Up (Pixar's 2009 film)

Because if I don't put that qualifier in the thread title it'll be impossible to search for.

Pixar's next two films after this are Toy Story III and Cars 2 so let's take the time to celebrate this one all the more. I've thought Pixar's strongest overall years have actually been these last few and this film on top of Ratatouille and Wall-E has the makings of a hell of a trifecta.

NYT demi-whimper article with people complaining that it won't be a super-colossal hit but just a hit is good for laughs but contains these details:

The film, about the adventures of a cranky 78-year-old who ties thousands of balloons to his house, features dazzling animation that evokes the work of Hayao Miyazaki, the refined Japanese filmmaker and anime master. Like Pixar’s Oscar-winning “Wall-E,” there are stretches without dialogue. A few scenes are rendered in black and white.

... A commercial juggernaut or not, “Up” has struck many early viewers as creatively stunning. The story focuses on Carl (voiced by Ed Asner), a prune-popping balloon salesman who, after the death of his wife, sets out to see the wilds of South America.

His young companion, Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), is a “Wilderness Explorer” working on his last merit badge, “assisting the elderly.” An exotic bird joins the excursion, which encounters a hilarious squad of talking dogs.

The animation is heavily stylized. Carl is not realistic looking, for instance, but has square features: fingertips, face, liver spots. The color palette is notable for its turquoise and magenta.

Nothing involving the picture was rushed — Pixar spent four years on it — and, apparently, no expense was spared. Mr. Docter and some of his colleagues flew to Venezuela for a three-day helicopter and Jeep tour to study jungle scenery; others spent time observing a rare pheasant at the Sacramento Zoo.

“We wanted more ‘Dumbo’ and less ‘Star Wars,’ ” Mr. Docter said. “In certain parts, it’s more of a feeling we’re going after than linear storytelling.”

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/3673/imageuploadimageu.jpg

Realistic!

Cars 2? Oh great, a sequel to the one Pixar film I couldn't even sit through until the end.

This one sounds pretty neat though.

*cough* sounds familiar...
http://www.vgculturalcenter.com/images/event_images/james-and-the-giant-peach.jpg

LA Times fluff but it provides more context and detail and etc.

Cars 2?

Hulk smash

There's been lots of noise about this being heavily miyazaki influenced; I'm pretty psyched.

friend of mine who saw an early screening of this says it's fantastic

Russ Meyer's Up >>>>>>>>>>>>> Pixar's Up >>>>>>>>>>> R.E.M.'s Up.

^^^ this is likely factual.

all the trailers and sneaks that they've put on youtube are great. this will be the first movie I take my son to (he's 3); he's been asking about it every day for a month.

Not looking forward to Cars II unless they really improve on the first one (which is possible); Toy Story III will be excellent though.

I am probably alone in liking the first Cars movie, which I did expect to hate.

It's far from their best film, but still miles ahead of any other studio animated movie.

http://img12.nnm.ru/2/0/8/4/9/52f7324d7446c6d51d781b18499.jpg

Oh, that's right. I'll revise:

Russ Meyer's Up >>>>>>>>>>>>> Pixar's Up >>>>>>>>>>>>> Shania Twain's Up! >>>>>>>>>>>>> R.E.M.'s Up.

Elvis T. is a major Cars fan so you're not alone on here at least.

yeah didn't like Cars at first but it's grown on me a lot upon repeated viewings (my nephew's obsessed).

Anyone seen it yet? (Will probably be catching it next weekend, though I do have the day off tomorrow so maybe then...)

Cars isn't their best, but I like it. My son went through a phase of watching it constantly, so I've seen it plenty of times.

I've been a pretty big Pixar fan, but I wasn't particularly thrilled by the Up trailer. Seems like people are enjoying it so far though...

I can find something to like about every Pixar film, and I don't expect Up will be any different. The trailer's not making me enthusiastic, but the article Ned posted to start the thread is.

Linking to Armond White review here so Morbs doesn't have to:

http://www.nypress.com/article-19876-the-way-of-pixarism.html

Instructions to most fully enjoy link: do not click on link.

The comment section under the article is pretty enjoyable, though.

Seeing this for five bucks on a weekend morning...excited. (Skipping the 3D.)

Nothing involving the picture was rushed — Pixar spent four years on it — and, apparently, no expense was spared. Mr. Docter and some of his colleagues flew to Venezuela for a three-day helicopter and Jeep tour to study jungle scenery; others spent time observing a rare pheasant at the Sacramento Zoo.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_D1ZZyTOG7tQ/RxEFGKS5WEI/AAAAAAAABJo/xAn3g6X3bAw/s320/DevilDoll.gif
what

Comments on the nyp article ARE entertaining

there are bad critics and then there are bad people and armond white consistently seems like the latter imo

Haha CHICKEN LITTLE!

It's so hard to take him seriously. I mean he's obviously fucking with everyone here.

no i think he's "serious"

i'm gonna go see this tomorrow in 3d and i'm going to argue with the ticket window girl about charging me extra for 3d glasses when i kept mine from when i saw coraline

Maybe you should make a list of your strongest points first. Preparation is key!

"no i think he's "serious""

It's pretty hard to tell sometimes, I'll give you that.

can't wait for morbs to weigh in on this

Remember, tho, Morbs liked WALL*E.

He's such a sucker for cuteness, that Morbo.

morbz is obviously off somewhere buying balloons

ha ha hahhaaa!

i thought the previews for this looked pretty good!

That review - hoo boy!

The whole Pixar as corporate shill argument is cute and all, but if you're main line of attack against a film is criticizing a film studio for corporate connnections, then you probably need to either find a new line of work or move to Scandinavia.

Haha CHICKEN LITTLE!

Fuck anyone who takes Zach Braff poultry for high art.

no one revived this thread for 5 days?
SHOCKING!
i wanna see this badly

Waiting on Saturday for me...

i was reading somewhere that it's the saddest pixar movie yet,
as opppose to the the trailer, which shows fragments of funny bits.
makes me wanna see this even more

Same here, which makes me think that the claims of this being especially Miyazaki-like in terms of tone aren't far off.

seeing this tonight in 3D!

Saw it on Friday, I agree pretty much completely with: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1873
... but I was also somewhat frustrated by the film’s somewhat transparent philosophizing (”don’t live in the past”, “don’t let your belongings hold you down”) and ham handed psychological metaphor (Kevin the Bird as mother figure, Doug the Dog as child, hefty round boyscout evoking wife’s spirit of adventure, Muntz the bad guy as castrating father). When so much thought is clearly given to every nuance of a film, I expect more complex subtext.

That said, it’s a must see; though perhaps not as good as Wall-E. It’s half a spectacular film and half a good film.
The Miyazaki connection is pretty much only skin deep.
Most of the theater I was in was bawling at one point or another.

THIS MOVIE IS SO GOOOD :D A+++++++

and i got 3d glasses now so the world is in 3d SQUIRREL!!!

in the scene where u first hear doug and they think its a guy the theater was totally silent and a little girl yells out ITS THE DOG

LOOOOL

so many great moments

A friend of mine said the 3D didn't add much, if anything, to the experience but that doesn't seem to accord with opinions here.

