I finally had the opportunity to catch Pixar’s latest work – Up. As a fan of Pixar from their very first movie, Toy Story, I had every intention of catching this in the movie theaters but various reasons prevented me at first. When I was ready to go, it had been playing for well over a month and I figured at this point, I should just wait till it hit the cheap movies. So I started waiting and as summer wore on, I continued to wait; sure that if I gave in, it would move to the cheap movies the next week and I’d be out the extra six dollars I would pay to see it in the first run theater. My patience was rewarded and this past weekend Up showed up at the local cheap movies.

Final Series Score: 12/12 – Perfect
Rewatchablity: 5/5 – Very High; After watching Up, I had to restrain myself from buying tickets to the next showing
Ending: 4.5/5 – Sublime; Everything you want in an ending, it had
Animation: 5/5 – Epic; Pixar continues to show why they’re the best American animators
Pros: Epic character development, more epic character development, even more epic character development, engaging storyline, sweet likeable characters, a real bad guy, was able to balance the serious with the funny and not have either feel wrong, a fulfilling ending
Cons: none

Story

As a young kid, Carl Fredricksen fell in love with the idea of being an explorer and going to the far corners of the Earth to discover the unknown that still existed. This love never diminished and lead him to finding the love of his life, Elie, who shared the same passion. They swore that one day they’d go to Angel Falls in South America but life got in way (as it always does) and before Carl realizes it, he’s a widowed and lonely old man. Before his sorrow and old age totally crush him, he decides to go on the trip that Elie and he could never get to and so starts a wonderful and exciting adventure full of surprises.

Thoughts and impressions

I remember reading an interview that John Lasseter of Pixar gave about the success of their movies back many years ago. At the time, CG animated movies where new and Pixar were pretty much the only people that made them in America. In the interview he disagreed with the idea that it was the CG that made Pixar’s movie great – it was their attention to developing memorable characters and the telling of a compelling story with these characters that made them successful.

Every Pixar movie displays this philosophy to a varying degree and I can’t help but notice that the better I like the movie, the better it showcases this philosophy. A movie like Cars ranks at the bottom because of my ambivalence towards the main character and his problems. On the other end of the scale, my favorites, Toy Story (1,2) and The Incredibles, have the memorable characters and compelling story. In the case of Up, I almost immediately got vibes that it could become one of my favorite Pixar movies because the subject matter is so different from the standard that it just had to have something interesting to tell. So, against this stiff competition and big expectations I have of what it means to be a Pixar film, I sat down in the movie theater hoping for a winner.

By the 20 minute mark of Up, I’d witnessed what has to be one of the greatest feats of character development in cinema history. It should not be possible to condense a person’s life into so short a time and leave the viewer with such a deep understanding of that person that when Carl suffered a trying hardship, the viewer cried tears as if it was us that experienced this hardship. If pressed to compare this to some other show, I’d say take all the feelings that one would have over episodes 11-21 of Clannad ~After Story~ and condense them down into 20 minutes. The result wouldn’t be a perfect match but it would give you an idea of the experience.

From there the movie moves onto Carl going on his adventure and I don’t want to spoil what happens but I want to mention that I disagree with some of the critics that would like to dismiss this part of the movie as being poor. They say it’s childish, implausible, shallow, etc. and I say they miss the point. The child-like desire to explore no matter the consequences, to thrill in the sheer wonder of seeing something new and to revel in knowing your alive and being able to appreciate the little things is exactly what Carl needs at this point. The concerns of being an adult have nearly crushed him and it’s only when being around a kid and letting it rub off on him can he return to being human and can find some happiness again.

One of the things that I generally hold against 3D CG animation is that almost no one seems to be able to make it look stylized like hand drawn 2D animation. Pixar, at times, seems like the only one willing to but some style into their animation and change up this style to match the material. Up continues this by stylizing it’s people but at the same time working this stylization into the show so that the viewer has to actually look for it. For example, Carl is drawn as if he’s made of stone, a very square stone with all his corners being perfect 90 degree angles. You’d expect him to say, “It’s clobbering time.” Or they wanted to convey the idea of the lawyers being soulless machines in one scene so they were given a body shape that looked like a 1950’s movie robot that was made up to look streamlined and they didn’t draw the mouths. Their where touches like this all throughout the movie and I’m sure I missed some because Pixar did a good job of getting everything to feel like a cohesive whole.

I’m trying to think of something else to talk about without spoiling things and I think I’m about tapped. If I was in the spoiling mood, I’d talk about how I really enjoyed the plot twist that forced Carl to pick between two options as to what was most important to him or why it’s a good idea not to meet certain people. Instead, I’ll close by saying that if for some reason you haven’t watched Up yet, your missing a truly great movie – easily, one of the best movies of 2009.

Posted in anime, movie review

Awhile back I posted my top 10 influential anime shows. I was happy with the final list but something nagged me about it and I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was until just recently. I mentioned maybe putting up my most influential non-anime animation shows but didn’t really see the importance of this list. The moment of insight came as I was reading another blogger’s reason for dropping a show. I realized that I enjoyed the show for the exact same reasons that he was dropping the show and that long before I was an anime fan, what I liked in animation and entertainment in general was already being shaped. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to create a companion list for non-anime animation and post it.

Once again the list is in roughly chronological order. This list was harder to compose because growing up I wasn’t a fan of animation, it was just entertainment for me. So, it’s somewhat hard to call a certain show influential even though I loved the show to death growing up. In the end, I cut the list down to 5 so I can realistically call all 5 influential to my viewing habits even now.

