There have been several articles as of late from other Pixar blogs surrounding the Amazon debut of "The Art of Brave" book page. Should I have reported it when the news first broke last week? Probably. Why didn't I?

There were no facts. I, like the rest of you, clamor desperately for the deets on the "Art of" books. They are my favorite part of my book collection. But I was unexcited by the news because A) the initial release dates are almost never accurate and B) neither are the covers. Indeed, the very publication of this article is a digression from that position. Alas.

Amazon is notorious for its guesswork so they can throw up a page for publicity's sake. Typically, they just drop in the first day of the month they presume it will be released, as they have with this and previous "Art of" books.

It's a pretty sure bet that it will be released shortly before the film hits theaters. But exact dates are never certain until a few weeks before the launch. Since Finding Nemo, all of the "Art of" books have been released between 5 and 8 weeks before the release of the film. Until recently, when the gap has been shrinking with books for Toy Story 3 released 3 weeks prior to the movie, both UP and Cars 2 only two days before, and then the odd duck, The Art of Monsters, Inc. released the day before the movie.

It would appear that we can now expect these books to be released later, rather than sooner, as Pixar is undoubtedly trying to keep story points secret for longer. It's hard to keep all of that under the lid when the book publishes detailed colorscripts, storyboards and interviews.

The "Art of Brave" cover, shown above, and a release date of June 1st, 2012 are Amazon's current claims, but should be taken with enough grains of salt to cover your large bag of overpriced cinema popcorn on June 22nd when Brave hits theaters.

My apologies for the cheek.

Now that Brave is leaping into the Pixar limelight, with Cars 2 becoming old news, and especially the recent release of the full-length Brave trailer, viewers can't help but draw comparisons between Pixar's Brave and DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon . Some hard-core Pixar fans might take offense to this because they are two distinct films with very different stories.

I sympathize with the confused. On my DreamWorks favorites list (gasp!) How to Train Your Dragon ranks second behind The Prince of Egypt and is actually the only animated DreamWorks film I own (still waiting for the Prince of Egypt Blu-ray). That said, I've seen How to Train Your Dragon enough times that I'll admit having fallen to some of the similarities to Brave myself. I think the problem begins with misunderstanding the differences between the vikings and the lords:

First, just look at 'em! The character designs of the vikings in How to Train Your Dragon (Stoick and Gobber, above) and the lords of Brave (MacGuffin, Dingwall and Macintosh, below) do bear blaring resemblances to one another. Large, burly men with wild hair, beards in braids and wearing tunics. They look like they could coexist in the same film. Sure, there still is some Pixar and DreamWorks flavor to the lords and vikings, respectively, but it's not hard to forgive the confusion on this point alone.

Second, Craig Ferguson. He voices both Gobber from How to Train Your Dragon and Lord Macintosh from Brave.

And last, they've all got Scottish accents. Though, that is only geographically correct in one of the films — Brave, which actually takes place in Scotland. Lords were powerful and wealthy land owners in medieval kingdoms. Vikings were explorers and pirates, known for sailing the seas and plundering land. They are almost always attributed to the great Scandinavian countries: Sweden, Denmark and especially Norway, though at certain points in history they were scattered across Europe, including the British Isles. So technically, the vikings of How to Train Your Dragon should have had Norwegian accents. But who the heck knows what that sounds like?

Enrico Casarosa, director of Pixar's short film La Luna, gave a detailed interview to /Film today on the process of making a short film from start to finish. La Luna is in the running for the Best Animated Short prize at the Oscars next February. It will be released to the general public in front of Brave in June of next year.

Also in the news today was the announcement of a new game for the Xbox 360 featuring Kinect motion sensing technology based on Pixar characters. In "Kinect Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure," players can assume the roles of characters from Toy Story, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and UP. It will debut on March 20th 2012 and available for purchase at an MSRP of $49.99. See the trailer below.