Very GRRRR that we have to wait til fuckin' October for this to come out in Britain.

yeah one of my friends was complaining after abt the extra $5 for 3d - i thought it was pretty sweet if completely unessential - but i mightve been swayed by the novelty of the thing

wait we have to wait til october/!?! i hate u uk

I love cricket should be ilx's first 3d borad imo xpost

it basically already is--its got the 3 ds--dudes, drugs, & derek bell of domino records faq

haa yes!

Lovely film. Yeah I teared up at a couple of points, who wouldn't? It does feel like a tone exercise at many points and that is not a complaint.

The "Partly Cloudy" short was good fun as well!

The first 15 minutes - especially the dialogue-free montage - is some of the most moving (if admittedly manipulative) stuff I've ever seen, Pixar or not. The rest of the movie may have been the weakest Pixar I've seen since "Cars," even lazy at times. Not bad - this is Pixar - but pretty padded and sketchily thought out. Admittedly, I had my daughter with me asking questions in the theater the whole time, but I still have no idea what happened to Russell's parents, especially his dad. Who was the woman at the end? His mom?

Loved the short. In fact, "Up" would have made a great short film, too, minus all the fat kid/Muntz stuff/talking dogs flying planes. Talking dogs are cute and funny, but they could have been relegated to their own short.

this is a tiny detail, but it made me smile when you see the guy slumped in front of a television, ten or twenty minutes in, and he's watching that youtube-meme-infomercial of a guy selling a ZOOM LENS camera that takes pictures of horses/moths

The first 15 minutes - especially the dialogue-free montage - is some of the most moving (if admittedly manipulative) stuff I've ever seen, Pixar or not.

this^^^ i was all boo-hooing during this

The filmmakers talk more about that montage.

Yes on the "look at that horse" thing; i had to be restrained from running around the theater screaming "zoom lens guy!"
I'm such a memey fuck

The first 15 minutes - especially the dialogue-free montage - is some of the most moving (if admittedly manipulative) stuff I've ever seen, Pixar or not. The rest of the movie may have been the weakest Pixar I've seen since "Cars," even lazy at times.

This.

I thought this was a second-tier Pixar film, but second-rate Pixar is before first rate if compared with most mainstream modern movies. Why do we all seem to think the movie leveled off soon after he leaves for S. America? Here are some of my own thoughts. spoilers

The kid: the little boy was cute and better than most child characters in movies (flesh or CG) but he was still standard kid movie stuff and he was only in the movie, ultimately, so that the children in the audience had someone to identify with.

They get to S. America too soon. The movie should have been more about the adventure to South America instead of having the all-too-easy out of a little boy who somehow used his GPS signal to find the coordinates (which he knew how???). The movie starts to really drag soon afterward and after that changes plot direction completely.

The Lindbergh adventurer guy. What was with this character? With what resources did he build his base and wouldn't inventing a way to interpret dog barks for human ears be infinitely more valuable and cause for fame than finding a rainbow-patterned bird? That's like a shamed scientist living his life in seclusion in search of the unicorn but not realizing that his recent cures for cancer and heart disease would be cause for even greater celebration back in the civilized world. Also, his death came without a satisfying fight.

General plot and motivation holes. If the old man is 78 and worshiped the adventurer as a boy, well, how old was the adventurer in the movie? And how does this 95+ year old man have such agility? And why is he so murderous and hateful still? Does he not know he'd be a media sensation back home anyhow? And how does the old man know how to navigate a house filled with balloons? How did the little boy know?

I know you could say to me "Dude, it's a movie really intended for kids! You can't scrutinize these things" but I think that a movie like this, where they play so so fast and loose with facts and motivation, ends up creating too much of a mess in the end. You can get away with a lot in movies if you foreshadow and are otherwise quite logical. Toy Story is a movie about talking toys, but it gets away with that basic absurdity because the movie is so watertight outside of that. The problem, I thought, with Up! is that it's very lazy with the how's and why's of the characters after the initial set-up. It's like after they let us into why the old man might want to fly to South America the story people just thought "If the audience can buy that, they'll buy anything, so don't worry if nothings makes too much sense."

Cunga, if you're willing to buy a guy lifting a house with helium-filled balloons, you really shouldn't worry about the other elements of disbelief.

I choked up fiercely in the opening montage like I did w/ Wall-E, but in that hectic final confrontation/chase at the end, I couldn't help think that the chase scene in Monsters Inc was so much fresher and awesomer, and Up's kind felt a little mundane and peremptory.

Wow, there's little I said that the reviewer in the link above didn't also think.

Cunga, if you're willing to buy a guy lifting a house with helium-filled balloons, you really shouldn't worry about the other elements of disbelief.

I don't think that's true. Something absurd works all the better if everything that surrounds it is then perfectly reasonable and airtight, or at least logically illogical. It's only through the exterior being recognizable and plausible that core absurdities work. I think you can ask an audience to believe anything (man ties his house with balloons and takes flight) if you ask it right, but when you start asking that they believe absurdity after absurdity with no logic (see: the rest of the movie) it just becomes silly.

Lewis Carrol was the first person to write about symbolic logic academically, and it was only because he knew the rules that he could write a book that systematically broke them (Alice in Wonderland). Pixar's mistake was in thinking that because the plot rested on something ridiculous that the rest of the movie could be arbitrarily ridiculous and it wouldn't hurt it further.

BTW, I think most of us agree that the movie was at least good. I just think it's more fun to talk about what kept it from greatness rather than what Pixar did right.

the problem is that they spent twenty minutes getting us to believe it was going to be a gentle, honest adult movie and then with little warning, we're plunked into talking dog territory.
I hate critiquing the movie, cuz I did like it and it makes me sound like a grinch but it is, at heart, badly flawed. Still quite worth seeing.

you people are haters, this movie was great, maybe even exemplary, and very possibly my favorite Pixar film bar Toy Story 2 (I have to re-watch Ratatouille though). I have to suffer through fucking Madagascar at my house every week on dvd, that is some bullshit; this is like Kubrick comparison. I know everyone wants Up to be fully satisfying on an adult level, but the target audience is still kids. There is more here than any other Pixar movie to appeal to just adults.

I still have no idea what happened to Russell's parents, especially his dad. Who was the woman at the end? His mom?

yes that's his mom. it sounds like his father remarried and new wife wants dad to have little interaction with his son.

I found that hanging arc of Russell's family story to be initially puzzling but in retrospect not -- having seen for myself the collapse of two close friends' marriage last year and the attendant fallout on them and their kids (and their kids' activities), seeing something where there was no 'easy' resolution at the end for him in a classic 'dad's back, all's well' manner was pretty remarkable.

it seemed to hearken back to Toy Story to me as well, where Andy's father is just not present and never mentioned (even though he has a new baby sister).

Yeah, that was subtle and pretty amazing. All the info's there, and as I had my "...oh, shit" moment, I blinked and realized Carl was having one as well.

I really liked Russell as a character, actually -- chatty, eager to please, dealing with something bigger he wishes wasn't there, he's a very recognizable type that's not a stereotype.

