch,” adds producer Jack Rapke.

Classically trained British theater actor Colin Firth plays a central figure in the film — the forever optimistic Fred, whose cheery disposition and opposing outlook on life is a stark contrast to that of his grumpy uncle Scrooge.

“Fred is quite simply the opposite of Scrooge,” explains Firth. “He’s the foil.  If Scrooge is the ultimate pessimist, Fred is the ultimate optimist. I think Fred sees life very simply. ‘Why can’t we be friends?  It’s not complicated. I’m inviting you to dinner. Why don’t you just come for dinner?’ I think he embodies the Christmas spirit. He wishes no ill to anybody.”

“Colin Firth is a dashing actor,” says producer Steve Starkey.  “He is just a perfect, proper young Englishman.”

Robin Wright Penn, who appeared in Zemeckis’ previous performance-capture film “Beowulf,” as well as the director’s acclaimed hit “Forrest Gump,” portrays Belle, the beautiful young woman whom Scrooge chooses not to pursue, turning his back on a life of love and light. Penn also plays Scrooge’s young sister Fan, for whom Scrooge had a great affection; he could never quite get over her untimely death.

“Robin is part of our repertory company,” says Rapke. “There is not a female role that we don’t think of her first. She is so talented, and she is part of our creative family.

“As Belle, she is part of the moment that forms the older Scrooge,” continues Rapke. “She is the object of his love.  She represents what could have been and is the source of Scrooge’s greatest sadness. His life would have been totally different. And for Fan, we needed somebody to portray that kind of beautiful innocence, that verve for life with a slightly naive quality—that’s Robin.”

Opening on Nov. 25 in regular theaters across the Philippines , as well as in Digital 3D cinemas and in IMAX 3D in SM Mall of Asia and SM North EDSA, “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.

Casting Jim Carrey as Scrooge seems such a good idea you wonder why no one thought of it before. Fortunately director Robert Zemeckis did think of it and the result is “Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” which finds the superstar actor playing the ill-tempered miser who is haunted by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come and taught the true meaning of the holiday season.

Carrey actually plays all three ghosts as well, while several of his fellow cast members, who include Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn and Bob Hoskins, also have multiple roles. “The great thing about playing Scrooge is that everyone has a little of bit of Scrooge in them,” says the Carrey, who previously put a damper on the holiday season in “The Grinch.” “My inner Scrooge rears its head on a day-to-day basis.”

Q: “A Christmas Carol” was published more than 150 years ago. Why do think it’s still so popular?

Jim Carrey: It’s one of the greatest stories of transformation and redemption ever written and it’s themes are truly universal. I think everyone can relate to the idea of someone who doesn’t feel loved and therefore doesn’t return love. Scrooge is faced with looking at his life, at the life he’s had and how his life is going to be if he doesn’t change, and of course that’s shown in a very fantastical way with all these ghosts who visit him, but who hasn’t had a glimpse of that in their own lives? Who hasn’t looked at the future and gone ‘Wow! I have to get it together!’

Q: Did you have to be convinced that Robert Zemeckis had an approach that made the story worth telling again?

Carrey:  When you can bring a story to people in a way that hasn’t been seen before so that it leaps out of the screen and really touches them, then that’s exciting to me. I’ve followed all of Robert’s films – “Roger Rabbit,” “Cast Away,” “The Polar Express” and so on – and his artistry is such that I knew he could do something original.

Q:  Scrooge is a truly iconic character. What was the best part of playing him?

Carrey: I really love getting inside the head of a character, which probably sounds like a cliché but I’ve always liked psychology and trying to understand why people become who they are. I also liked Robert’s idea that I should play all the spirits, which I believe is brilliant because all the different spirits could just be different aspects of Scrooge’s character. So it’s all very Freudian [laughs].

Q: You also had to play Scrooge at different ages…

Carrey: If you look at it like that, it’s about eight different characters because I had to have the mentality of a seven-year-old Scrooge and then the slightly older adolescent Scrooge, who suddenly realises that no one is going to pick him up from the orphanage when everybody else has somewhere else to go, and so on. And, of course, your voice changes as you get older, which was a challenge in itself, as well as several different accents for the spirits.

Q: How about the technical aspects of the film? It’s a performance capture film, which I don’t think is very well understood…

Carrey: No, I think people think it’s like voice-over work, but I’d say it’s more like doing a play. All the actors are in a room together and give a complete performance that is captured by a camera. It’s just that those images are then processed by computer to give the film its amazing look.

Q: So it feels quite natural?

Carrey: Yes, apart from the fact that you have to wear a strange spandex suit and something that looks like a bicycle helmet that has several cameras in it, which is odd when you’re doing close-ups. I had some scenes with Robin Wright Penn that were just clank, clank, clank. It was like we were locking antlers.

Q: Finally, I wonder if you think there is a moral behind “A Christmas Carol” and how you would express it? Also, do you have a favorite Christmas memory?

Carrey: I think the moral of the tale is to love: to love yourself and to love the people around you and to know that you can make a difference in someone else’s life. My favorite Christmas memory is from my childhood. My big thing was that I couldn’t wait to lay under the tree and squint my eyes up at the lights. I also liked to listen to Johnny Mathis and all those other Christmas songs that just never got old as far as I was concerned.

(Opening soon across the Philippines , “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.)

