Up

[MacGuffin]

Up Retells Don Quixote?
Source: Upcoming Pixar

Upcoming Pixar reader Joe points to Up's Wikipedia entry which has some new information about the film which does seem to have that ring of truth to it. The entry tells us:

Insider sources say this new film is a re-telling, somewhat, of the classic Don Quixote fable.

Joe adds, "Disney has tried forever to make an animated movie based on Don Quixote, maybe this is John Lassetter's way of realizing one of Walt's unfulfilled dream projects?".

Since it's Wikipedia, we can't easily judge its authenticity nor its accuracy.

UPDATE: I've decided to add some more information to add credence to this piece of information. From TIME Magazine, we know this about Up:

"Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson are preparing this "coming-of-old-age story" about a seventysomething guy who lives in a house that "looks like your grand-parents' house smelled." He befriends a clueless young Wilderness Ranger and gets into lots of alter kocker altercations. Says Pixar: "Our hero travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon."

And About.com provides this brief synopsis:

The title character, a middle-aged gentleman from the La Mancha region of Spain, becomes enchanted with the idea of chivalry and decides to seek adventure. Eventually, he is accompanied by a sidekick, Sancho Panza. With a dilapidated horse and equipment, together they seek glory, adventure, often in the honor of Dulcinea, Quijote's love. Quijote doesn't always act honorably, however, and neither do many of the other minor characters in the novel. Eventually Quijote is brought down to reality and dies shortly thereafter.

They are slightly similar, but it's really too early to tell.

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Pixar Doing Don Quixote
Source: Cinema Blend

The Spanish fictional character Don Quixote pretty much destroyed himself with his fruitless adventures chasing windmills, and adapting Quixote for the screen famously tore Terry Gilliam apart, as told in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. Telling the story of the man from La Mancha doesn't seem to end well for anyone, but that doesn't mean Pixar isn't up for the job.

According to Upcoming Pixar, the animation company's upcoming project Up may be a retelling of the classic Cervantes story. The movie's Wikipedia entry had been updated at the time they wrote it—it's since been deleted—to say "Insider sources say this new film is a re-telling, somewhat, of the classic Don Quixote fable. And one of the blog's readers adds, "Disney has tried forever to make an animated movie based on Don Quixote, maybe this is John Lassetter's way of realizing one of Walt's unfulfilled dream projects?"

What we do know about the plot so far is that it concerns an old man, a park ranger, who hooks up with a buddy and goes on some wild adventures. It's no stretch to imagine that the story is inspired by Don Quixote, but whether it's a direct retelling or not is hard to say. I mean, The Bucket List pretty much has the same plot, but no one is accusing Jack Nicholson of retelling Spanish classics.

Pixar is known for its smarty-pants storytelling and allusions, so it wouldn't surprise me if they went full-fledged literary adaptation with this one. Regardless, they've recognized that Quixote is a classic, enduring story, and are telling their spin on it, even if there are no windmills in sight this time.

[Ravi]

Pixar is known for its smarty-pants storytelling and allusions

[MacGuffin]

New Photo From Disney/Pixar's Up!
Source: ComingSoon

A new photo from Disney/Pixar's summer 2009 animated film Up is on display at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida and you can view it below! Directed by Pete Docter, Up is coming-of-old-age story about a seventy-something guy who lives in a house that "looks like your grandparents' house smelled." He befriends a clueless young Wilderness Ranger and gets into lots of alter kocker altercations. Pixar previous said, "Our hero travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon."


http://pixarplanet.com/blog/images/60.jpg

[modage]

Teaser:

[MacGuffin]

Docter Makes It Up In Up

Pete Docter, who is directing Pixar's upcoming computer-animated adventure film Up, told SCI FI Wire that the main challenge of the film has been creating a stylistic reality that is also believable.

"We're not just making things up unless we need to for the story," Docter said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26. "There are a couple things, for sure, that are not based in any sort of real life. But, hopefully, we'll find ways to piggyback on real things so that you find them believable in the film."

Up centers on a 78-year-old balloon salesman named Carl, who embarks on an adventure after tying his entire stock of balloons to his house and flying off to South America. Although the film's setting is the present day and most of the characters are human, the filmmakers are not attempting to make it look photorealistic.