Yeah, but there's repeated talk about how Russell's dad used to do all this stuff with him, but no reason given why out of nowhere the dad apparently stopped caring about his kid. I thought we'd find out that the throwaway evil developer character was Russell's dad. That at least would have provided some (easy) symmetry.

Other things that would have been better, had the movie been better thought through:

Definitely more of the trip there, and less of the arrival. In fact, I would have preferred a full-on fantasy, for once, with the arrival in S. America an "Oz"-like illusion deflated (literally) by the realization they'd been home the whole time.

None of that Muntz stuff, which made no sense in the narrative or even logically. What did he add but a lame villain?

No talking dogs, let along talking dogs flying planes. Again, added nothing but lazy (if amusing) talking dog gags that would have been better served in a movie about, you know, talking dogs.

The S. America stuff was a missed opportunity, from a design standpoint. No bugs? No animals? Not much color? Barren rocky wasteland? Again, if it were an explicit fantasy, Carl and the kid could have gone anywhere and encountered anything. But then, it might have been too much like, say, "Big Fish" in intent and execution.

3-D was also wasted (versus, say, the truly multi-dimensional "Coraline")

And so on. If my Pixar gold standard is "Toy Story 2," with its brilliant take on childhood, growing old, and misplaced nostalgia, this is, indeed, very minor Pixar that underscores the brilliance of its immediate (post-"Cars," which is as pedestrian as it gets) predecessors. There's a genuine adult theme throughout "Ratatouille" and "Wall-e" that pays off in their respective conclusions. But what was the theme of "Up?" It sucks to be old and alone? Dads are important? I'm not sure. It comes close to cohesion, but ultimately comes up pretty short.

Oh, and totally thought Russell was in fact a stereotype. The weird kid who turns out he is that way because dad is out of the picture, forcing the protagonist to step in as proxy? That's Family Movie 101 stuff. Now, none of this stuff was offensively stupid, which is also a facet of Family Movie 101, but it did all seem pretty mundane for a movie with, you know, houses suspended by balloons and talking dogs flying planes.

i thought this was fun and moving.

also...for josh and everyone who's all like "oh man 2nd tier stuff, cliche, blah blah"...i would submit that me and the mrs. went to this today and it was pretty much striking how much more the kids were enjoying this than ratatouille or wall-e, for whatever that's worth

The talking dogs were worth it just for Dug's "joke."

Hahah I just remembered that.

i cried like a big dumb homo at this movie

"wouldn't inventing a way to interpret dog barks for human ears be infinitely more valuable and cause for fame than finding a rainbow-patterned bird? That's like a shamed scientist living his life in seclusion in search of the unicorn but not realizing that his recent cures for cancer and heart disease would be cause for even greater celebration back in the civilized world."

I also thought about this

Loved the dogs playing poker, too.

oh yeah, doug's joke is great. "it's a joke because the squirrel is dead"

No argument, a million awesome talking dog jokes. Esp. how the doberman's high voice was a malfunction and not, as I initially suspected, from huffing helium. Or maybe it was, at was changed/cut at the last minute to stop kids from, you know, huffing helium. Anyway: they needed to just make a talking dog movie! Instead, they got talking dog movie in my moving mediation on growing old, which makes me say humbug! >:(

My 4-year old daughter, by the way, was not into it as much as "Rat" or "Wall-e," for whatever that's worth.

peeps be getting defensive on this thread

Okay I am laughing at the idea that the movie was just called RAT!

ok this made me cry like a big dumb homo.

Up (The Ass)

is the digi 3-D experience worth it

two posts that should never be next to each other

True.

Seeing this in 3-D was all right but nothing too much to write home about.

>is the digi 3-D experience worth it

I got the impression the 3D was very subtle with this one. Still definitely worth it, especially for the action sequences, but I think they took pains not to do anything that would start to look weird in 2D

For comparison, Aliens vs Monsters IMAX 3D was just insane in the theatre, and the trailer for 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' basically showcases how ludicrous 3D is about to get. But I can't imagine those films making much visual sense without the glasses.

btw can I just say that the fact that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is an actual soon-to-be-released movie is completely bonkers to me

"and food just - it keeps falling from the sky. It doesn't stop"

"So when you see it raining cheerios..."

"you know milk is gonna follow right after"

"this is hilarious! Consider it greenlit"

3D was effective during a) long shots of house floating in sky, b) one sunset tableau that was stunning.

aside from that it didn't add much.

"it's a joke because the squirrel is gets dead"

Important fix!

Best throwaway dog gag: the dog that poured wine like Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein," all polite formal finesse until it came time to dump the stuff into glasses.

I'll say it again, talking dogs should have been its own movie. Here, try this one on:

Eccentric inventor retreats to remote S. American jungle with dog buddies. Fast forward, inventor dies, leaving behind tribe of semi-self sufficient dogs. Dogs can't quite cut it and get lonely, so decide to send team out to find new master (with Dug as stowaway). Team fails, but Dug continues onward and upward (north). Has adventures. Finds new master in Carl and the fat kid - also lonely - but must first overcome adversary in the form of evil pound worker. Dog wins, thanks to help of taking dog buddies, and new "family" travels back to jungle to start new life with tribe of talking dogs. (Begin work on sequel).

I just made that up. With my mind!!!

I would go see a Dug + Russell sequel (with brief Carl cameo maybe).

I'd bet solid money that there's a Doug short being made for the DVD right now.

It’s half a spectacular film and half a good film.

^^^^This. First 15 minutes are as good as any film I've ever seen. Important to note how AMAZING the score is during this montage and how much weight it holds.

Agree w/ above about the dogs - they're hilarious but they really change the tone. Muntz lacked subtlety - he coulda been a lot more than theevilbadguy.

damn

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pixar-up-movie-2468059-home-show

I appreciate that everybody admitted, albeit online, to getting "something in our eyes" during that montage scene. As previously mentioned it's a shame that movie ended.

I just got back from seeing this--I can't believe how much I cried. The 3D glasses made my eyes hurt, as did the previews for the upcoming 3D atrocities (Ice Age etc).

jesus christ that story linked is the saddest thing ever

yeah, my god. I don't know what to do with that.

Big points to Pixar for fulfilling that dying girls wish.

Back to the point: I really enjoyed UP, but not nearly as much as the short cloud film that preceded it.

Final word: anyone who is going to watch 3-d films without the assistance of weed is only getting 1/3 of the effect.

Wait, so weed makes this into a 9-D film? Will have to dig out the bong...

(and yeah, good on Pixar. That story is heartbreaking.)

I went in fully prepared for that montage at the beginning and holy shit did it just reduce me to a total fucking mess. Really embarrassing but fuck it. I don't have anything new to add. The Muntz stuff sucked, the dog army sucked (though Doug was a great character), the film was A+ great when it wasn't trying to shove in all the ACTION and CONFLICT.

"Wait, so weed makes this into a 9-D film? Will have to dig out the bong..."

If it's Oregon weed, yes.

I was just going to link to that story. Apparently she just died. :(

She already did in that article :(

Thanks for spoiling the ending for me.

Funny cos reading this alot of opinion say the opening bit is amazing and the last 1/2 falls into standard not-so-amazing territory. That's exactly what I thought when I saw Wall-E.

