Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios about a cranky old man and an overeager Wilderness Explorer who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons. It is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and premiered by opening the 2009 Cannes Film Festival as the first animated film ever to do so.[3] The film was released on May 29, 2009 in North America and is scheduled for release on October 16, 2009 in the United Kingdom. Up is director Pete Docter's (Monsters, Inc.) second feature-length film, and features the voices of Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson and Jordan Nagai. It is Pixar's tenth feature film and the studio's first to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D,[4] and is accompanied in theaters by the short film Partly Cloudy.[5] Carl Fredricksen is an introverted young boy who meets an energetic girl named Ellie and discovers they share the same interest in adventures as their hero, famed explorer Charles Muntz. Ellie expresses her desire to move her clubhouse to Paradise Falls in South America, a promise she makes Carl keep. Carl and Ellie wed and grow old together in the old house where they first met while making a living as a toy balloonvendor and a zookeeper respectively. Unable to have children, they also try to save up for the trip to Paradise Falls but other financial obligations arise. Just as they seem to finally be able to take their trip, Ellie dies of old age, leaving Carl living alone, becoming sour and missing his wife terribly. As the years pass, the city grows around Carl's house with construction as Carl refuses to move. After a tussle with a construction worker over Carl's broken mailbox, the court orders Carl to move into Shady Oaks Retirement Home. Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his promise to Ellie, and uses his old professional supplies to create a makeshift airship using ten thousand helium balloons which lift his house off its foundations. Russell, a Wilderness Explorer trying to earn his "Assisting the Elderly" badge, has stowed away on the porch after being sent on a literal snipe hunt by Carl the day before. After a storm throws them around for a while, they find themselves across a large ravine facing Paradise Falls. With their body weight providing ballast allowing Carl and Russell to pull the floating house, the two begin to walk around the ravine, hoping to reach the falls while there's still enough helium in the balloons to keep the house afloat. As they walk towards Paradise Falls, Russell finds a colorful tropical bird which he names Kevin, not realizing that the bird is actually female. They later run into a dog named Dug with a translating collar that lets him speak. They discover Dug's owner is Charles Muntz, who has remained in South America for several decades to find and bring back a large species of bird (which turns out to be Kevin) in order to restore his reputation after bringing back a skeleton of the bird and being called a fraud because scientists thought he faked the evidence. Carl is initially thrilled to meet his hero, but when he realizes that Muntz is after Kevin and will kill without a moment's thought in order to capture her alive, Carl takes steps to save the bird and escape from Muntz. Thanks to Kevin and Dug they escape Muntz's pack of vicious dogs, led by Alpha, but Kevin is injured during the escape. As Carl and Russell assist the injured Kevin to her chicks, Muntz and his dogs arrive in his airship, led by a tracking device in Dug's collar, and sets Carl's house on fire, forcing Carl to choose his house over Kevin. Muntz and his dogs quickly capture the bird and fly off. Though Carl successfully gets the house on the ground overlooking Paradise Falls per Ellie's wish, he has lost Russell's favor. Carl, settling down in his house, finds Ellie's childhood scrapbook and discovers her mementos of her life with Carl after they were married, and a final note from her thanking Carl for her adventure and an encouragement for him to go on his own. Invigorated by Ellie's last wish, he goes outside to see Russell, only to find him giving chase to Muntz. Carl lightens the weight of his house by dumping furniture and his possessions, allowing him to chase after Muntz with Dug by his side, leaving his and Ellie's two special chairs behind together as a memento of his accomplishment. Russell enters the airship through a window, but is captured by the dogs. He is tied up and left to fall to the earth, but Carl saves him and keeps him tied up in the house. Carl and Dug board the ship, and are able to lure the guard dogs away from Kevin to free her. Carl and Muntz duel face to face and fight (Muntz with a sword, Carl with his cane), while Dug is able to wrest control of the dogs and the dirigible from Alpha. Russell frees himself but clings to a lifeline as he finds the house in a dogfight with biplane fighters. When Carl shouts for help, Russell distracts the dog pilots and regains control of the house to rescue his friends, who are now on top of the blimp. In pursuit, Muntz shoots out some of the balloons, causing the house to land and slide off the airship. Carl manages to trick Muntz inside the house while saving Russell, Dug, and Kevin; Muntz falls to his doom, while Carl's house drifts off into the clouds — a loss Carl