New trailer for Pixar’s ‘Soul’ is the jazz interlude we need right now

Walt Disney Studios has released a new trailer for their summer Pixar release Soul, and it’s a stunner. It’s Pixar’s first feature with a largely Black cast of animated characters and features the voice acting talent of Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx (Ray) and Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got to Do With It).

Joe Gardner (Foxx) is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before (which tips its hat to the animation style of Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow) – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions.

Featuring the voices of Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Daveed Diggs, Soul is directed by Academy Award winner Pete Docter (Inside Out, Up), co-directed by Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami) and produced by Academy Award nominee Dana Murray (Pixar short Lou).

Globally renowned musician Jon Batiste will be writing original jazz music for the film, and Oscar-winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network), from Nine Inch Nails, will compose an original score that will drift between the real and soul worlds.

Walt Disney Studios will release Soul on June 19. Here is the new trailer.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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