Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Step 1: Hold onto your seats as Pixar takes you on yet another delightful adventure Up, up and away.

Step 2: Truly marvel Pixar’s innate ability to tell a wonderful story again and again and again. Up comes from the brilliant mind of Bob Peterson, a Pixar veteran who also wrote the endearing Finding Nemo. He mixes the bittersweet, excitement and hilarity all into one compelling tale of Carl — a man who, at 78-years-old, decides to go on an adventure of a lifetime by tying several thousand balloons to his house and floating to South America. It had always been a lifelong dream of his and his dearly departed wife to travel there – and now he’s finally doing it before it’s too late. Except Carl gets an unexpected stowaway in the form of an 8-year-old wilderness explorer named Russell, who is desperate to get his final badge: helping an elderly person in need. Not like Carl needs any help.

Step 3: Also be wowed by the visuals once again. I mean, we almost take Pixar’s innovative animation for granted at this point. But once Carl and Russell make it to South America, to this weirdly remote place with lush tropical forests, expansive canyons with gorgeous cascading waterfalls – and a giant, colorful bird with a penchant for chocolate bars – things get very imaginative. There’s also a bitter once famous adventurer there, trying to reclaim his former glory by hunting the bird down. He has his pack of dogs, with collars that allow them to talk, do all the dirty work – except one dog, Dug, is just too nice a mutt and latches onto Carl and Russell instead. Yes, Carl’s eyes roll a lot in the movie.

Step 4: Realize you might be getting a little tired of the whole 3D thing. Those glasses are just not the most comfortable and honestly, with a Pixar movie, is the technology really necessary?

Step 5: A-list vocal ensemble not required. Although Pixar has employed a few top-tiered actors to voice their characters through the years (Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Holly Hunter, Ellen DeGeneres, to name a few), they’ve never made that a priority as some of the other animated films have. No, I truly believe the Pixar folk look for the best person to bring their characters to life, regardless of status. Last year’s Wall-E hardly had any talking at all, for heaven’s sakes. So with Up, veteran Ed Asner is absolutely spot-on as Carl, while newcomer Jordan Nagai is annoyingly adorable as the persistent Russell. Another veteran actor, Christopher Plummer, gives voice to the hardened explorer Charles Muntz – and writer/co-director Peterson multitasks as the faithful Dug.

Level of difficulty in watching Up: Easy peasy. Those Pixar guys never get it wrong.

Just hop onboard! Right after I posted that Disney was staging a 40-city train tour to promote their holiday release A Christmas Carol in 3D, which kicked off May 22 in Los Angeles, I got an invitation to take the tour myself. Gotta love the perks of the job.

Heading downtown L.A. to where the train was stationed, I walked through the five-car virtual tour, which showed the making of Charles Dickens’ classic, visualized by animation innovator Robert Zemeckis, using his performance capture technology. In the first couple of cars, I saw the character designs of Jim Carrey as Scrooge through the years, as well as Colin Firth as Scrooge’s nephew Fred; Gary Oldman as Scrooge’s faithful clerk Bob Cratchit; and Robin Wright Penn as Scrooge’s long lost love Belle.

As well, there were monitors showing behind- the-scenes footage of the actors performing their roles in what looked like tripped out wet suits, with black dots all over their faces and wires going every which way. I swear Zemeckis came up with this technology just to torture his actors. There were also artifacts from the Charles Dickens Museum in London, including a first edition of A Christmas Carol and other letters he wrote. As a literature major, this particularly fascinated me.

The best part of the train tour itself was the interactive kiosks. Using Hewlett Packard TouchSmart PCs, I was able to explore Dickens’ London told through his story, as well as morph my face into a character from the movie. It was kinda difficult to line up my eyes where I was supposed to, so in my picture I had my tongue sticking out from concentrating too hard. Lovely. I chose to morph with an image of Marley’s ghost since that was the only pic that didn’t show my tongue. You can even email the picture to yourself. I didn’t, though. Wonder if Jim Carrey emailed his pic, on the left there.

As I departed the train, I was ushered into a giant inflatable movie theater in which they showed a few scenes from the movie. Armed with the most high-tech 3D glasses I’d ever seen (wonder if they will be handing those out at the theaters when the movie opens), I watched Scrooge bah humbug his nephew Fred, after the later wished him a happy Christmas and then a scene in which Marley visits Scrooge to let him know he is in for a bumpy night. It all looked pretty damn cool. Even though I’ve seen A Christmas Carol a hundred times, this kind of animation technology will surely allow the story to stretch its imagination. Beware though — small kids (under 5, let’s say) might get a little scared by the imagery.

The whole Christmas-y feel to the tour (there’s even fake snow) was a little odd to experience in May, but I’d imagine by the time the train hits the Northeast in late fall, it’ll fit right in. Again, for details on when the train might be stopping in YOUR town, go to www.christmascaroltraintour.com.

Stay tuned to read what Jim Carrey had to say about playing another “Christmas hater” and working with Robert Zemeckis.