"We have our main character, who is caricatured to such a degree that I think if you actually measure, his head is, like, 3 feet wide, and he's 5 feet tall and he's got limbs that are weird proportions," Docter said. "[Yet] he looks totally believable. You accept him as a real old man on the screen. But he's very caricatured. And so how does the cloth then behave on such a caricatured body? How do things--like even the scale of the balloons--what size is right? So it's been a lot of things like that, almost more artistic challenges than technical ones."

One element of the film that has not had to be enhanced is the landscape of the Venezuelan mountain range where Carl eventually lands. Docter said that it presented a whole different set of issues because it already looks so exotic.

"It is a tricky one, specifically, because it's such a weird, fantastic place that people are not familiar with already that you could photograph it, and half the audience would go, 'I don't believe that that really exists.' So we're straddling this line of, 'OK, we want to caricature it and make it [a] cartoon, and yet find enough believability so that people feel like it's not an alien planet or something.' It's still Earth. And we're still finding that. It's part of the fun." Up is scheduled for release on May 29, 2009.

[MacGuffin]

'Up' And Coming: 3-D Pixar Movie Tells A 'Coming Of Old Age' Story, Director Says
'It kind of defies description, because it's moving, it's emotional, it's active,' Pete Docter says.
Source: MTV
   
At their heart, most of Pixar's films are about connecting: a father with his son in "Finding Nemo," a hero with his family in "The Incredibles," a little robot with the whole universe in "Wall-E."

Pixar's newest film, "Up," came from a desire to do the exact opposite, director Pete Docter said.

"Basically, I'm not a guy that loves being around people all day. There's times where I just need to get away. This film is born of that feeling," Docter told MTV News. "Sometimes, you just need to get away from everything."

For 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), the geriatric hero of "Up," that desire is manifested quite literally in an early scene, when he winds up hooking hundreds of helium balloons to his house and soaring off through the skies to find a little peace and quiet among the clouds.

It's a last-ditch effort for an aging man to make good on a promise he once made to his dead wife, who always wanted to see the mountains of South America but never could.

And if you buy that sequence, you'll buy the whole film, Docter said, including scenes when Carl winds up battling terrifying villains and creatures alongside a 9-year-old Boy Scout named Russell (who stows away for the ride because he doesn't have a "help the elderly" badge) when he finally touches down.

"Carl used to be a balloon salesman, and so when the outside world is going to take his house, he ties all his surplus balloons, fills them with helium, and floats his entire house up into the sky off to South America — that's the image of the film," Docter said. "It kind of defies description, because it's moving, it's emotional, it's active, but it's weirdly poetic and doesn't make a lot of logical sense. And yet it's really the cornerstone of the film."

To Docter, that means finding a connection to a loved one when that loved one isn't even around and finding a connection to the universe when the universe has said you're past your usefulness.

"We've described it as a 'coming of old age' story," he said. "It's really like an unfinished love story, is kind of the way we're talking about it. This wonderful romance this guy had with his wife and she passes away and it's the unfinished business of dealing with that. The little kid [also has business he] needs to deal with — that's Russell — and so the two of them end up really needing each other and helping to finish each other's business."

Like all Pixar's films from now on, "Up" will be presented in 3-D. But unlike DreamWorks Animation, which is shooting its upcoming "Monsters vs. Aliens" using the process, "Up" is being made like any other film and being converted, Docter said.

"There's a whole other separate team that's following along that's doing the stereo version. We're going to educate each other on what's the best way to do the 3-D thing," he revealed. "So far, the difference is this. [He puts his hand over his eye.] If you close one eye, you're going to see what you'd see in another film."

"Up" is scheduled for a May 2009 release.

[Ravi]

FIXED

Trailer

[Reinhold]

broken

[modage]

[MacGuffin]

[modage]

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/01/21/new-up-footage-on-vimeo/

[Pozer]

pointless, ay?

[Stefen]

When does the Pixar backlash start? They're really churning these out, aren't they? I hope with the frequency they're making flicks, they don't lose their touch.

[Kal]

When does the Pixar backlash start? They're really churning these out, aren't they? I hope with the frequency they're making flicks, they don't lose their touch.

They usually release one per year, so I dont think that has changed?

[pete]

I think it'll be like Disney.  Remember when it was Walt and his three friends and everything was gold?  I think the current group of guys will be awesome for a while, but the people that replace them might not be as magical.