Maybe Pixar should start making short films and string together 3 or 4 of them in a showcase...

I don't think that's a good idea, but I'd love to see a pixar fantasia...

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x109/Baby_Girls_Bucket/smileys/confused-smiley-17432.gif

(xxpost)

i thought this movie was awesome - way better written than ratatouille f'rinstance

everything in it paid off really satisfyingly... most interesting, and perhaps weirdest, was the explicit way the little scout kid became a wife-substitute for dude

kind of bothered me that NOBODY took a bite at that muntz dinner tho (except the hot-dog stealing dog). i would think they would both be starving at that point, chocolate or no chocolate

good point. also, you can't lift a house with balloons.

That's a movie rule: dinner is served, but never consumed (with the exception of films poking fun at fancy pants bourgeois or suburbanites, where people take a few bites between put-downs or to make them look stupid while chewing).

Also: people generally don't go to the bathroom in movies.

the book of the up artwork is unbelievably beautiful. better-looking than the movie in places.

i know i know suspension of disbelief and all that. i just wished they'd at least eaten a BIT. i mean come on. i would have been hungry.

did anyone else find it weird that up and gran torino start from the exact same premise?

omfg this movie so good

I totally cried during "partly cloudy." I am that stork. That stork is me.

Yeah. I cried when the wife died.

Jeez, I was sort of way underwhelmed with this one. WALL*E was as spotty as this one, but at least that one's high points were legitimately transcendent.

I didn't care for the short at all. Parts of this were moving, and every time the camera cut to the photo of Ellie on the wall, with her puckish, direct, honest smile of old age, I teared up. Whoever said upthread that Christopher Plummer should have marketed his talking dog collars (and four-course meals) instead of obsessing over a bird was OTM.

i didnt like the short either. the rabbit/magician one before up was 100000x better

btw can I just say that the fact that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is an actual soon-to-be-released movie is completely bonkers to me

It's a pretty popular kids book. Been around since 1982...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61850RSK98L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

I wasn't astonished as I was with Wall-E, but I liked it a lot. Felt like Pixar's version of a Wallace And Gromit feature. Bawled my eyes out.

everything in it paid off really satisfyingly... most interesting, and perhaps weirdest, was the explicit way the little scout kid became a wife-substitute for dude

?? I thought Russell was a substitute for the child that Carl and Ellie could never have.

well, both. but they make some pretty explicit comparisons between the two. none of which i can remember at all.

they're both round as opposed to Carl's blockiness. He's def. meant to be the spirit of his dead wife's adventurousness and sense of sacrifice for love

Count me in the camp of loved it (though it didn't quite reach Wall-E's heights, that's a very tough standard), tears welling up in the theater and all. Even the typical kid's movie stuff that probably shouldn't have worked, like Russell and the talking dogs, just did it for me.

Really liked the short too (and that it sort of thematically tied into the film, even!). The 3D experience was nice, but not essential. Maybe other films have done it better, but a 3D-animated film is sort of already using certain tricks to make it "more 3D", so didn't feel very useful or effective. Everyone should see this in any format that's available.

Finally saw this and I thought it was just great. Totally got misty half a dozen times.

Kind've bummed the next two Pixars are gonna be sequels though.

I might be slightly wrong on that because apparently the Cars one comes out in 2012 (or maybe never, if we're really lucky), meaning there's a 2011 one in the pipeline, presumably.

Toy Story 3 next year, Cars 2 mid-2011, The Bear and the Bow late-2011, Newt 2012.

"Cars" is such a Pixar low I can only hope they do better this time out. As for "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story 2" is such a Pixar high I have high hopes.

Thanks Hugh!

Anyway great to see Gingrich is getting the biopic he always deserved.

the story line for toy story 3 is pretty promising (andy has grown up and gone to college and all his toys are donated to a preschool); it was kind of the original plot for the first toy story.

cars is the only pixar movie I can't deal with and even my kid was bored by it. I think the biggest problem with it is the overbearing music. the short (mater's ghost light) that is on the dvd is better than the full film.

there have been murmurs about a followup to monsters inc as well; hopefully not as that movie seems perfect as it is.

Saw this tonight, and had watery eyes due to the emotional content of the film and not having taking my meds for the last day or two. This film was transcendent. There is SO much Miyazaki in this, mixed with Muppets and Looney Tunes and God knows how much else.

Also, the thousands and thousands of little bits that I like, e.g. Muntz giving the menu a quick glance and dismissing the maitre'dog, then the chef dog wearing the hat & kerchief.

Saw this, in 3D, with active specs. But I don't know what was active about them, there was no noticeable flicker and the lenses were polarising even when they were off. Weird. But about the film - yeah the story was pretty slight but I think it works brilliantly as a mood and character piece - I teared up at all the obvious points, and of course would love to see a whole movie about Doug. But my favourite scene was probably the bird discovery and mimicry bit. Just hilarious, and expertly done. And of course the whole thing looked incredible.

One major gripe though, yet again another Pixar movie with no good female characters. The two leads, the baddie, and most of the support are all male. Out of the two female characters, one dies at the beginning, and one is a) a bird, ii) identified as a man for half the film and given a man's name, and 3) takes the role of damsel in distress.

Also got a Q&A at the end with the director and producer, except the director had lost his voice and couldn't say a word.

One major gripe though, yet again another Pixar movie with no good female characters. The two leads, the baddie, and most of the support are all male. Out of the two female characters, one dies at the beginning, and one is a) a bird, ii) identified as a man for half the film and given a man's name, and 3) takes the role of damsel in distress.

Also got a Q&A at the end with the director and producer, except the director had lost his voice and couldn't say a word.

― this must be what FAIL is really like (ledge), Saturday, 12 September 2009 08:30 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Why didn't you ask about this then?

'cause I hadn't done my research beforehand on just how bad they are and the audience only got a handful of questions and it was recorded and i didn't want to seem mean and and...

ok, my bad.

Finally saw Up ... definitely one of their best. I liked the fact that the tone changed and you didn't know what to expect once they landed. Also how they kept the sentimental stuff kind of subtle in places - there was no scene with Carl explaining his wife's life story to Russell, for example. Talking dogs were definitely worth it. The Muntz guy was paranoid and bitter and his whole life had been affected by people not believing his greatest achievement - so his withdrawing from society, inventing great things for his own amusement rather than having a balanced view of what might make money etc was entirely believable.

Cone of shame!

So Up finally got released in the UK this weekend, only four months late. I liked it enormously, much more than Monsters, Inc. in fact. The opening sequence certainly brought the misty eye, bookended by the later bit where Carl reads the scrapbook again with Ellie's additions, which choked me up even more.

I've only seen a couple of recent 3D films but this certainly felt like Pixar have a far deeper understanding of how to use the medium than other studios - the bits that worked best were those where it added depth to the scene, rather than any "wooooo" stuff eg. when the house is first drifting across the city and people and cars are scooting about below.

One major disappointment: The showing I was at didn't include the short, they seem to have cut it over here for a trailer for Toy Story 3; fun as this was, not having a short fucking sucked and if it was as good as Presto was before WALL-E then I feel robbed.

