Pixar's "Up"

Mister Tee
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Post by Mister Tee »

Because this was the one movie my wife desperately wanted to see -- her health has kept her from seeing anything else the past year -- I'm very late weighing in. By waiting so long, I, sadly, didn't manage to see it in 3-D (Coraline very late was still giving out the glasses, but I guess in summer the next blockbuster is always coming along to grab the compliant theatres). So, feel free to downgrade my opinion accordingly.

Unlike Sonic, I loved the prologue. Perhaps it's a function of being not-so-young anymore, and of having recently feared I'd lose my wife, but I found the marriage
montage incredibly moving.

After that, I'm more in line with Sonic's opinion, though probably less negative. This seems to me fairly run-of-the-mill PIXAR -- not down there with Cars, but certainly not at Wall-E/Toy Story level, and probably below Finding Nemo/Monsters Inc. as well. Some of it was a bit too obvious (hmm...who could have trained all those dogs?); the character of the kid was irritating (not irritating-but-ultimately-winning, as I'm sure the aim was); and the resolution of the adventure element (the marriage replacing exotic travel in the scrapbook), while a nice sentiment, wasn't integrated as neatly in dramatic terms as I'd have liked. Oh, and the final battle aloft, while imaginatively enough staged, didn't have any emotional resonance -- it might as well have been the fight for the Death Star.

On the other hand, the dogs were mostly fun (the reason my wife wanted to see it so badly was from the clip in the ad where the dog suddenly snapped to "Squirrel!")...though it seemed to me the squeaky-voiced dog gag would have worked better had we first encountered the character in perfect voice and heard it go awry.

So...if I'm voting for animated feature this year so far, I'm picking Coraline. It may be a function of 3-D for one and not the other, but I don't think so. I just wasn't as wild about this one as I'd hoped I'd be.
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Post by Sabin »

Good to have you back, cam! It's a very special film.

Apparently, kids love Cars which I don't understand. It's very dull. I think it's because the characters are just so expressive and friendly-looking. Well, despite the deaths of Paul Newman and George Carlin, Cars 2 is on the way to theaters in 2011.
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Post by cam »

Hello! I haven't posted for awhile.

I took our grandkids to see "Up" yesterday afternoon for coming first in their respective sprints at Sports Day at the school!

They are huge Pixar films and Cooper, being a 7-year old boy, likes "Cars" the best. They both loved "Wall-E"

Because it is so subtly nuanced, children understand whats is going on immediately in terms of action--and emotion--and adults can dig deeper; truly for all ages.

To follow "Wall-E", Pixar had to be really inventive--again--and the writer(s) should be accorded the Oscar for Original Screenplay as nothing the rest of this year could ever match it for ingenuity.
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Post by The Original BJ »

Perhaps it's just my mood as of late, but I read that story and began weeping almost uncontrollably.

(Since I was on my phone, I should add that this was in public, no less.)




Edited By The Original BJ on 1245542005
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Post by anonymous1980 »

A very bittersweet story:
Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'
Company sent DVD so Huntington Beach girl, 10, could watch it.
By ANNIE BURRIS

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie.

From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

The animated movie begins with scenes showing the evolution of a relationship between a husband and wife. After losing his wife in old age, the now grumpy man deals with his loss by attaching thousands of balloons to his house, flying into the sky, and going on an adventure with a little boy.

Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.

With her daughter’s vigil planned for Friday, Lisa Curtin reflected about how grateful she is that Pixar – and "Up" – were a part of her only child’s last day.

“When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie,” said Curtin, 46. “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.”

Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved.

THE PREVIEWS

Colby was diagnosed with vascular cancer on Dec. 23, 2005 after doctors found a tumor in her liver. At the time of her death, her stomach was about 94 inches around, swollen with fluids the cancer wouldn’t let her body properly digest. The rest of her body probably weighed about 45 pounds, family friend Carole Lynch said.

