Hacker Cinema
Up
2009 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Pete Docter
AnimationComedyFamilyAdventure
Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.
51 positive13 negative3 mixed52 neutralfrom 119 commenters
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137 comments on Hacker News
I remember some of the early movies in theaters were hard to look at - they had some weird temporal jumpiness.
and then the 3d in disney's Up was so good it put the others to shame.
The one I hate so much is fake ai-made movie trailers. I just got fooled by a fake AI-generated for a new Tropic Thunder. There's another one where they have ai-made Harrison Ford playing the old man from Up, and one of the girls from FRIENDs playing the Golden Girls. It's not art it's deceptive. It's so aggravating.
Sounds to me like what people are identifying as dopamine, generating it and enjoying it. I am not educated though about brain function.
Noticing novelty is beneficial in nature as it surfaces opportunities to conscious level. "Squirrel!" famously, from the movie "Up". It feels good to experience. Then, creating ones own dopamine supply can drive behavior, and increasing the number of behavior can exhaust energy supply on different human dimensions.
So now, managing this process and limiting the dopamine cycle becomes also worthwhile -- avoiding fatigue potentially perhaps -- while still not negating the attractiveness of dopamine derivable from the endless opportunities of the world. <3
> It's stuff that is masterfully communicated without the need for corny expository dialogue
This is the scene I'm thinking of: https://youtu.be/70FLqFWJMNk?si=0faCWRS9aNpVTil4&t=68
You don't need to know that the character is a mentat. The story works perfectly well without that knowledge. But if you do then it adds a second layer to the scene. Much like watching something like the early Simpson's is even better if you have a grounding in the novels and movies that they're parodying but isn't required to get the show.
> A masterclass in "Show, don't tell" is the intro to Pixar's "Up". If you haven't seen it, you absolutely must.
I have seen it quite some time ago, please point out some clips where you feel the show don't tell is executed well.
> This embodies show don't tell and it works amazingly.
That's not "show, don't tell". That's "you need the companion book".
A masterclass in "Show, don't tell" is the intro to Pixar's "Up". If you haven't seen it, you absolutely must.
"Show, don't tell" isn't stuff that is lost on the uninitiated. It's stuff that is masterfully communicated without the need for corny expository dialogue.
Villeneuve's mentats are like an adult joke in a kid film.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Pixar does not have a monopoly on attention to detail. They're flush with cash and their leadership has decent taste.
There are so many creators putting in intense work, and doing it on low budgets. You can't claim these folks don't have attention to detail. Check out A24, low and mid and low budget films, or independent films and you'll see a wide assortment of highly meticulous storytellers.
Pixar, on the other hand, isn't low or mid budget:
Toy Story - $30 Million A Bug’s Life - $120 Million Toy Story 2 - $90 Million Monsters, Inc. - $115 Million Finding Nemo - $94 Million The Incredibles - $92 Million Cars - $120 Million Ratatouille - $150 Million WALL-E - $180 Million Up - $175 Million Toy Story 3 - $200 Million Cars 2 - $200 Million Brave - $185 Million Monsters University - $200 Million Inside Out - $175 Million The Good Dinosaur - $200 Million Finding Dory - $200 Million Cars 3 - $175 Million Coco - $175 Million Incredibles 2 - $200 Million Toy Story 4 - $200 Million Onward - $175 Million Soul - $150 Million Luca - Unknown but probably around $150 Million Turning Red - $175 Million Lightyear - $200 Million For that amount of money, they had better pay attention to detail.
Miyazaki is doing way more with much less.
Voices of a Distant Star was one person -- Shinkai. That's the kind of thing we'll see more and more of. Small creators reaching audiences and building studios. Gooseworx, psychicpebbles, Vivienne Medrano. That's the algorithm of tomorrow.
AI, as a tool, makes this more possible. One of the first people to do it successfully was Joel Haver, and he's just the first of many to come.