That sucks. The short's very sweet and silly in equal measure, though my favorite remains Lifted.

Lifted is certainly up there with the best of the shorts. I *really* like Boundin' too.

Did you see Up in 3D, Ned? I wonder if the short doesn't play with the 3D version? That would suck even more, considering Mrs A and I paid an extra three quid each for the illusion of depth!

Saw it with 3D here -- it's very subtle on that front, but nicely done.

Oh man, thank you 3d goggles for partially obscuring me weeping like a child* throughout large portions of this. Ahem.

(* more like weeping distinctly unlike a child, as the children at our viewing were pretty much emotion-free through all but the slapstick chase scenes, mostly going "mummy, this film is weird" and asking to go to the toilet.)

We got the "Partly Cloudy" short with our 3d showing in the UK. However I am grumpy that the 3d Toy Story reissue the same cinema was showing last week seemed to be a) only a week-long special and b) only the first film when Americans currently have the first two films showing in 3d as a double-feature. Oh well, maybe we'll get both next year...

Our UK Odeon (sticky, cramped) was offering a free DVD of the shorts if you bought 3 Up tickets, but there were only two of us, and £9.80 each we were not going to buy an extra. Gonna see if that's ebay-able instead.

The other half is from Belfast and is horrified that a cinema ticket in Oxford is very nearly twice as expensive as back home.

I can't think of anything I'd pay $15.50 just to see on the big screen.

That is part of the reason why I went many years without going to the cinema until 3d screenings came along, and once the novelty of that wears off will probably return to not going to the cinema. At half the price I'd go a lot more often.

Fuck that's dear. We just paid £7 a ticket to see Cloudy With...(etc) at a Cinema De Lux (not cramped, not sticky, lovely cinema in fact) and I thought that was a lot. CloudyWACOM was great as many have said already.

CloudyWACOM

Should have been the actual title.

Aw man, I'm even more pissed off with Odeon now, if they are showing the short at some cinemas but not the one I went to. In fairness, the Odeon in M/cr is a great cinema (massive screens, good seats, awesome sound and picture etc) but it *was* £11 a ticket with credit card fee, so I'd hoped to get the full presentation!

As is the British way I have mailed them to complain, will wait and see how far that gets me...

Well, my good old fashioned British complaint was met with (what my Californian colleague described as) American standard customer service: Turns out the cinema had not received the digital files for Partly Cloudy, and in fact were only able to start showing this yesterday. To make up for it they're sending me two free passes and the DVD of pixar Short Films from a couple of years back. Well done, Odeon.

saw this last night. thought it was great, and while it didn't reach the high points of Wall-e i also didn't lose as much interest when the detached fun/adventure gave way to the inevitable storyline.

Wonderful.

glorious!!!!

(also Bill A - wahey RESULT!)

although i must concur with the complaints above re: believability. dogs in machine-gun mounted biplanes i mean come on now. dogs can't fly biplanes!!

A huge fuck-off zeppelin and an army of talking dogs is number one on my wish-list right now.

xpost - didn't so much mind them being able to fly as being able to cook.

or use milk bones as poker chips.

Finally saw this. As poignant as Coraline was sinister. Truly heart-wrenching at points, but so worthwhile.

http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/up_dog.jpg

Cone of shame!

Dudes, you're all just reaffirming that the movie should have been called "Dug" and been about the dog, with the first 12 minutes its own tear-jerker short. Though watching this movie again with my wife (she was increasingly unimpressed the more the movie deviated from its original promise), I wondered how many times I could watch that first 12 minutes before it stopped making me cry.

This movie would have been sooooo much better had they traveled to South America and found some sort of Lost World situation rather than a vast desert and deserted jungle apparently populated by one exotic bird. They could have dropped the lame 120 year old villain and had Carl, the kid and the talking dogs face off against dinosaurs or something. Take advantage of the fantastic setting to do something, you know, fantastic. It's the rare movie where just about any other third act would have been better than what we were given.

it's been a few days now, and i've only just stopped wanting to blub whenever I think of this film. i can't remember the last scene that affected my emotions as much as *that* one.

no 120 year old villain, no talking dogs!

"I love you, so I hid under your porch" actually made me cry as much as any of the obvious bits, although I was a complete mess by that point tbh

This movie wins the award for shortest amount of time between introducing a character & crying my eyes out of genuine sadness at their death.

I thought this movie was great, altho it totally felt like they were making up the damn thing as they went along, which is a feeling I've never had at a Pixar film.

Upon rewatching I'm starting to wonder if it isn't superior to WALL-E.

typical complaints: great set-up, wonderful characters, love the old man, the boy, the dog and bird. totally lost me as soon as the weak, forced "conflict" kicks in and we have to deal with a boring antagonist and his dogs and completely uninteresting action fluff. the last half or third, whatever it is, really crippled the film for me. a shame, really, because the film starts out with so much promise.

one of my favorite little moments in the film is when the old man pulls up the knees on his pants as he sits down on a chair. i don't know why, but that was kind of a winning touch for me.

and yes, holy shit, that aging montage is destroying.

kind of feel the same about wall-e. the movie is a+ amazing until the plot arrives.

plot-wise, up and wall-e definitely fall behind ratatouille, monsters inc, nemo and the toy story films, but there's more to enjoyability of a film than just plot.

i agree! i don't even need a plot, just give me these characters and put them in an interesting world and let them go. i feel like with wall-e and up, there are these neat characters and settings/set-ups that are just totally waylaid halfway through when it seems to be all "right, we've got this worn conflict/obstacle structure we've got to squeeze in".

Robert Bresson's Wall*E

the first portion of wall-e was just him wondering around, doing his work and meeting and falling in love with another robot and it's 100x better than the fat humans in space stuff later on.

*wander

Pixar's last proper plot = Finding Nemo and everythjing since has slid downhill.

in no way is wall-e downhill from nemo

Let alone Ratatouille or The Incredibles, both of which have stronger plots than Nemo.

Finding Nemo is better than Cars, but it is the second worst Pixar movie this decade. Which does mean it is still really good.

You crazy.

Because for some reason you think the movies I mention don't have proper plots? Or because I found Nemo a tad trite and less enjoyable than Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Up and Monsters Inc.?

My lunacy needs clarity.

monsters inc before any of them tho.

i agree that many pixar films aren't as good when they get down to business: chase scenes and the like. but this movie was excellent. i liked it much more the second time, which i think is a good sign. i think it's their best since, i dunno, the incredibles maybe?

i thought the action stuff in the incredibles was way compelling, much more so that most of the stuff that came later. some of the chase scenes in nemo were astonishing too, although that film felt a bit too sprawling to me for some reason.

Finding Nemo is better than Cars, but it is the second worst Pixar movie this decade. Which does mean it is still really good.

otm

will likely get to see this at Lincoln Center next week.

bring a small scout kid for lols :)

Pixar's version of
http://www.impawards.com/2002/posters/about_schmidt_ver2_xlg.jpg

http://www.impawards.com/2002/posters/about_schmidt.jpg

I thought this movie was great, altho it totally felt like they were making up the damn thing as they went along, which is a feeling I've never had at a Pixar film.