gracefully accepts as being for the best. Carl takes Muntz's dirigible and returns Kevin to her chicks, and then returns Russell and Dug back to the city. When Russell's father snubs his son's Senior Explorer ceremony, Carl fulfills that role himself to proudly present Russell with his final merit badge, the grape soda badge that Ellie presented to Carl when they first met. Afterward, Carl, reinvigorated in both spirit and body from his adventure, becomes a cheerfully active community volunteer with a strong father like relationship with Russell, Dug, and the other Wilderness Explorers. His house, through happenstance, has landed exactly where Ellie envisioned it — overlooking Paradise Falls. The fantasy of a flying house was born out from director Pete Docter's thoughts about escaping from life when it becomes too irritating,[8][11] which he explained stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up.[23] Writing began in 2004. Actor and writer Thomas McCarthy aided Docter andBob Peterson in shaping the story for about three months.[13] Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons.[13] The two men thought an old man was a good idea for a protagonist because they felt their experiences and the way it affects their view of the world was a rich source of humor. Docter was not concerned with an elderly protagonist, stating children would relate to Carl in the way they relate to their grandparents.[8] Docter noted the film reflects his friendships with Disney veterans Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Joe Grant (who all died before the film's release). Grant gave the script his approval as well as some advice before his death in 2005.[24] Docter recalled Grant would remind him the audience needed an "emotional bedrock" because of how wacky the adventure would become; in this case it is Carl mourning for his wife.[13] Docter felt Grant's personality influenced Carl's deceased wife Ellie more than the grouchy main character,[24] and Carl was primarily based on Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau, because there was "something sweet about these grumpy old guys".[22] Docter and Jonas Rivera noted Carl's charming nature in spite of his grumpiness derives from the elderly "hav[ing] this charm and almost this 'old man license' to say things that other people couldn’t get away with [...] It's like how we would go to eat with Joe Grant and he would call the waitresses 'honey'. I wish I could call a waitress 'honey'."[25] The filmmakers' first story outline had Carl "just wanted to join his wife up in the sky," Docter said. "It was almost a kind of strange suicide mission or something. And obviously that's [a problem]. Once he gets airborne, then what? So we had to have some goal for him to achieve that he had not yet gotten."[20] Docter created Dug as he felt it would be refreshing to show what a dog thinks, rather than what people assume it thinks.[26] The idea derived from thinking about what would happen if someone broke a record player and it always played at a low pitch.[13] Russell was added to the story at a later date than Dug and Kevin;[13] his presence, as well as the construction workers, helped to make the story feel less episodic.[20] Carl's relationship with Russell reflects how "he's not really ready for the whirlwind that a kid is, as few of us are".[24] Docter added he saw Up as a "coming of age" tale and an "unfinished love story", with Carl still dealing with the loss of his wife.[27] He cited inspiration from Casablanca and A Christmas Carol, which are both "resurrection" stories about men who lose something, and regain purpose during their journey.[28] Docter and Rivera cited inspiration from the Muppets, Hayao Miyazaki, Dumbo and Peter Pan. They also saw parallels to The Wizard of Oz and tried to make Up not feel too similar.[29] There is a scene where Carl and Russell haul the floating house through the jungle. A Pixar employee compared the scene toFitzcarraldo, and Docter watched that film and The Mission for further inspiration.[30] An inspiration for the Charles Muntz villain character was cartoon producer Charles B. Mintz who stole Walt Disney's hit character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from him forcing Disney to create replacement character Mickey Mouse. Mintz, like Muntz, did get his comeuppance in real life.[31] Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains.[8][24] In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, jeep and helicopter.[16] They spent three nights there painting and sketching,[32] and encountering dangerous ants, mosquitos, scorpions, frogs and snakes. They also flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls,[16] as well as Brazil. Docter felt "we couldn't use [the rocks and plants we saw]. Reality is so far out, if we put it in the movie you wouldn't believe it."[22] The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also be realistic because those mountains exist in real life.[24] The filmmakers visited Sacramento Zoo to observe a Himalayan Monal Pheasant for Kevin's animation.[1]The animators designed Russell as an Asian-American, and modeled Russell after similar looking Peter Sohn, a Pixar storyboarder who voiced Emile in Ratatouille and directed the shortPartly Cloudy, because of his energetic nature.