UP

UP 

Directed by Pete Docter

Screenplay by Bob Peterson ,Pete Docter

Story by Pete Docter ,Bob Peterson ,Tom McCarthy

Produced by Jonas Rivera

Edited by Kevin Nolting

Music by Michael Giacchino

Production companies Walt Disney Pictures ,Pixar Animation Studios

Distributed by Walt Disney Studios ,Motion Pictures

Release dates  May 13, 2009 (Cannes) ,May 29, 2009 (United States)

Running time 96 minutes

Country United States

Language English

Budget $175 million

Box office $735.1 million

STORY LINE

As a young boy, Carl Fredricksen idolizes explorer Charles Muntz. But after he is accused of presenting a fake giant bird skeleton from Paradise Falls in South America, Muntz returns to the area intent on clearing his name by capturing a living specimen. Carl meets fellow Muntz fan Ellie, who confides her desire to move her "clubhouse"—an abandoned house in the neighborhood—to a cliff overlooking Paradise Falls.

The two later marry and live in the rebuilt house, with Carl working as a balloon salesman and Ellie a tour guide at the zoo. After Ellie suffers a miscarriage, the couple decide to refocus and begin saving for a trip to Paradise Falls, but are constantly forced to spend their savings on more urgent needs. Years pass and Carl decides to arrange the trip as a surprise for Ellie. On the day that Carl plans to tell Ellie, she falls ill and is hospitalized, dying soon after.

Some time later, a now-retired Carl stubbornly holds out in the house while the neighborhood around him is replaced by skyscrapers. After Carl accidentally strikes a construction worker during a mishap, the court deems him a public menace, requiring his relocation to an assisted living facility. However, Carl resolves to keep Ellie's promise, turning his house into a makeshift airship using countless helium balloons and flying away. Russell, an eight-year-old Asian-American "Wilderness Explorer" who visits Carl in an effort to earn his final merit badge for assisting the elderly, becomes an accidental stowaway. Before Carl can land and send Russell home, they encounter a storm that propels the house to South America.

The house lands on a mesa opposite Paradise Falls. Carl and Russell harness themselves to the still-buoyant house and begin to walk it across the mesa, hoping to reach the falls before the balloons deflate. Russell encounters a giant, colorful flightless bird, whom he names Kevin. They then meet Dug, a Golden Retriever who wears a special collar with a device that translates his thoughts into English; he joins them on their trek.

A pack of fierce dogs led by the Doberman Pinscher Alpha take Carl, Russell, Dug, and Kevin to their master, Charles Muntz. He invites them aboard his dirigible and talks about his search for the bird. Carl realizes Muntz’s obsession with finding the bird has driven him mad, to the point of killing innocent travelers whom he suspected of seeking the bird themselves. When Russell sees the skeleton's resemblance to Kevin, Muntz becomes suspicious of their intentions. The dogs pursue Carl, Russell, and Dug until Kevin saves them. Russell urges Carl to help Kevin get home and reunite with her chicks, but then Muntz captures her. He starts a fire beneath Carl's house, forcing him to choose whether to rescue it or Kevin; Carl chooses his home.

Carl looks through Ellie's childhood scrapbook and discovers that she filled in the blank pages with photos of their marriage, accompanying a note written from her hospital bed, thanking him for the "adventure" and encouraging him to have a new one. Reinvigorated, he goes outside, only to see Russell set out after Kevin using a leaf blower and some balloons to fly. Carl lightens his house by throwing out furniture and keepsakes. Muntz captures Russell, but Carl and Dug board the dirigible and free both Russell and Kevin. When Muntz pursues them to the tethered house, Carl lures Kevin back to the airship using a piece of chocolate. Muntz leaps after them, but his leg catches on balloon strings, and he falls to his death. The house descends out of sight.

Carl and Russell reunite Kevin with her chicks before returning home in Muntz's airship. Russell finally receives his "Assisting the Elderly" badge, and Carl presents Russell with a grape soda bottle cap that Ellie gave to Carl when they first met, which he now dubs "The Ellie Badge". Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Carl, the house lands on the cliff beside Paradise Falls, fulfilling his promise to Ellie.