― we are normal and we want our freedom (Abbott), Friday, November 13, 2009 11:58 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

also this is great: "I love you, so I hid under your porch"

but the dog parts and the opening bit aside, this movie was waaaaay weaker than wall-e imo

also

ok, since my image keeps disappearing - pixar's version of... about schmidt, imo.

Why does A Bug's Life never get celebrated?! It's my Pixar favourite. Dave Foley and those wonderful gonzo Russky-potato-bug acrobats.

A Bug's Life isn't all that funny or moving -- it's much more latter-day Disney than Pixar.

bug's life used to be afavorite but it doesn't stack up well against Monsters Inc or Toy Story, so getting stuck between the two was an unlucky break for it. It's probably my least favorite except for Cars which still irks me, mainly because of the music, which is hideous and unforgivably loud; no Pixar movie uses music like that.

did anyone else find it weird that up and gran torino start from the exact same premise?

― some dudes are bigger than others (s1ocki), Monday, June 22, 2009 10:02 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this occurred to me too. someone must have done some sort of mashup/mixed version by now rite?

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.

i remember when the palm dog went to actual fur & bone DOGS

Overall pleasant enough, but dropped off after a stellar opening 15 minutes.

ie the loudmouth butterball kid entered, the villain -- I mean HUH? -- was strangely unimpactful, I really didn't care if the bird went free (HIPPIES), and all that thrill-ride shit, yadda yadda.

(Muntz sez he went on safari with Roosevelt, presumably Teddy. Is he 120 years old, and is that why they got Chris Plummer?)

typical complaints: great set-up, wonderful characters, love the old man, the boy, the dog and bird. totally lost me as soon as the weak, forced "conflict" kicks in and we have to deal with a boring antagonist and his dogs and completely uninteresting action fluff. the last half or third, whatever it is, really crippled the film for me. a shame, really, because the film starts out with so much promise.

Okay, I could have written this post almost verbatim. So otm.

"Partly Cloudy" was better btw

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs095.snc3/16238_737099380010_23927951_41565172_1314242_n.jpg

has this been mentioned?

I love that guy

partly cloudy was partly shitty imo

the rabbit/magician one in front of wall•e was so much better

I just loved the put-upon stork

Just saw this movie for the first time and man, the little kid fucking RUINS this movie. He is so much worse than Jar Jar Binks.

I think you guys know what to do here.

My almost 4yo freaked out and wanted to go home to mommy. It was the 3D version. Scared the fuck out of her.

Having seen "Finding Nemo" a million times (well, a dozen or so) in the past year, I'm pretty sure it's the most beautiful Pixar film, and features one of the best scripts. Triteness aside, it's pretty dark at times, too - hell, the mom and all her kids get eaten in frightening fashion in the first two minutes!

"Up" is a scattershot mess, without a doubt, a real missed opportunity given the endless possibilities (why is that bird the only exotic creature they encounter? There could have been friggin' dinosaurs or something!). But"Cars" is definitively the single worst Pixar movie. Even beyond the lame plot, characters, premise, "Doc Hollywood" cops, NASCAR sops, etc., it was also the product of much blatant Disney behind the scenes market research in desperate search of a product as marketable to boys as the Princess franchise is to girls (and, as the parent of two girls, trust me when I say how effective it is in the latter case). Years later I still see tons of "Cars" toys, blankets, clothes, etc., on kids, which shows how successful the research turned out to be. Haven't seen too many aspiring chefs or environmentalists, and as far as I can tell, "The Incredibles" barely made a dent in the collective kids consciousness (perhaps because it's the only Pixar movie that could have been made live action without many major changes). But "Cars" ... scary.

Said it upthread, but my 4yo was bored with "Up." I had to counter her urge to leave early, though had I left after 15 minutes I would have gotten my money's worth.

But it's a TALKING DOG!

I think I like Nemo best because it integrates its narrative to its characters most closely, that and Monsters Inc and yeah the Toy Storys feel like Pixar when they weren't so pressured for everything to be an event/weren't so up themselves. Incredibles is where the flaws set in for me - not that it isn't a great film but I think it's less great - too long, too much iffy ideological fannydangle, reaching too hard for an older audience that they'd always had in the first place. All this imo obv. There aren't any downright bad Pixars I don't think - even Cars is above average - but I wish they'd shave 20 minutes off the next movie and have a bit more fun.

monster's inc for me, sure the narrative is forced on it a little more than in nemo, but the imagination of the doors sequence etc puts it top of the list.

I REALLY need to see Cars.

Monsters Inc is my favourite, I think. How it's a whole other world that *works* (unlike Cars imo - there's no explanation of whether humans are around or what, why the world is built for humans but inhabited by cars... etc).
Nemo looks amazing but I don't really like "journey" type stories (I don't class Up in the same way- it's also one of my favourites - it was just something quite different).

It reminds me of L. Frank Baum's writing style: "They went HERE! Then they went THERE! Then they went HOME! the end."

When done right that can be awesome!

Yeah, that's pretty much what life is like when you're under 10 anyway imo.

To be fair Don Quixote, Tom Jones and the Pickwick Papers are all structured like that and they suck balls.

heh i mean where are all the outraged lynchians, for instance?

"They went HERE. They fucked HER. They may not EXIST. HOME is a concept that doesn't exist outside of middle america's sugardreams. There is only CHAOS. The end."

"Plus, Angelo Badalamenti can make nonsense seem deep."

poll: the little kid in this vs. the little kid in bad santa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TuRbk-00Sw&feature=player_embedded

did anyone else find it weird that up and gran torino start from the exact same premise?

― some dudes are bigger than others (s1ocki), Monday, June 22, 2009 10:02 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this occurred to me too. someone must have done some sort of mashup/mixed version by now rite?

― johnny crunch, Saturday, December 5, 2009 12:53 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok, i can't wait to play that when I get home.

NV those are three of my favorite books ;_;

Me too I was being snarkastic :)

Oh man, what a relief. I had no idea how you could read all those three and hate them all! Unless they were assigned, I guess.

"I'm only majoring in post-Cervantes/Fielding lit because I hate it."

This movie is a little bit of a disaster, isn't it?

no

What a disaster for kenan.

It starts out wonderfully, and then it becomes cluttered, loud, not-much-sense-making, way too action-heavy, and the kid really is annoying.

Loved the dog, though.

Christopher Plummer had an age problem in "Inside Man", too. He was a Nazi officer? Wouldn't that make him... oh... 90-ish? This one is worse. He must have been about 150.

I know, that really upends the suspension of disbelief in this cartoon. With talking dogs. And iridescent flightless bird.

Also he was evil for no reason. Other than "he's a crazy person".

You'd be crazy evil too if you'd been stranded in the middle of nowhere looking for an elusive bird for 60 years.

Bitter because no-one believed him, wanting to prove bird's existence at all costs, iirc?

Right. Kenan, you are just making him more bitter and crazy.

seen this a bunch of times now and like all pixar movies, it grows on you. It's such a beautiful looking movie and there's awesome talking dogs and old dudes facing off with canes and dentures and the last bit when he silently watches the house disappear... ;_;

I don't know why anyone is so bothered by a 150 year old villain and talking dogs when the entire premise is A HOUSE FLOWN BY HELIUM BALLOONS.