Colby had gone to Newport Elementary School and was known for making others laugh, family friend Terrell Orum said. Colby loved to dance, sing, swim and seemed to have a more mature understanding of the world than other children her age, Orum said.

On April 28, Colby went to see the Dream Works 3-D movie "Monsters Vs. Aliens" but was impressed by the previews to "Up."

“It was from then on, she said, ‘I have to see that movie. It is so cool,’” Lynch said.

Colby was a movie fan, Lisa Curtin said, and she latched onto Pixar’s movies because she loved animals.

Two days later Colby’s health began to worsen. On June 4 her mother asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair for Colby so she could visit a theater to see "Up." However, the weekend went by and the wheelchair was not delivered, Lisa Curtin said.

By June 9, Colby could no longer be transported to a theater and her family feared she would die without having seen the movie.

At that point, Orum, who desperately wanted Colby to get her last wish, began to cold-call Pixar and Disney to see if someone could help.

Pixar has an automated telephone answering system, Orum said, and unless she had a name of a specific person she wanted to speak to, she could not get through. Orum guessed a name and the computer system transferred her to someone who could help, she said.

Pixar officials listened to Colby’s story and agreed to send someone to Colby’s house the next day with a DVD of "Up," Orum recalled.

She immediately called Lisa Curtin, who told Colby.

“Do you think you can hang on?” Colby’s mother said.

“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” the girl replied.

THE MOVIE

At about 12:30 p.m. the Pixar employee came to the Curtins’ home with the DVD.

He had a bag of stuffed animals of characters in the movie and a movie poster. He shared some quirky background details of the movie and the group settled in to watch Up.

Colby couldn't see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film.

At the end of the film, the mother asked if her daughter enjoyed the movie and Colby nodded yes, Lisa Curtin said.

The employee left after the movie, taking the DVD with him, Lynch said.

“He couldn’t have been nicer,” said Lynch who watched the movie with the family. “His eyes were just welled up.”

After the movie, Colby’s dad, Michael Curtin, who is divorced from Lisa Curtin, came to visit.

Colby died with her mom and dad nearby at 9:20 p.m.

Among the Up memorabilia the employee gave Colby was an “adventure book” – a scrap book the main character’s wife used to chronicle her journeys.

“I’ll have to fill those adventures in for her,” Lisa Curtin said.
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Post by The Original BJ »

As ranked top ten lists of Pixar films fill the web, I have to admit that to me this seems like a futile exercise. Aside from putting the Toy Story films at the top and Cars at the bottom, the middle of the list consists of so many wonderful pictures -- full of exciting stories, humane moments, and visual wow -- that it pains me to pit them against each other.

And I think Up is a very worthy entry in that canon. While it doesn't approach the narrative boldness of WALL-E, which likely led to those ecstatic reviews (and the LA crix prize), it's nonetheless a lot of fun and very touching. That opening montage is beautiful, but the moment that really got me was when Carl opened the "Things I'm Going to Do" book. The theme may be simple -- that spending time with those you love is its own adventure -- but it's beautifully rendered. I haven't been so moved by a movie couple's relationship since Away From Her, and yes, I think that's an appropriate comparison.

I'll echo what Sabin said about the Pixar writing gang's terrific understanding of planting & payoff. Their plots almost seem to operate like machines, and yet they're filled with such imagination they rarely feel formulaic. Up might push some of the zaniness a bit too far (see the dogs), but the depth and humanity woven throughout the narrative make this much more than simply a rollicking adventure yarn. (Which is not to say that the action set pieces aren't anything less than terrific.) I particularly loved seeing the film in 3-D; although I was really impressed by the visuals in Coraline, this might be the most impressive use of 3-D I've ever seen. It truly feels like the film surrounds you.