This left off several shows that deserve some sort of recognition so before I get to the list so let me mention them here:

Watership Down was an animated movie that I watched when I was three or four and all I really remember from it was being disturbed that it showed talking rabbits being hunted and killed. I really should watch this now to get an adult perspective but this movie showed me from an early age that animation could be something more entertainment.

The Rankin Bass’ version of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings left such a strong impression on me that I read the Hobbit in third grade and Lord of the Rings in the fourth grade.

Shows like The Little Prince, Unico, and The Last Unicorn all had intriguing animation styles that made watching them interesting. And technically, all are anime but growing up they were so Americanized that I had no idea they where anime.

Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was funny, unpredictable, and a great example of what you could do with animation, even on a shoe-string budget. It was one of the first shows produced by Cartoon Network and it’s success paved the way for Adult Swim.

Now, onto the list.

1. Thundarr the Barbarian

Back before wide-spread cable television and VCRs, if a child wanted to watch cartoons the only way was to wake up early on Saturday. Any other day of the week and you were out of luck. Scheduling changes, cancellations, and new additions all seemed arbitrary to me at this tender young age and was the primary source of drama for me at that age. I can still remember the anger I would feel when finding out that one of my favorites where being dropped.

Many of these shows I have forgotten, some I still vaguely remember watching but Thundarr the Barbarian is a show I still remember vividly. It was set in a post-apocalyptic America where strange creatures roam, magic is commonplace, and remnants of our half remembered society could be found. Our trio of heroes: buff dude, female sorceress, and a Chewbacca knockoff, journeyed across the country, fought evil and helped those in need. This was a recipe for weird things to happen, for example, an evil magician might make his hideout in a mall or magic would be used to get a still functioning train across a lake.

My young self thought this was the coolest; never thinking the reason a show like this existed was because the adults of the time where worried that the Cold War would end in nuclear holocaust. This was obviously where I first developed my love of science fiction in general and post-apocalyptic stories in particular. Also, because they used a setting that was at the same time familiar and alien, I started to look at the mundane and would imagine the hidden fantastical element or possibilities.

2. Scooby Doo

I must have watched literally hundreds (and probably thousands) of hours of Scooby Doo growing up. I wasn’t deterred even if I had no idea who Sonny and Cher, Don Knots, and Dom Deluise where or that I figured pretty early on that there were no real monsters – it was always a hologram, a person in a costume or something similar.

The problem is that I’m not quite sure how even this amount of Scooby Doo influenced me. Surely, it must have. Maybe it helped cultivate a desire for mimes in the shows I watched. After all, what episode of Scooby Doo was complete without the culprit saying – “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddlin’ kids”. So when I watch something like Minami-ke, is it really a complete experience without thinking, “Haruka-neesama is amazing.”? Or maybe this is where I learned that the longer a series is around, the more the creators will monkey with the concept till they ruin the show.

Whatever the reason, I couldn’t imagine not including Scooby Doo on this list.

3. Looney Tunes

There was no question that Looney Tunes belonged on this list and I’d even go so far as saying that Looney Tunes did more to shape what I find entertaining and what it means to be funny then any other show, cartoon or live-action.

This is where I learned to love and appreciate witty physical humor. The eternal struggle by Coyote to catch the Road Runner and Elmer Fudd’s perpetually fruitless pursuit of Bugs Bunny where fertile grounds to showcase how sublime physical humor could be in the right hands. Sadly, not many other shows can match that level but it’s always nice to see some sort of physical humor bit worked into a show, be it a Kyou Dictionary Attack or a Fujioka Teddy Bear to the face.

Speaking of the Coyote, something about his character really resonated with me – maybe my support of Cleveland sports teams had something to do with that – but I was drawn to watching his countless attempts, hoping he’d finally get that Road Runner. It was always a plausible chance that he would and it felt like he just needed a little better luck. Since then, I’ve become very sympathetic towards characters that strive continuously to meet a personal objective and wish to see them finally get what they desire, even if it’s only to get the eldest Minami sister to realize your existence.

I could go on but I’ll just mention one more way that Looney Tunes influenced me. Long before watching and enjoying anime like Maria+holic that feature traps, males impersonating women, and reverse traps, females impersonating men, I learned the comedic value of gender-bending from Bugs Bunny.

4. Animaniacs

This modern attempt (early-mid 90’s) at recapturing some of the magic of Looney Tunes couldn’t match the brilliance of Looney Tunes but was a very strong effort. The adventures of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (along with Pinky and Brain) where funny with a slightly subversive streak to them. I still have the wheel of morality song burned into my brain – “Wheel of morality, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson we should learn.” – and the lesson was supposed to be something we should have learned based on the show but would often be something really out there like ‘Vote early and often’. The reason why this show was so important stems from the age I was when it aired. I was just starting to get into that teenage mindset that I was grown-up now and didn’t need to watch cartoons along with other childish things. Animaniacs showed me that more mature people could still enjoy animated shows.

5. Toy Story

Toy Story earns the fifth spot not because it was the first full CG animated movie I saw but because it proved to me that an animated show can tell a story just as well as a live action show. This is a vital thing to learn for the continued watching of animated shows, including anime, as an adult. Of course, most anime fans know this already; watch something by Satoshi Kon, for example, if you don’t believe me but for me anime was years in the future. I had to rely on one of few American animation houses, Pixar, that believes an animated show can tell a real story to teach this fact.

Posted in anime rants/views, youtube