“Up,” the uplifting tale of 78-year-old balloon salesman, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure, is the 10th film from Disney•Pixar, which has gone nine for nine with an unprecedented streak of hugely successful films, including “WALL•E,” “Ratatouille,” “Cars,” “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Toy Story 2,” “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story.”

Pixar now has nine of the 25 top grossing animated films of all time domestically, and all nine have been #1 at the box office on their opening weekends of wide release. “WALL•E,” “Ratatouille,” “The Incredibles” and “Finding Nemo” all earned Academy Awards® for Best Animated Feature, an award that was introduced in 2001.

“I am so proud that ‘Up’ is Pixar’s 10th film,” says John Lasseter, executive producer and chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. “I think it’s the funniest film that we’ve ever made, and also one of the most beautiful. We have a main character that is an amazing hero. Carl Fredricksen is 78-years-old and he travels the world in a flying machine of his own design and still has dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon. He’s the most unlikely hero you can imagine in an action picture. He is a character who learns that the big adventures in life are all the small things that happen in everyday life. Russell is one of the most appealing and charming characters that we’ve ever created. Together with Carl, these two characters light up the screen.”

The film is directed by Pixar veteran Pete Docter, who joined the studio in 1990—just the third animator to be brought on board. Along with Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, Docter developed the story and characters for “Toy Story,” Pixar’s first full-length feature film, for which he also served as supervising animator. He was a storyboard artist on “A Bug’s Life” and wrote the initial story treatment for “Toy Story 2.” Docter made his debut as a director on “Monsters, Inc.,” which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Animated Feature Film. As one of Pixar Animation Studios’ key creative contributors, Docter garnered another Academy Award nomination for his original story credit on Disney•Pixar’s Oscar-winning “WALL•E.”

Docter says he’s learned a lot over the course of Pixar’s 10 films. “It never gets easier,” he says. “There are always new ways that the story conspires to trick us, to fool us into thinking we have the right solution. It’s only with a lot of reworking—and reworking and reworking—that you get good stuff.

“We still don’t know everything,” he continues. “But we allow ourselves to make mistakes. As Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, says, ‘if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks.’ I hope we never think of ourselves as experts—we learn something new on every film.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Up” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.

Clearly, a computer-animated story about Bolt, a television superhero dog engaged in a trek across America with a super fan hamster, Rhino and a super cynical cat, Mittens, could not be construed as even slightly autobiographical for anyone behind the film. But in a way, for the executives, filmmakers and talent at the heart of Walt Disney Animation Studio’s upcoming release, “Bolt,” there is something that the onscreenanimals and off-screen humans share in abundance—ENTHUSIASM.

The zeal with which directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard discuss their feature film directing debut is palpable. Williams was hand selected by John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and Principal Creative Advisor, Walt Disney Imagineering) to helm “Bolt,” given his talents clearly on view in Chris’ first CGI animated short, “Glago’s Guest.”

Williams felt an immediate and positive connection to the project. He remembers, “I felt that there was a great potential to create really rich characters—that’s sort of our overall goal as filmmakers. We thought we could come up with a trio – a hero dog, a cynical cat and a cheerful hamster — that the audience could spend a lot of time with. And I really feel that we did that. For me personally, I’m just excited to be working at Disney under John Lasseter—you really want to make a movie for him. He’s the best boss you could possibly have in animation. He’s very engaged and involved, and feels passionately about any film that comes out of Disney or Pixar.”

That passion for animation is also evident in the impressive career path of co-director Byron Howard, a member of Disney Animation Studio’s “Story Trust,” a hothouse group of artists creating and developing stories for the Company’s short and feature-length offerings. Howard’s keen sense of animation is put to superlative use in “Bolt,” where a painterly world is inhabited by fully-realized CG characters who feel right at home. Byron explains the rule for this successful combination: “Something that John really stresses is believability—the world you create doesn’t have to be realistic, but it has to be believable, and everything in that world has to obey its own logic. You can see within the animation of Bolt some actual dog mannerisms that have been captured—the more that Bolt gets away from his TV show in Los Angeles, the more he starts to act like a real dog. So the animation incorporates more ‘dog’ physicality. We watched video, we researched some of the dogs of classic Disney films, we brought in dogs to the offices and sketched them. And you can really see it in the character. That’s really gratifying to all of us.”

Bolt believes that he is a lucky canine with superpowers, which he actually doesn’t, but in the end, he finds that his belief and his acting on that notion is enough. In a way, just as the Disney artists do, Bolt becomes the dog, the hero, he always wanted to be by the action he takes.

Starring the tween / young adult favorites Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu, Lucas Grabeel, the ensemble of cast members pull off one of the biggest productions put up by Disney in recent years.

Last night, I had the chance to catch the premiere of the phenomenon known as High School Musical, with four kids in tow… and the movie blew us away. Perhaps we enjoyed the flick for different reasons, but this just showed the universal appeal of the movie.

The set design and whole production was grand — with my personal fave, a song number by Ryan and Sharpay entitled “I Want it All”. And in true Evans fashion, the number was done in luxurious and ostentatious fashion, with several changes in sets that could rival even (a juvenile) Baz Lhurmann (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge) production.

Of course, the music was great, too. After all, this has become the signature of the whole series. It is just a little bit sad that the franchise has reached its end. But who knows. As Anshel, one of the kids I was with pointed out “Next year, College Musical na.”