That didn't stop Up (the Pixar film) from being a masterpiece, so that's hardly an excuse /j
Deferred tax payment.
If someone is lucky enough to win the lottery by buying a pot of land for cheap and then seeing its value rise astronomically, they would be given the option to defer their tax payments until the sale of their profit when they realize their gains.
Obviously, there is still a large incentive for them to move sooner rather than later, but they would not be forced out of their home. I think this would be much fairer than the status quo as it would increase the incentive for them to move.
Ultimately, it is not an efficient use of land to have someone keep their single family home in the middle of high-rises like you see in the movie up. We've got a homeless crisis and random parking lots or low density is making it worse. There needs to be a compromise here. Deferred payments lets you balance the scales in a way that would be fair to all.
To me, they look like they are from the movie "Up".
Gaussian splats themselves aren’t very useful for Hollywood because they don’t have any issues with higher cost representations that are more accurate.
That said, Gaussian splats are based on very old papers that do have use in Hollywood. The closest example is radiance caches for Renderman.
This would store points in space with very similar information to a splat, then interpolate between them to provide things like bounce lighting.
The first Pixar film to use this throughout was Up.
If you ask Rick Astley for a copy of the movie "Up" you will have presented him with an impossible dilemma.
After Cars there’s: - Ratatouille - Up - Inside Out
In your opinion, which movie has a better story than any of those?
Usually places with no regulation look a lot like Houston TX.
Do you know the situation depicted from the movie "Up" where there's a house surrounded by parking lots of malls and stuff? That's what low regulation building gets you. I'm not talking about NIMBYs, I'm talking about lax zoning laws.
This is really what I thought "defund the police" was all about.
You don't send people with guns drawn to someone if you suspect they might kill themselves by hanging themselves in their own home.
We can't rely on informal / social structures though. Maybe the old person is like that old man from the Disney Pixar movie up who refused to sell his house. If your neighbors resent you, it doesn't mean you must die.
I have a sinking feeling under some further investigation that it may be! I am pretty sure that I've heard it in a few places, one of which being the Disney movie Up.
I'm not sure how to describe it, it is a sensorially very unique and pleasant experience for me hearing it.
Here's one example, starting roughly around 7-8 seconds or so: https://youtu.be/ah7I6jr-gKQ?feature=shared
I listened to some older zeppelin/dirigible recordings based on your comment and they seem to make a rather nice, but also not as-euphoric fan whine. Noooooo, that is quite disappointing!
I think there's one game that had an extremely highly punctuated, very clockwork-like soundtrack in one of its worlds that used the dirigible-whip sound as a base layer for one of its themes whenever you were in that part of the world. I'll see if I can find it.
Curious that it shows up in a few places, there _has_ to be able origin for why people who are designers associate it with airships. It likely wouldn't just occur by chance....
It's been a while since I saw Up, but isn't the moral of that movie that Carl is holding onto the past too tightly and that doing so has separated him from the outside world and the people around him and colored his perception of them? The emotional climax of the film is Carl throwing away all of his antique furniture that is metaphorically and literally weighing him down, and then the film ends by Carl dropping his house off of a blimp.
I do have sympathy, it's a understandable position for someone to be in, but I'm not sure that Up in specific is the best analogy?
Sometimes people want to sit on underdeveloped-for-the-location land not because it's a low-effort way to ride capital gains but for non-economic reasons.
Examples include conservation projects and urban farms, but the big one is empty-nesters ageing in place (while the city has grown around them).
If you've seen the start of the movie Up you'll recall that Mr. Carl Fredrickson owns a detached home which now has apartment towers going up on all sides. As a widower his house holds extreme sentimental value to him; he isn't selling. Under an optimal land tax regime, he'd be paying quite a bit of land tax reflecting the increased desirability of his location, and would potentially be forced to sell up as a result.
You can understand the plot without the first sequence, but remove it and you lose more than just 10 minutes of run time. Even changing a single shot can alter how an audience engages with a movie farther into its runtime.
