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Carl & Ellie from Up Part 2

 Please click here to see Carl & Ellie Part 1.

Some facts about Up:

1. All characters in “Up” are based upon circles and rectangles, except for the villains who are triangles. Not only are Carl and Ellie based on squares and circles, but objects around them are based on their shapes, like their chairs and picture frames. When they both appear in a photograph, the frame is both circle and square.

2. The villain Charles Muntz is named after Charles Mintz, the Universal Pictures executive who in 1928 stole Walt Disney’s production rights to his highly-successful “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoon series. This led Walt Disney to create Mickey Mouse, who soon eclipsed Oswald in popularity. Muntz is the fifth animated Disney villain to fall to his death – following the Wicked Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937), Ratigan (The Great Mouse Detective, 1986), McLeach (The Rescuers Down Under, 1990), Gaston (Beauty and the Beast, 1991), and Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996). He is the first Pixar villain to do so.

3. In June 2009, 10-year-old Colby Curtin from Huntington Beach, California, was suffering from the final stages of terminal vascular cancer. Her dying wish was to live long enough to see “Up” (2009). Unfortunately, Colby was too sick to leave home and her family feared she would die without seeing the film. A family friend contacted Pixar, and a private screening was arranged for Colby. The company flew an employee with a DVD copy of “Up”, along with some tie-in merchandise from the film. Colby couldn’t see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed, so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film. Seven hours after viewing the film, Colby passed away.

4. If Carl’s house was approximately 1600 square feet, and the average house weighs between 60-100 pounds per square foot, it weighs 120,000 pounds. If the average helium balloon can carry .009 pounds (or 4.63 grams), it would take 12,658,392 balloons to lift his house off the ground. (20,622 balloons appear on the house when it first lifts off.)

5. Carl Fredricksen’s face and gruff personality are based on actors Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau.

6. Dug’s ‘point’ pose, where his entire tail, back, and head is in a perfectly straight line, is an homage to the identical pose that Mickey’s dog Pluto often makes. Dug also shares a similar color scheme to Pluto.

7. “Up” was the first film produced by Pixar to be shown in 3D. “Up”‘s musical score has become the 9th musical score (and the 3rd from an animated film) to win the Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for “Best Original Score”. The other previous winners are “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), “Jaws” (1975), “Star Wars” (1977), “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992), “The English Patient” (1996), and “The Lord of the Rings: The Retorn of the King” (2003). “Up” was the first film to be nominated for Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Animated Feature.

8. Film debut of Jordan Nagai, who voices Russell. Originally, his older brother Hunter was auditioning for the part, and Nagai simply came along with him. About 400 children had showed up for the auditions, but Nagai stood out because he would not stop talking. Director Pete Docter later said that “as soon as Jordan’s voice came on we started smiling because he is appealing and innocent and cute and different from what I was initially thinking.”

9. When the dogs start attacking Russell with airplanes at the end, this aerial fight literally becomes a ‘dogfight’. Also, the dogs refer to each other with “Grey leader”, “Grey One”, “Grey Two”, etc. This is a nod to “Star Wars” (1977), where pilots referred to each other with Red Leader, Red One, etc., and it also jokingly refers to the myth that dogs cannot see colors, only black, white and shades of gray.

10. All of the dogs except for Dug are named after letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc) although this could relate to rankings in a dog pack, where the lead male is known as the Alpha, then Beta and so on. This is supported by the fact that when Dug puts Alpha in the Cone of Shame, all the other dogs begin referring to Dug as Alpha. The voices of both Dug and Alpha are performed by the same actor, Bob Peterson. The three main dog characters, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, as well as being named for the Ancient Greek alphabet, also reference three classes of workers in Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World”. It is also worth noting that Muntz’s “chef” is a dog named Epsilon, another class of worker from “Brave New World”.

Source: IMDb.

Carl & Ellie from Up Part 1

“Up” is a 2009 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Pete Docter, the film centers on an elderly widower named Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner) and an earnest young Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai). By tying thousands of balloons to his home, 78-year-old Carl sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America and to complete a promise made to his lifelong love. The film was co-directed by Bob Peterson, with music composed by Michael Giacchino. Docter began working on the story in 2004, which was based on fantasies of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating. He and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days in Venezuela gathering research and inspiration.

The designs of the characters were caricatured and stylized considerably, and animators were challenged with creating realistic cloth. The floating house is attached by a varying number between 10,000 and 20,000 balloons in the film’s sequences. “Up” was Pixar’s first film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D. “Up” was released on May 29, 2009 and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film to do so. The film became a great financial success, accumulating over $731 million in its theatrical release. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, making it the second animated film in history to receive such a nomination (and Pixar’s first Best Picture nomination), following “Beauty and the Beast” (1991).

Carl Fredricksen is a shy, quiet boy who idolizes explorer Charles F. Muntz. Muntz has been accused of fabricating the skeleton of a giant bird he claimed to have discovered in Paradise Falls, and vows to return there to capture one alive. One day, Carl befriends Ellie, who is also a Muntz fan. She confides to Carl her desire to move her “clubhouse” — an abandoned house in the neighborhood — to a cliff overlooking Paradise Falls. Carl and Ellie eventually get married and grow old together in the restored house, and they planned to have children, but Ellie was diagnosed as infertile, so Carl wanted to fullfill their promise of travel to South America. They repeatedly pool their savings for a trip to Paradise Falls, but end up spending it on more pressing needs. An elderly Carl finally arranges for the trip, but Ellie suddenly becomes ill and dies.

This is just the begining of the “Up’s” plot, but these minutes pay all the rest of the movie. I think that “Carl & Ellie” is the most heartbreaking sequence of a Pixar’s movie ever. If you never seen “Up” don’t wait more time and go watch it. And if you already watched, remember the Carl & Ellie’s love story with the YouTube video below. And you can drop a tear if you wish. Or maybe two.

Text: Wikipedia. IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/.

Click here to see Carl & Ellie Part 2.

Movie Couples

Here are the answers for the Movie Quotes Post. If you hit hundred percent, congratulations! You really are a movie fanatic!

Quiz-1: Al Pacino, Scarface, 1983
Quiz-2: Anne Hathaway to Jake Gylenhaal, Love & Other Drugs, 2010
Quiz-3: Jim Carrey, Yes, Man, 2008
Qquiz-4: Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, 1999
Qquiz-5: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 500 Days of Summer, 2009
Qquiz-6: Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada, 2006
Quiz-7: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, 500 Days of Summer, 2009
Quiz-8: Anna Faris, The House Bunny, 2008
Quiz-9: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, 2008
Quiz-10: Daniel Craig, 007 Skyfall, 2012
Quiz-11: Bill Murray, Groundhog Day, 1993
Quiz-12: Morgan Freeman, The Shawshank Redemption, 1994
Quiz-13: Leonardo Di Caprio, The Great Gatsby, 2013
Quiz-14: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jingle All the Way, 1996
Qquiz-15: Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971
Quiz-16: Woody Harrelson, Zombieland, 2009

Now, some more gifs to test your knowledge about movies. Try to tell who are the actors and actresses and what are the movies in the gifs below. Answers in the next post:

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Hold me in your arms