6/7/09

Disney's UP



This is the first time I'm posting a movie that is currently screened on the big screen. They did it again, Pixar's people made a terrific addition to their great latest Wall-E and Ratatouille. It seems Disney's cartoons are one of the very rare reasons to attend a movie in a theater amidst the endless garbage of Hollywood blockbuster releases.

A grumpy old man refuses to surrender his old house to the new urban wave of construction, overwhelmed by the loss of his wife, he decided to pursue the trip they always wanted to make but had constantly to give it up due to life's demands. UP fuses an imagination as wild as H. Myazaki's finest moments, a comedy that works for adults even more than kids, and a solid narrative. But above all, it has those great cinematic moments, some sequences without dialogue, where every shot is an irreplaceable piece of narrative.

Currently in theaters, I didn't catch the 3-D version but read good feedback about it (The New Yorker, June 8/15 issue: The Current Cinema). The movie is preceded by a funny Pixar short (one of the funniest I've seen lately): Partly Cloudy , (I hope it finds its way to the upcoming DVD), here's a short sequence.

This is Up's trailer, also excerpts from the soundtrack that accompanied some dialog-free sequences(here: married life). Overall Disney is creating a new standard for "classic", a quality that should be regarded like their Pinocchio, Bambi, Snow white... but with more grasp on real life and less (or no) references to fairy tales.

Wassim