Extra Blog, Up, By John Lyver

‘Up’ the new computer animated feature from Pixar, is a humorous and touching story about an Old man(Mr. Fredrickson) dealing with the lose of his wife and the lose of his and his wifes dream of reaching paradise falls. As he tries to live out his life in peace and quiet he is confronted by two issues in the real world, increasing urbanization of his town in which he is the last house left on the block, with construction all around him and by a young Boy Scout(wilderness scout) named Russell. As he tries to escape having to live in a retirement home he decides to attach numerous ballons to his house to make it fly and enable him to escape from the old folks home and the urban environment. However, he is unable to escape the Wilderness Scout who somehow manages to get stuck on his house as it takes off. Mr. Fredrickson is trapped with the new responsibility of watching after Russell while trying to get his home to paradise falls. This movie is amazingly beautiful in its animation and its scenery, the characters also move in very believable ways while still retaining their cartoon like qualities.

‘Up’ like its other earlier Pixar movies contain great use of 3D like images on a 2D screen. The characters contain amazing depth, shape and colors while still looking very human in appearance and in motion, even if all their physical features aren’t completely life like, for example Mr. Fredrickson has a very large and angular square shaped head. The dogs in this movie also have very believable movements, this can especially be seen in the dog ‘Doug’ who is the main dog Russell and Mr. Fredrickson befriend, besides the fact that Doug can speak to them in English (and sometimes in other languages depending the setting of his collar).  Along with the believable physical movements the use object motions are lifelike and detailed as well. While Russell and Mr.Fredrickson stand on the porch of his flying house you can even see the hairs on Russell’s move in the wind in a realistic fashion.

The use of color in this movie is very well done. This can be seen in all over the movie in every scene especially in the balloons, one scene in particular is when Mr. Fredrickson’s floating house flies past a young girls window as she is playing and the colors of the light coming through the balloons lights up the room with all sorts of different colors. In paradise falls there is a stark contrast in colors depending on whether they are showing the top of the falls which contains a lot of rocks of mainly dull colors while they are in the forest you see a very large range of bright colors of the plants. The use of color on their bird friend ‘Kevin’ who looks to be some sort of large ostrich like bird is also very eye catching. This use of color can also be an indication of which characters are friend and foe. Mr. Fredrickson’s house has some interesting and pleasing colors as well as Russell’s uniform showing they are people the audience should be pleased with, while in contrast the villain’s air balloon is a dry color of gray and his hide out area in a valley filled with the bones is void of life and color other then dull rocky colors indicating he is a harsh and unfriendly character.

‘Up’ is an amazingly beautiful movie filled with many moments of laughter, fear and a few tears. It contains many visual characteristics that are subtle and not always noticed but that make an overall impact on what we are seeing and feeling through out the movie.

I commented on Chris DeMarco’s blog at http://cfdemarco.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/animated-movie-post-lilo-and-stitch/#comment-49

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