ANIMATION

Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains of Canaima National Park;tepuis were previously featured in another Disney film, Dinosaur. In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, by jeep, and by helicopter.They also spent three nights there painting and sketching, and encountering ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, frogs, and snakes. They then flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls. 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."The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also they had to be realistic because those mountains exist in real life.The filmmakers then visited the Sacramento Zoo to observe a Himalayan monal for Kevin's animation. The animators designed Russell as an Asian-American, and modeled Russell after similar looking Peter Sohn, a Pixar storyboard artist who is Korean-American. The Pixar employees frequently sketch each other during meetings, and a drawing of Sohn became the model for Russell.

While the studio usually designs their characters to be caricatured, Carl was even more so, being only at least three heads high. He was not given elderly features such as liver spots or hair in his ears to keep him appealing, yet giving him wrinkles, pockmarks on his nose, a hearing aid, and a cane to make him appear elderly. Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's head is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while Russell is rounded like a balloon.The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural,although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley".Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham, and George Booth influenced the human designs. Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house.New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers. To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics.The directors had various rules for Carl's movements: he could not turn his head more than 15–20 degrees without turning his torso as well, nor could he raise his arms high. However, they also wanted him to grow more flexible near the end of the film, transforming into an "action hero".

A technical director calculated that to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that such a high number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size. There are 10,297 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and a varying number in other scenes.

Music

Main article: Up (film score)

Up is the third Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino, after The Incredibles and Ratatouille. What Pete Docter wanted most importantly out of the music was the emotion, so Giacchino wrote a character theme-based score that producer Jonas Rivera thought enhanced the story. At the beginning of the movie, when young Carl is in the movie theater watching a newsreel about Muntz, the first piece of music heard is "Muntz's Theme", which starts out as a celebratory theme, and echoes through the film when Muntz reappears 70 years later. "Ellie's Theme" is first heard when she is introduced as a little kid and plays several times during the film in different versions; for instance, during the sequence where Carl lifts his house with the balloons, the theme is changed from a simple piano melody to a full orchestral arrangement. Giacchino has compared the film to opera since each character has a unique theme that changes during a particular moment in the story.

The score was released as a digital download on May 26, 2009, three days before the film opened in theaters. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score,and the 2010 BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. It is the first score for a Pixar film to win the Oscar (Randy Newman also won for Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 3, but in the category of Best Original Song).

REVIEW

No one is too old to live an adventure

This lovely film tells the story of Carl Fredrickson, a little friendly widower who lives alone in a house restored along with his late wife, Ellie, whose memory he cherishes constantly. Forced to leave his home, threatened by real-estate interests, to live in a nursing home where he didn't want to go, Carl decides to go on a long journey that always wanted to do with his wife but that life never allowed... and departs with your home through a system that he created and that makes it fly. But the journey is bound to change radically when he meets the scout Russell, eight-year-old, grabbed on his porch, an unwitting passenger on that trip.

Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, two brilliant directors of Pixar Animation Studio behind hits like "Wall-e", "Monsters Inc." or "Finding Nemo", this film has a number of experienced voices and a touching soundtrack, which earned the Academy Award that year for Best Original Score. A curious fact: the place represented as a destination point for Carl's trip - the fictional Paradise Falls - exists on the real life, in the border between Venezuela and Brazil: its Mount Roraima.

The most touching on this film is to see the love of Carl and Ellie, alive even after her death and visible in the way he keeps her memory alive and ever present. Russell's goodness also move us, especially when he is confronted with the harsh ways of stubborn Carl, who sees in Russell a problem. Another deeply moving character is Dough, a friendly and affectionate dog who speaks through a device placed on his leash.

For all these things, "Up" is a film for the whole family, is a film that touches us, moves us and thrills. It proves that, if love cannot move mountains can still move homes, and that no one is too old to live an adventure or fulfill a dream.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(2009_film)