One example I remember is from Jaws. Spielberg explained that changing the editing of an earlier scare (when they explore the abandoned boat) made the audience much less shocked at the first reveal of the shark later on. The change was literally the timing of a couple of shots; less than a second at most.
The first 10 minutes of Up colours the entire rest of the film.
As someone that doesn't have the bias and nostalgia for Pixar movies that someone growing up with them does, I would say that your assessment is fairly accurate.
Masterpiece factory is clickbait hyperbole. Pixar has made at best, 2 masterpieces, and I'd argue 0[1], but that's a matter of preference frankly. What isn't subjective, is regardless of my or your feelings on the movies, that first 10 years period you mentioned? Yeah. Pixar fucking killed it. They were box office darlings for sure that could do no wrong for a while there.
[1]: The intro to up, as a standalone: Masterpiece. The rest? Good movie but it wouldn't have been near as memorable//enjoyable if not for those first few minutes.
Imo it’s not just that Up sucks without the first 10 min, it’s that the last 90% of the movie is aimless, emotionless, and feels unnecessary. Like the first 10 min should have been a pre-film short that they drew out because it was too depressing to just end like that.
I think there’s a bit to this and also a bit where he gets it wrong. What’s right:
1. A Bug’s life was underwhelming after Toy Story. I grew to like it more after having entered the workforce.
2. Luca is understated.
3. Kids love Cars way more than adults.
4. Coco is a real diamond in a whole lot of (relative) rough.
5. The second half of Wall-E is quite good.
6. People aren’t unkind enough regarding Toy Story 4. Not amount of unkindness will be enough enough.
There’s lots more wrong but I want to zero in on one thing, Up.
De Boer says that without the first 10 minutes the movie is awful… but that’s the point of the movie. It’s about a miserable grieving man… the scene sets up the rest of the movie. Of course the movie sucks without it. It tells the story on the basis that you have just watched that scene.
After 2006 they were still knocking out an extremely high rate of absolutely impressive films:
Wall-E -- if you don't love this film you are possibly dead inside. It's not only absolutely beautiful and emotionally communicative, it's a deeply clever pastiche.
Up, as observed below.
Toy Story 3 came out after Up. And it is a work of acutely well-observed cinema. A staggeringly good film that should have won the Best Picture Oscar. [0]
Brave (2012) is critically neglected, too -- that is a beautiful, subtle, yes quite elusive film, despite what the article says.
And then there are films I have not seen yet but I am told are clever, inventive and beautiful -- Coco, Inside Out, Soul.
They are by any measure still a masterpiece factory. This article is lazy, toxic and cynical.
[0] edit: when I say this, I say it in the sense that surely everyone knows now that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should have won Best Picture, not Gandhi. Even Richard Attenborough thought this.
Up is the dividing line; I believe any concept after that would have been developed post-merger with Disney. It’s about as simple as that.
I’m not a Disney hater to the extent of some, but any weak film before Up and any strong film after are the exceptions.
I don’t think it’s the same thing. The initial scene is a masterpiece but if you remove it, it would still be possible to understand the movie. And the tone and message of the first scene is very different from the rest.
I compare (negatively) to “Saving Private Ryan” which also has a masterpiece of a first scene, that also can be removed without much loss to the main plot. The difference is that on SPR the first scene set the tone and message of the movie perfectly. And if you remove it, the rest of the movie is pretty great too. You can’t say those two things about “Up”.
The author's criticism of Up is weird to me. I watched Up when it was released. Can't say I remember it too much. But, I don't think it's fair to criticize a movie by saying that a movie is bad if you remove the best scene. One of my favorite books is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. 99% of the book is the musings and activities of an old lady, which are not interesting to say the least. It's not until the last page that the whole story is tied together. If you removed the last page, it wouldn't be a great book.