I also noticed the compositions in this film. The visuals frequently place the flying house very inventively within the frame, and also use windows and doorways to frame people and things in visually stunning manners. At the risk of losing my Damienite card, I'll argue that the filmmaking here -- the CINEMA here -- puts a lot of live-action films, even technically polished ones like Star Trek, to shame. (Its only rival in my book this year -- Coraline. I'm not sure if that says more about the impressive achievements by animated filmmakers or the sorry state of adult moviemaking, but there you go.)

It's interesting that Sabin compared the film to Miyazaki. In addition to the flying house motif, Michael Giacchino's lilting music feels like the greatest score never written by Joe Hisaishi.

I do wish the film blogosphere would spare us the perennial "could this Pixar be nominated for Best Picture?" question. Haven't these people been through an Oscar race (or five) before? It's not going to happen. So let's just be happy that a good populist movie is getting great reviews and doing really well at the box office and not worry about the bling.
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Post by Sabin »

There certainly is credence to everything that Sonic says, which is to say that it is the most slapped together PIXAR film outside of Cars. That being said, it's worth noting that the mood in which I saw Up can be best described as cataclysmically shitty in terms of life direction et al. To hear the opening described as maudlin is beyond me. Up conveys an entire lifetime from childhood to septuagenerian in ten minutes, and perhaps the state of mind I was in thirsted for something of the sort but even while the film veered here and there I kept returning to the beginning. In winning me over from the start, the film achieved a form of credit that never expired. I like Up a lot in spite of its flaws. It's more of a B+ but only because it's following Ratatouille and WALL*E.
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Post by Sabin »

The question is, why do you have to post it?

'Cause it's quiet. And Armond White is tantamount to noise.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Sabin wrote:I'm going to sum this review (indeed every Armond White review) up so you don't have to read it:
The question is, why do you have to post it?
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I'm a huge Pixar fan - Ratatouille and Wall-E were my two favorite films of their respective years - and Up was profoundly disappointing. If I didn't know this was Pixar, I would've sworn this came from the animation division of a competing studio. But even at its worst, the one thing other animated films have that Pixar lacks is crassness. Fortunately, Pixar is still free of the crudeness and cynicism and cheap contemporary humor that's all over every other animated features. (Not that I've seen a single one, but I've seen several features worth of commercials and previews to understand the formula.) But a Pixar film has that sense of uniqueness, where everything from the technical department to the screenplay, puts 150% effort into the project, and once we've established that the central character is an elderly man, everything else - the adventure, the jokes, the story arc, the peripheral characters (and animals) - is almost shockintly routine. Where everyone sees 'emotional', I saw 'maudlin'. Where everyone sees "Citizen Kane" in the segments showing the passage of time in a marriage, I equated it to a banal tracking shot of photographs on a mantelpiece. Where everyone sees a wonderful conception of a talking dog who, throught the magic of technology, is able to put his dog thoughts into words, I saw a loveable and very uninteresting sidekick worthy of Dreamworks. I suppose people who find this such an original concept aren't familiar with the play "Sylvia" by A.R. Gurney, but even so... come on! And after greatly admiring the frank and honest protayal of the young title character "Coraline", it's dismaying to see that Pixar's idea of a model child (the boy scout Russell) comes straight out of the '50s, all bumbling naivete and eager conformity, not fazed by anything fantastical because he has no independent imagination of his own. To me, a Pixar film is an event, but "Up" felt like material cobbled out and expanded from their short films.

And speaking of short films, that one with the clouds and the babies sucked.
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Post by Sabin »

At the end of the year, I'm participating in a Decade-End Poll with four other internet film critics on the 100 Best Films of the Decade. We're each given the task to pick our Best Director of the Decade. My choice is PIXAR. If PIXAR was a dude, we'd be saying "Man, I can't wait until Bob PIXAR directs another movie." Monsters, Inc....Finding Nemo...The Incredibles...Ratatouille...WALL*E...even Cars. It's an honor roll, and add to it Up, a movie that I wouldn't quite put at the top but as The Godfather: Part III to the rest of the series, what can you?

