Last night I went with some friends to the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin. (if for some odd reason you haven't gotten around to going, please make sure you do soon! Great movies, great atmosphere, great food, and great beer! Plus with a student ID admission is only like $6) Anyway, we went and saw Disney Pixar's UP. I have to admit, I was mainly going for the company. I'd heard it was good, but I just figured I'd wait til it came out on video. I'm a huge animated film fan, but for some reason it just didn't look that entertaining to me in the previews. We'll get back to this later. Well, wasn't I so surprised! Like I said, I'd heard it was really good, but often when people tell me that I don't believe them.
I'll give you a quick summary though I'm sure most of you already get the gist. A little lonely and grumpy old man named Carl Fredrickson loves his house and the memories it holds, and decides to fly away by attaching a large sum of helium-filled balloons to the fireplace. His destination is South America; a place that he thinks will hold happiness for him. Surprisingly, as he is journeying upward a wilderness scout named Russel who had been waiting on his porch upon liftoff, knocks on his door. He grudgingly lets him in and eventually they get to South America. What awaits them is a new adventure full of danger and excitement.
-We're going to go ahead and give the predictability 8/10. Most everything I could see coming. There was quite a bit of obvious foreshadowing as far as major plot points go, but this is really the only complaint I had. There are little one liners and funny things that happen throughout however, that you DO NOT see coming.
Let's just say the above the line people knew what they were doing! The writing was brilliant. (Bob Peterson did the screenwriting, co-directed, and was the voice of Dug) There were a lot of emotions invoked very cleverly: good timing of sad moments followed by quick, intelligent humor that still leaves you a little heart broken and wanting more. My adventurous side came out as well, which is what the whole movie is about: so Kudos to them for that. Seriously though people, the humor was amazing. The comedic timing and unexpected oddities took me by surprise multiple times and had me laughing out loud. While this blog is still new, I'll go ahead and remind you that I'm a pretty stoic audience member. I don't laugh out loud and I don't cry. It takes a lot to get me to that point. They didn't get my tears (but I can assure you they got a lot from other people!) but they definitely got the lol's. For example, the dogs in the movie can speak via a transcoding collar that looks like one of those 'no bark' collars. The leader of the pack, a big Doberman (I think...it was some intimidating breed) has a screwy translator and speaks in a high-pitched voice not true to what we expect. He sounded like one of the little aliens from Space Jam. High-larious.
Moving on... the lighting? Brilliant. There was something very striking about the way the inside of the house looked while they were floating up in the sky vs when they were planted on the earth. This was just one instance, I won't bore you with them all. The music was also fabulous. I'm not going to spend much time on this, I'm not really an auditory person myself so I won't pretend to know everything and I don't always notice it much (which really just means they're doing their job well, huh?) Although if it helps you get the picture a little bit better, the same guy (Michael Giacchino) did the music for Star Trek.
And then there were the credits. PRECIOUS. The credits tell the epilogue through a series of still photos after the main action has completed. However, each picture correlated with the credit. For example, for Production Manager there was also a picture of one of the characters trying to organize a bunch of the dogs. For Sound, the picture was of two characters listening through a "homemade" phone made of string and tin cans. There was a picture of two people holding hairdryers "accidentally" creating wind that was up at the same time as Visual Effects. And on and on for all the major crew members. Very clever.
Let's talk advertising/marketing. I haven't yet decided if Disney's strategy was crappy or brilliant. So if you're like me, you've been watching the same two minute trailer in theaters for what seems like forever. I was already bored with the movie and I hadn't even started watching it yet. With that said, I wasn't excited about spending a lot of money to see it on the big screen. I had heard it was good, but was it really that good and worth the hype of my frinds? Um, yes. They definitely were able to invoke the element of surprise. By the time you see half the big blockbusters out there nowadays, you've been so bamboozled by all of the advertising and marketing you're super hyped up and excited only to be incredibly let down. I went in with low expectations. Was that part of the reason I liked it so much? Yes. The only reason? Heck no. It's definitely legitimately great, but I think it was that much better when I wasn't expecting to be blown away. So Disney Pixar basically are relying on word of mouth in a "modest" approach. I think it was a little risky not revealing a little bit more of the humor/plot line in the trailer, but there you go.