I disagree, Up remains probably my favourite Pixar film. It’s originality is so refreshing. Yes it’s weird, try explaining the story to someone, but the world it constructs is consistent and not weird for the sake of it (kooky). And through that the film carries some age old themes, exploration, friendship, individuality that everyone can relate to. I yearn for more such originality.
The first time I saw "Up" I came across it while channel flipping, and missed everything up to shortly before they encounter the bad guy. I had no idea what I was watching and it didn't even cross my mind that it could be a Pixar movie. My guess was that it was something from one of the studios that mostly does goofy kids TV animation trying their hand at a bigger budget TV movie.
The answer is not as simple as the analogy suggests, but the principle of the problem is that the conflict resolved by the rat driving the human around is central to the theme and the characters, while the dog flying the airplane is not.
I used to have a high opinion of Up, having originally seen it when it came out in theaters. It was only on a re-watch that I was shocked by how much of that opinion was based on what is essentially only 15 minutes of the total runtime. Ratatouille is fundamentally about a ratty artist overcoming his background and prejudices. Up wants to be about an old man managing to move past his grief, but the climax (and most of the movie) involves a stupid bird and a stupid kid that only detract from the experience.
> …[Up] ends with dogs flying airplanes.
…
>… Pixar's peak at Ratatouille…
The latter is a movie about a rat that drives a human around like a mech, what’s the issue with dogs flying airplanes?
> I've never understood the love given to "Up". Everybody remembers the fantastic opening sequence but seems to forget that it ends with dogs flying airplanes.
The flying house with balloons wasn't too unrealistic? ;)
Up tugs on a lot of heartstrings. It's front-loaded with tremendous loss, but that emotional punch isn't lost as it transforms throughout the film into Carl opening up to protect someone new.
The film is cute and full of emotion. And despite the fantasy, it's well written. It's my favorite Pixar flick by a wide margin. Ratatouille and WALL-E are fantastic, though.
What happens when we can't find a solution. In a lot of ways we're lucky b/c every major problem that has come along we more or less have found a solution to. I suspect climate change may be a little different. Not sure if you saw the movie Up but the basic plot is an asteroid is going to crash into earth. They devise a mechanism to blow it up but it doesn't work and everyone dies. Not everyone is going to die from climate change but it's very possible we don't "solve" it and life as we know it is fundamentally altered.
> You can look at all the Disney movies for kids: all men are stupid, liars, stealer, and when you hit them it’s funny. On the opposite the feminine is often perfect, manage it all on the first try.
A few counterexamples: Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, Raya and the Last Dragon, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatoullie, Up, The Good Dinosaur, Onward, Soul, and Luca.
Could we change the title to "Up (documentary film series)" to avoid confusion with the Pixar film?
Almost all of their best movies have had heavy involvement in the writing / directing role by a couple of key players and most of those individuals have either graduated to a producer role or have moved on from Pixar.
Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out, and Soul were all written and/or Directed by Pete Doctor.
Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and Wall-E were written and directed by Andrew Stanton.
There are multiple writing and directing credits on all of their films, but these two have writing and directing credits on almost all of the great original ones.
One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs. Have to wonder if Disney has been asserting too much influence on the company.
It kinda looks like the balloons in the Up movie
Yup. Even if you only look within a relatively small category of films one per year can miss a bunch. For example, consider the category of animated feature length films released after 2000 in the US, and pick one per year by picking the winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
In 2001 you'd miss Monsters, Inc. because of Shrek.
In 2002 you'd miss Lilo & Stitch because of Spirited Away.
In 2004 you'd miss Shrek 2 because of The Incredibles.
In 2005 you'd miss Howl's Moving Castle and Corpse Bride because of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
In 2008, no Kung Fu Panda because of WALL-E.
In 2009, no Coraline or Fantastic Mr. Fox because of Up.
In 2010 you'd miss How to Train Your Dragon because of Toy Story 3.
In 2011 no Kung Fu Panda 2 because of Rango.