The main faulting I have with Up is that for it to fully achieve the leisurely (I"ll say it again) Miyazaki-esque saga it aims for, the adventure that Karl thirsts for, far too much happens too quickly on the island that his reactions feel unrealistic. Just as he wonders how he got there, so do I. The idyllic portrayal of an old man aloft in his house carried by a hundred balloons is quickly traded for a throttling narrative. If the point is that the call of adventure is one that cannot be abated and that Karl needs to embrace all that comes at him even as it proves annoying, it could stand some time to percolate as a squat, square geriatric (composed entirely of hard, flat lines) takes in the beauty of South America for the first time.

Up is still the most emotional PIXAR film to date, a film containing reservoirs of history, regret, love, and self-loathing beneath a simple story of an old man and a young boy. I don't mind the contrivance because it's so expertly unsentimental, and also because a small mountain's worth of innovations are thrown at us: "Kevin" the giant bird; Munz, the aging obsessive explorer; the house perennially afloat on balloons; and especially Dug the dog with an amazing collar that registers his thoughts out loud. "You're my master and I love you because you're smart!" The love that Dug shows to all those around him is a very special pure kind of love that dogs feel that humans cannot entirely register. Cats are complicated, introspective creatures. Dogs are not, and Docter captures it in all their glory here.

I don't think any other group of filmmakers are so expertly trained in the sense of set-up/pay-off. For all of White's grumblings at the formula of the PIXAR Journey, nobody makes conventional narratives like they do involving little jokes that come back to forward their plots organically. Up will not be nominated for Best Original Screenplay but as Mike D'Angelo pointed out, no film displayed stronger cinematography last year than WALL*E. Their use of composition and lighting is unrivaled and Up is no exception. Michael Gianchino's score is glorious.

In addition, they deserve some form of prize for the opening prologue. I cannot remember the last time I've cried so in a movie. Three times I found myself on the edge of tears in Up, but at the beginning of the film I was actively crying. It's glorious movie-making and the rest of the film both expands upon its thesis and can't help but feel like something of a let-down. Much in the same way that Cars can be considered a let-down in that we are spoiled that something like this can even register as a disappointment.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Someone should tell Armond White that it ain't cute anymore.
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Post by Sabin »

Last year, Armond White called The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, and WALL*E the Worst Films of the Year for all "[celebrating] the reign of pessimism and the death of culture." I understand Slumdog and (gloriously so) The Dark Knight, but WALL*E is about the rebirth of culture through adopting gender roles through cultural totems. WTF, bro?

I'm going to sum this review (indeed every Armond White review) up so you don't have to read it: "This movie sucks. This movie sucks like something this movie has nothing to do this. This movie is worse than a worse movie." Anyway, here's another review of a movie he made up his mind to hate before seeing. Slight Spoilers ahead.


The Way of Pixarism
Pixar’s rote whimsy ruins animation
By Armond White

Pixar rules pop media like nothing since mid-20th century General Motors held sway as the preeminent American corporation (and the bane of grassroots individualism).The adage “What’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A.” inspired cartoonist Al Capp to spoof: “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the U.S.A.,” satirizing the military industrial complex.Today, nobody dares mock Pixar. Critics don’t merely salute this bullmoose animation studio, they genuflect. Every Pixar film—including the new Up, gushed over by Cannes Film Festival shills—is greeted with nearly patriotic fervor.This absurdity clarifies contemporary news media’s unprincipled collusion with Hollywood capitalism.

Up’s uninteresting story of an old widower who attaches his home to helium balloons and floats off to Venezuela with an overeager kid in tow follows the same formula as the previous nine Pixar movies. This rote whimsy is as dispiriting as a productionline gas-guzzler. But artistic standards get trumped by a special feature: sentimentality.

Pixar’s price sticker includes enough saccharine emotion to distract some viewers from being more demanding; they don’t mind the blatant narrative manipulation of a sad old man and lonely little boy.They buy animation to extend their childhood like men who buy cars for phallic symbols.

