Before the recent merger, Pixar and Disney were two seperate companies that worked together to release movies. Pixar made the movies and Disney shelled out the money to distribute them and take in a chunk of the profits (as far as I understand it, anyway). With their contract expiring after Cars, and knowing that Pixar was the only way they were making any decent money anymore, Disney booted Eisner (one of the major sticking points to Pixar's renegotiating, since they hated him) and must have made them one hell of an offer. The Pixar guys are now high-rankers at Disney (I'd actually heard Lasseter canned Toy Story 3), and have influence over things that really needed some attention, like… quality. I guess we'll see how things go, but it sounded to me like Disney was at least aware of a lot of its internal problems and the Pixar guys seem smart enough to me to hopefully not have made a bad deal in this.
And back on topic, I enjoyed Cars. Larry the Cable Guy wasn't nearly as irritating as I'd once feared, and every time Paul Newman spoke, my brain went "I <3 you, Paul Newman!!", so I was entertained. The scenery was GORGEOUS, as always, but man, I'm just astounded at how much they leap forward with every movie. I swear, in that scene where they're travelling across country in the begining, I could practically smell that scenery, it was amazing. Not my favorite, but I didn't feel like it was a waste of my time (which was nice, since the last movie I shelled out money to see in the theater was).