So that's it for my first post! Up was definitely worth the money and was an all around good film: good writing, good directing, lighting, music...and on and on. Props to directors Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson! I'll definitely be purchasing it on DVD asap. I'll probably even shell out my money to go and see it again in 3D...
I'll give you a quick summary though I'm sure most of you already get the gist. A little lonely and grumpy old man named Carl Fredrickson loves his house and the memories it holds, and decides to fly away by attaching a large sum of helium-filled balloons to the fireplace. His destination is South America; a place that he thinks will hold happiness for him. Surprisingly, as he is journeying upward a wilderness scout named Russel who had been waiting on his porch upon liftoff, knocks on his door. He grudgingly lets him in and eventually they get to South America. What awaits them is a new adventure full of danger and excitement.
-We're going to go ahead and give the predictability 8/10. Most everything I could see coming. There was quite a bit of obvious foreshadowing as far as major plot points go, but this is really the only complaint I had. There are little one liners and funny things that happen throughout however, that you DO NOT see coming.
Let's just say the above the line people knew what they were doing! The writing was brilliant. (Bob Peterson did the screenwriting, co-directed, and was the voice of Dug) There were a lot of emotions invoked very cleverly: good timing of sad moments followed by quick, intelligent humor that still leaves you a little heart broken and wanting more. My adventurous side came out as well, which is what the whole movie is about: so Kudos to them for that. Seriously though people, the humor was amazing. The comedic timing and unexpected oddities took me by surprise multiple times and had me laughing out loud. While this blog is still new, I'll go ahead and remind you that I'm a pretty stoic audience member. I don't laugh out loud and I don't cry. It takes a lot to get me to that point. They didn't get my tears (but I can assure you they got a lot from other people!) but they definitely got the lol's. For example, the dogs in the movie can speak via a transcoding collar that looks like one of those 'no bark' collars. The leader of the pack, a big Doberman (I think...it was some intimidating breed) has a screwy translator and speaks in a high-pitched voice not true to what we expect. He sounded like one of the little aliens from Space Jam. High-larious.
Moving on... the lighting? Brilliant. There was something very striking about the way the inside of the house looked while they were floating up in the sky vs when they were planted on the earth. This was just one instance, I won't bore you with them all. The music was also fabulous. I'm not going to spend much time on this, I'm not really an auditory person myself so I won't pretend to know everything and I don't always notice it much (which really just means they're doing their job well, huh?) Although if it helps you get the picture a little bit better, the same guy (Michael Giacchino) did the music for Star Trek.
And then there were the credits. PRECIOUS. The credits tell the epilogue through a series of still photos after the main action has completed. However, each picture correlated with the credit. For example, for Production Manager there was also a picture of one of the characters trying to organize a bunch of the dogs. For Sound, the picture was of two characters listening through a "homemade" phone made of string and tin cans. There was a picture of two people holding hairdryers "accidentally" creating wind that was up at the same time as Visual Effects. And on and on for all the major crew members. Very clever.
Let's talk advertising/marketing. I haven't yet decided if Disney's strategy was crappy or brilliant. So if you're like me, you've been watching the same two minute trailer in theaters for what seems like forever. I was already bored with the movie and I hadn't even started watching it yet. With that said, I wasn't excited about spending a lot of money to see it on the big screen. I had heard it was good, but was it really that good and worth the hype of my frinds? Um, yes. They definitely were able to invoke the element of surprise. By the time you see half the big blockbusters out there nowadays, you've been so bamboozled by all of the advertising and marketing you're super hyped up and excited only to be incredibly let down. I went in with low expectations. Was that part of the reason I liked it so much? Yes. The only reason? Heck no. It's definitely legitimately great, but I think it was that much better when I wasn't expecting to be blown away. So Disney Pixar basically are relying on word of mouth in a "modest" approach. I think it was a little risky not revealing a little bit more of the humor/plot line in the trailer, but there you go.
So that's it for my first post! Up was definitely worth the money and was an all around good film: good writing, good directing, lighting, music...and on and on. Props to directors Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson! I'll definitely be purchasing it on DVD asap. I'll probably even shell out my money to go and see it again in 3D...
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