As a child, Carl Fredrickson, already a young fogey, thrilled to the airborne adventures of daredevil explorer C.J. Muntz. But in retirement, Fredrickson sulks; mischief deeply buried beneath blandness—a Robin Williams trait but with a head of white hair like Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (and voiced by Ed Asner). Carl’s not an irascible audience-surrogate like the urban curmudgeon Mr. Magoo. Only Russell, the pie-faced, father-abandoned, 8-yearold scout, is cuter. “Cute” is how Pixar oversimplifies the world.

Even the montage showing Carl’s marriage to childhood sweetheart Ellie (their wedding, companionship, childlessness, then Ellie’s illness and death), is over-sentimentalized.This silent interlude (which first seems to stretch the genre into seriousness) is no more daring than the utterly conventional Wall-E: It concludes with Carl, alone, holding a blue balloon at Ellie’s funeral. Sheesh. A parallel montage of Carl leafing through romantic-couple scrapbook photos is equally sappy—especially when you consider the logic of “Who took those pictures?” Reality is never a Pixar issue. Although Chaplinesque music underscores these maudlin scenes, they’re not emotionally pure like Chaplin; they preen. Critics who forget that movies should be about people defend this reduction of human experience. It’s part of their Pixar-corporate allegiance. Apparently, they would pass this on to their children, the way autoworkers once instilled union loyalty.

When Up trivializes Carl and Russell’s loneliness—treating it to the same Journey/Rescue/Return blueprint as Finding Nemo, Cars,Wall-E, Monsters, Inc.,A Bug’s Life,Toy Story 1 and 2—the predictability becomes cloying. And the inevitable shift to anthropomorphism—Carl and Russell float to South America, encountering a prehistoric bird and mysteriously “talking” dogs—is very nearly depressing. Almost as depressing as Wall-E. Despite some imaginative imagery (gray-blue night storms, dark yet vivid jungle scenes, compositional values J.J. Abrams knows nothing about), Up drops its emotional elements for chase mechanics and precious comedy.This way, Pixar disgraces and delimits the animated film as a mushy, silly pop form.What used to be ridiculed as sentimental excess in old Disney animation now comes disguised in the latest technology— which excites consumerist audiences who revere technology as the true achievement of capitalism, if not Americanism.

Pixarism defines the backward taste for animation. Refuting Chuck Jones’ insistence that he didn’t create his great Warner Bros. cartoon for children, Pixarism domesticates and homogenizes animation—as if to preserve family values.The only exceptions have been Brad Bird’s Pixar movies The Incredibles and Ratatouille—both sumptuously executed in Bird’s belief that animation should show “how things feel rather than are. Indulging in the human aspect of being alive.”Yet their conceptual weak point was cuteness—same as Up’s glossing over Carl’s “public menace” court conviction and that inconsistently imagined dog pack.

After ripping-off Albert Lamorisse’s classic The Red Balloon, dispersing it into Carl’s thousands of colorful orbs, Pixar then literalizes the meaning of flight as a commercial icon: Up. Here, it’s simply the means to “adventures” and not an ecstatic elevation of individual identity. Last year, elitist film nerds forgot how Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon also dishonored Lamorisse’s beautiful tale—as they cynically overrated the entropic Wall-E. All this deflated cinema and Pixarism mischaracterizes what good animation can be, as in Coraline, Monster House, Chicken Little,Teacher’s Pet,The Iron Giant). Up’s aesthetic failure stems from its emotional letdown.




Edited By Sabin on 1243475058
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Post by HarryGoldfarb »

There was of course a great personal feeling when I first saw the trailer. The image of the Tepuis and the Salto Angel gave me serious chills. Count me on the Can't-wait list in.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Ed Gonzalez gives it ***1/2.

Click here.

Damn. Can't wait.
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