I wouldn't call it a disaster but I'd probably place this movie near the bottom third of Pixar movies (above Cars and a Bug's Life, but worse than the others)

roz otm

i think its funny, pixar always bang on abt how storytelling is key, but like i felt like this was one movie that suffered for it, they won't even take a detour from the plot/character development when i wanted more than some retarded bird in the jungle

^ This. I did not like the bird much. I definitely did not like the kid. I didn't much care how any of the conflict turned out, since all of it felt so totally pulled out of someone's ass. I sympathized deeply with the old man -- I wanted this movie to go away and leave me alone.

I feel like some people in this thread are willfully forgetting that this is a kids movie. The bird was included so the 5 year-old set could giggle, not so 20 and 30 somethings would find the film more compelling.

I feel like this movie was great

"It's a kids' movie" is no excuse for anything. When other movies are uncompelling, "it's just a movie" is an equally bad argument.

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation as to why some elements of a movie might be unappealing to adults. Personally I'm sick of smart-ass cartoon movies that don't have the faith to do anything aimed squarely at young kids without delivering the obligatory knowing wink to the grown-ups.

I definitely think the film kinda falls apart in the second half, but my problem is more with the bog-standard villain and chase scene than, as others have complained, the bird and the kid.
(xpost)

I may be severely out of touch with what young children are like.

Well I guess we all are, but it's like when we had that thread of pile-on for Dora the Explorer and I'm saying "ffs it's a show for toddlers why does everything always have to be about us?"

Pixar often manages to make movies that are truly appealing to all ages, though. It's one of the things people mean when they talk about Pixar raising the standards for writing and animation.

They do, and I thought they did that again this time, at least until the stupid villain showed up and it devolved into a predictable mess.

I think there's lots in Up to appeal to grown-ups. It might be possible for all of a movie to appeal to all ages but I think I doubt that. I guess what usually happens is that different ages take different things from a movie - that would apply even to your classicest of classics, whatever they might be.

It might be interesting if Pixar made a film solely aimed at adults, and dispensed with the wacky soft-toy characters and such. But I don't know what the financial implications of that wd be, and I don't suppose any studio is likely to spend 3 years developing something that can only make half the money of their usual movies.

in a way i think those wacky soft-toy characters are aimed at adults, or more specifically, adults' "inner child"

i liked the bird i just coulda used more awesome jungle crap, i thought kids were into that kinda stuff too

Ha NV Disney got rankled that there was like zero wacky soft-toy characters merchandising potential for UP, that no one would want a cranky-old-man bedsheet set and action figure. My mom even said the dog was too generic Everydog to be a good toy (I totes disagreed, as 10-yr-old dogless Abbott wld have had stuffed toy Dug at the top of the Santa list).

Disney execs later came out w/some statement like "not every Pixar film has to rake in toy cash I guess ;_;." Which, you know, I cld head out into town and easily purchase an entire roomful of different CARS items.

My mom was really taken aback when I casually referred to the kid as Asian. "I thought he was just fat! Seriously, he was supposed to be Asian? Do they have to make everything so politically correct these days? blah blah blah"

Like I said earlier, I write away the "villain is probably 150 years old by now" as part of its crazy 18th-century storytelling style. Moll Flanders at one or another point has like four kids, then she says she's had two kids, suddenly she's in America for no reason, doesn't seem to bother Daniel Defoe. I can roll with it, too.

I was thinking it was Jules Verne or H. Rider Haggard but yeah it's totally deliberate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1rVF8Np4xw

hope u caught the Itchy & Scratchy parody of the marriage sequence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml9hAN5km14

i need some time to think about this but the talking dogs in this movie are possibly my favorite thing ever

one time i was talking to a friend about this film when a squirrel ran in front of us, it was a perfect moment. :')

i can't remember if this was the same time i spent hours arguing that anyone who didn't cry multiple times during it was an unspeakable monster, probably some kind of high-level sociopath.

Everything about the dogs in this movie is great. Not a day goes by (more or less) when I don't hear someone declare "squirrel!" That's why the movie sucks. Should have been about talking dogs. It says it all that a movie with an intro as moving as this one has still boils down to "the talking dog movie." The people in this movie are so peripheral.

anyone who didn't cry multiple times during it was an unspeakable monster

watched this at home with my 5-year-old, he watched it through but without much interest, i didn't cry and sort of started checking e-mail at some point, later they showed it at a school event and we went but about halfway through he got bored and we went home

and that is my exciting pixar story

how does it feel to be a monster

I have started referring to executive/management ADD symptomatic behavior as "Squirrel Syndrome" thanks to this film. I hope I didn't already say this upthread.

Disappointingly, many adults without children have not seen this terrific movie (really, for the music alone, well deserved oscar, that) and many adults WITH children have "seen" it but can only remember it in the same sense that they remember any other cartoon that their offspring have watched over and over again, which is to say they know it exists and is popular with hatchlings, but not much else. So I have to explain the joke a lot, making it less of a joke and more of a painful commentary on the fact that I pay attention to animated films and am weird/have "too much time on my hands."

never apologize, bro

>anyone who didn't cry multiple times

After loving this at the cinema (per way upthread), I got the blu-ray and the first time I watched it again the opening sequence was like an emotional daisycutter - plenty of films can leave me momentarily teary-eyed, but with this I let out an actual anguished sob. Outside of real life sadnesses this is highly unusual, even for this soft old git.

I'm confused about all you crybabies: did anything other than the opening segment make you weepy? I mean, it sure made me weepy, and has on subsequent viewings, too, but only the opening, but that partly accounts for my relative dislike of the rest of the film, or at least what I find to be its tonal divergence. The opening segment seems like a stand-alone thing, perfect and powerful. The talking dog comedy also its own thing, but it's a different movie. That is, given the emotional strength of the opening, I never would have guessed we'd end up with talking dogs fighting in airplanes.

why should a movie be all one tone all the way through? it's all the same story. it makes a stronger whole imo.

Yeah, I think it made the transition from tear-jerking love story to wacko adventure very nimbly, while never losing sight of its original themes.

Yeah, I file Up firmly under I don't get it. I would have rather watched a feature-length talking dog movie, words I never imagined ever typing in my life.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTQwMTc0NTE0NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzIwNzIyMQ@@._V1._SY317_CR4,0,214,317_.jpg

well the house isn't just a house, it kind of comes to signify his relationship with his wife and everything that was left unfinished with it. so i think that opening sequence is left bubbling under throughout, coming to the surface now and then. that it's almost unstated means that it can coexist in parallel with the wacky talking talks and airships adventure without it being tonally jarring.

well the house isn't just a house, it kind of comes to signify his relationship with his wife and everything that was left unfinished with it.

The movie was hardly subtle about this, though it was less about what was unfinished and more about what needed to be let go (get it? like a balloon?). Doesn't negate the fact that the talking dog's story was more compelling than the old man's and the boy's emotional quests.

ya. i guess you just have a small stone where there should be a heart. :'(

http://chzmemebase.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/internet-memes-so-call-me-squirrel.jpg

it's def extremely loose and all over the place (esp for a pixar movie) but i didn't find that to be a problem.

ya. i guess you just have a small stone where there should be a heart. :'(

The thing is, I find the start one of the most moving explorations of love and death I've ever experienced at the movies! I just have a hard time negotiating my way back to that place after flying talking dogs and blimp battles and giant exotic birds and fat kids, et al.