[11] [33] Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's body is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while his wife's body is shaped like a balloon.[7] The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural,[8] although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley".[24]Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham and George Booth influenced the human designs.[13][28][19] Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house.[23] New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers.[17]To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics.[6] A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size.[34] There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and it varies in other scenes.[16] The novel The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and its film adaptation from 1925 clearly served as an inspiration for the film. Early on, we see newsreel footage of Charles Muntz departing for Paradise Falls. A high, isolated plateau is clearly visible with a tall pillar of rock of about the same height to its right, separated from it by a narrow chasm. This image can be found in the 1925 film and is described in Chapter 4 of the novel. Further, the scientific community ridicules the discoveries Muntz claims to have made, motivating him to return to Paradise Falls to obtain hard evidence to substantiate his assertions. This closely parallels the situation of Professor Challenger in Chapter 5 of the novel. Later on, we learn that Muntz has spent a great deal of his exile acquiring what appear to be dinosaur skeletons. In The Lost World, Challenger's unproven claim is that the high plateau is in fact inhabited by dinosaurs. Whenever the film is screened at the El Capitan Theatre from May 29 to July 23, it will be accompanied by Lighten Up!, a live show featuring Pixar's characters.[35] Among the children's books that will be published to promote the film is My Name is Dug, which was illustrated by screenwriter Ronnie del Carmen.[36]Despite Pixar's track record, Target Corporation and Wal-Mart will stock few Up items, while Pixar's regular collaborator Thinkway Toys will not produce merchandise, claiming its story is unusual and will be hard to promote. Disney acknowledged not every Pixar film would have to become a franchise.[1]Promotional partners include Aflac,[37] NASCAR and Airship Ventures,[38][39] while Cluster Balloons will promote the film with a replica of Carl's couch that will be lifted by hot air balloons, that journalists can sit in.[40] In Colombia, unexpected publicity for the film was generated due to the uncanny similarity of Carl Fredricksen with Colombian ex-president Julio César Turbay Ayala.[41][42] Director Pete Docter intended for audiences to take a specific point from the film, saying: Up has received nearly universal acclaim from critics. As of June 13, 2009, Rotten Tomatoes reports that 98% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 181 reviews, with an 8.6/10 review average.[44] The film also holds a score of 88 on the review aggregator website Metacritic as of June 1, 2009.[45] The notable film critic Roger Ebert has awarded the film four out of four stars.[46] Up ranked number one at the box office its opening weekend, grossing $68,108,790 in North America. This was a stronger return than analysts had been expecting.[47] The film had an unusually small drop-off of 35% over its second weekend, earning another $44,244,000.[48] Initial estimates projected the film holding on to the #1 spot in its second weekend, but revised figures placed it in second, less than $1M behind the Warner Bros. comedy The Hangover,[49] but over $25M ahead of the Will Ferrell remake of Land of the Lost. It currently has earned a total of $187.2 million domestically as of June 14, 2009.[50] Dug, the talking canine, was awarded the Palm Dog Award by the British film critics as the best canine performance at Cannes Film Festival. Dug beat out the fox from Antichrist and the black poodle from Inglourious Basterds.[51]Up
Theatrical posterDirected by Pete Docter
Co-Director:
Bob PetersonProduced by Jonas Rivera
Executive Producers:
John Lasseter
Andrew StantonWritten by Screenplay:
Bob Peterson
Pete Docter
Story:
Pete Docter
Bob Peterson
Thomas McCarthyStarring Edward Asner
Christopher Plummer
Jordan Nagai
Bob Peterson
Delroy Lindo
Jerome Ranft
John Ratzenberger
Elie DocterMusic by Michael Giacchino Studio Pixar Animation Studios Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures Release date(s) May 29, 2009 (US)
September 3, 2009 (Aus)
October 16, 2009 (UK)Running time 96 min. Country United States Language English Budget $175 million[1] Gross revenue $187,179,000[2] [edit]Plot
[edit]Cast and characters
[edit]Production
[edit]Release
[edit]Reception
[edit]References
Up
Monday, June 15, 2009
Basically, the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it's so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they're gone. More often than not I don't really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they're either moved or passed away. So if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, "Wow, I've got some really cool stuff around me every day", then that's what the movie's about.[43]
Posted by Didit Nurwantoro at 2:18 PM
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