That bird is straight-up hilarious, though.

Lots of stuff in this movie is hilarious. That's why I wish it was all dog and animals. Imagine a movie with a secret society of talking dogs left to fend for themselves in the jungle after their master died!

tbf several of them died in tiny plane crashes

makes u think

welp that's darkened it a bit.

<3 call me maybe doug.

Er, lotta doggy parachutes in my memory of this film.

the opening sentence always gets me

The opening has made me cry a couple times, or at least tear up. But I get back on the verge of it when he opens up a part of the scrapbook he'd never seen before and found out his wife was happy with everything that happened and the way it happened.

Oh god, that bit. Devastating.

I love the looseness of tone, but it could come across as uneven I guess. The whole visual side has really stuck with me too; Pixar have made a lot of great looking films, and this might be their most beautiful - the landscapes, and colours and hugeness of the environment are wonderfully done.

That's ironic, because I always thought of this as one of the lest visually interesting Pixar films. The jungle is empty - no creatures but that bird. The rest is set in a barren, rocky valley. Compared to the incredible water stuff in "Nemo" (my vote for best looking), or the planet in "Wall-E," or even the landscapes in the otherwise terrible "Cars," I think "Up" is just full of missed opportunities, on both the story and visual front. BUt dif. folks, etc. Obviously a lot of people like this one.

I had totally forgotten about the scrapbook bit. Yeah, that's brings back the heartbreak, all right.

This is a sparse movie. Maybe he really went back into the house and killed himself instead of unleashing the balloons. Everything after that moment is just his afterlife ride into salvation.

If the balloons were already inflated, they should have taken the house Up into the sky already. See what I'm sayin?

Maybe he's still dreaming as a kid about his adventures as a lonely old man.

And he's Korean.

Maybe it's Doug's dream about talking humans.

I just have a hard time negotiating my way back to that place after flying talking dogs and blimp battles and giant exotic birds and fat kids, et al.

Ehh, I think the movie was fine despite this. There's clearly a major shift in gears but there's really nothing wrong with a movie that tries to be two things

I mean, it's no Full Metal Jacket or anything.

The sadness doesn't really go that far away though, it's always the why of what he's doing and where he's stubbornly going to. I mean yeah it gets sidelined by an adventure, but that kind of the point?

oh oh oh and I love the hero stubble. stubble! makes you tougher!

Lots of stuff in this movie is hilarious. That's why I wish it was all dog and animals. Imagine a movie with a secret society of talking dogs left to fend for themselves in the jungle after their master died!

― Josh in Chicago

see this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxJj64D5alE

bah - embedding disabled - you'll have to click the link

ha, thanks! hadn't seen that

Wall.E way more uneven, to me, than Up.

I've avoided spoilers, but apparently "Brave" gets derailed halfway through by its own silly digression. Still excited to see it with my daughters. They like silly digressions.

Wall.E way more uneven, to me, than Up.

Good point. The first section of WALL·E is so wonderful that I tend to forget how much I (now) actively dislike all the human stuff in the 2nd half.

it was all real!

https://p.twimg.com/AxWTRZyCAAAIYle.jpg

I rewatched Wall-E a few weeks back and I don't think any of the spaceship stuff is so markedly worse than the (fantastic) opening act.

Was never a big fan of Up, in comparison to Wall-E or otherwise, but ... after the recent Cars 2/Brave twofer ... man ...

i'm glad this thread was revived with an adorable picture, i really hated to think the same circular conversation going on here a couple weeks ago was still at it

A list of the Pixar movies that made me tear up:

Wall-E
Toy Story 3

So is Monsters Inc. 2 next up? Trailer for that looked sort of straight to DVD.

Watching almost anything with my kids makes me tear up.

Ratatouille was my most recent favorite. Toy Story 3 was great but still just a sequel.

Otherwise ive found diminishing returns with each film since 2007.

There are more Pixar films that make me tear up than don't.

If you did not cry at the "When Somebody Loved Me" bit in Toy Story 2, man . . .

haven't seen Brave yet but imo outside the Cars movies Pixar is still pretty much unimpeachable with the 07-09 run being especially great

Toy Story 3 was great but still just a sequel.

Matters not if both sequels are greater than the original.

So is Monsters Inc. 2 next up?

Wreck-It-Ralph is next in line.

Wreck-It Ralph is Disney but not Pixar

does brave have a crying moment?

Scenes in Pixar movies that made Jer cry:

-the "When She Loved Me" sequence in Toy Story 2
-the final shot of Monsters Inc.
-the entire first 10-15 mins of Up
-the final scene in Toy Story 3

If that doesn't seem like a lot--and if you think me heartless for not tearing up at Finding Nemo or Wall.E--know that I honestly think I've cried at less than 10 movies in my life as an adult, and there's four of them right there.

xps oh I thought it was Pixar. d'oh

Cars 2 made me wanna cry, too, but for very different reasons than any of the aforementioned.

The two Cars movies are the only Pixar works I've not seen (well, haven't seen Brave yet either). I think my cry moment's are the same as jer's.

*moments

the final scene in Toy Story 3

The welling up bit for me was when the toys were holding hands sliding down towards the furnace. The final scene was ruined a bit by grown-up Andy being kind of a idiot.

Final scene's weight didn't have much to do with Andy, but rather the little girl and the toys' reactions to Andy.

I should get around to seeing Toy Story 3 some day.

haven't seen Brave yet but imo outside the Cars movies Pixar is still pretty much unimpeachable with the 07-09 run being especially great

Cosign, especially on that last part.

I did, however, enjoy the Cars ride at Disneyland yesterday so hey.

Coming up on the tenth anniversary. Definitely a keeper. (All the complaints about the film on this thread leave me puzzled.)

Anyway, Disney shared this yesterday: the original storyboards for THAT sequence, set aside the final result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoyZmu0IOKc

i cried at the opening of this movie in the theatre.

i remember next to nothing about the remainder of the film, which i remember being bored by. the complaints upthread have jogged my memory.

same. the opening eclipsed the rest of the film for me and I still feel awfully sad about that scene

I haven't seen this in eons, but keep meaning to. Love it.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but the marriage portmanteau in this feels mawkish and manipulative, whereas the silent pathos of WALL-E quite reliably evokes a tear.
(NB what is this "mawk" that "mawkish" things are like?)

Not least because Wall-e>>>>>>>>>>>Up

Up is Pixar's most inventive film apart from anything else, perhaps the best as a result.

it's certainly up there

I'm going to admit while at the Lego Movie last night when the trailer for Toy Story 4 came on (the teaser which is just the characters with "Both Sides Now" playing) I welled up in tears.

Time to (re)mix it up! This pixel perfect adventure is one you don’t want to miss. pic.twitter.com/gDWWbRtwHb

— Pixar (@Pixar) February 18, 2021

wow

official!