In 2012 no Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, or Wreck-it Ralph because of Brave.
In 2014 no How to Train Your Dragon 2 because of Big Hero 6.
2015 no Shaun the Sheep Movie because of Inside Out.
2016 you miss Kubo and the Two Strings and Moana because of Zootopia.
2019 No How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World because of Toy Story 4.
2021 you'd miss Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca because of Encanto.
Most of the winners are good...but if you just put all the above mentioned films in a pool and asked most people to pick their top 14, most would have a lot of films on their list that were not among the winners of the aforementioned years.
I get it that this stuff is confusing and can be hard to make sense of at first, but gender identity and sexuality are completely different things.
Also I'm not accusing anyone of pushing this on their kids, rather, our society does it in massive doses. Watch most children's TV shows or movies and heteronormativity is abundant.
For a pretty clean example of this check out the movie Up by Pixar. The first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to Carl & Ellie's relationship and the loss of that relationship serves as a major driver for the movie.
Also there's nothing wrong with showing children this kind of content. It helps them make sense of the world. However, there is an issue with representation. When it's all they see then it constrains their minds as to what is possible.
Not sure what the "last few years" mean to you. Personally I got to see Pixar's movies in the cinema all the way back since Toy Story. They certainly had an incredible run for about 15 years. Up is the last "Pixar classic" in my view.
However in recent years they actually did have a couple of truly wonderful titles. Luca and Soul are pretty good, and Coco is really one of the best Pixar movies. So perhaps not all hope is lost.
> They're still making good ones: Frozen, Moana, Encanto. Just watch those and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Probably the most objective way to view this is to actually look at the list of films from any given decade and see how many flops they had [1]. There's a bias at play here: the only movies we remember Disney making a decade+ ago are the hits. We don't often remember the misses.
Apparently Disney's "Renaissance" ended with Tarzan in 1999; but here are a list of movies that have come out since the end of this golden era:
- Monsters, Inc.
- Lilo and Stitch
- Treasure Planet (a personal favorite)
- Finding Nemo
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- The Incredibles
- Ratatouille
- WALL-E
- Up
- Tangled
- Brave
- Wreck-It Ralph
- Frozen
- Inside Out
- Encanto
I'm sure there's many great ones that you might love that I'm missing. But I'd say this lineup is potentially better than the list of movies spanning The Little Mermaid to Tarzan. To the author's credit, I will say there's part of me that's nostalgic for the traditional style of 2d character animation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Pictures_films
Animated movies that I often rewatch (in no particular order):
- Spirited Away
- Grave of the Fireflies
- Finding Dory
- Up
- Tokyo Godfathers
- Akira (NOT the English dub, which completely changes the story and dialogue for the worse, and for no good reason)
- Mononoke Hime
- Ghost in the Shell (the original one)
- My Neighbor Totoro
Animated series I'll rewatch:
- Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
- Castlevania
- Futurama
- Archer
- Arcane
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ergo Proxy
- The Dragon Prince
- Hakaba Kitaro
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
It's not just the word friend, but also the word love.
One my favorite intro's to a movie was Up. The amazing part is how deeply it communicated emotions without using any words.
Talk is cheap, characters in movies and shows will start saying they love each other after having met a week or two before. That's an L word, but it aint love.
Strong disagreement. The acquisition happened in 2006. The last few great Pixar movies were in the pipeline already (Ratatouille - 2007, WALL-E - 2008, Up - 2009).
They're called "family" movies and not "children's" movies for a reason. Kids are usually watching these with their parents, and when they're done well, every age group gets something out of them.
Frozen, Up, and many others accomplish it well. I personally found Encanto completely boring.
I don’t know where you get those numbers from, but obviously animation price for both 2D and 3D are dependent on level of detail.
Naive calculation says that princess and the frog (disneys last 2D) was 100mill for 97 minutes, while Up (released same year) was 175mill for 96 minutes.
I don’t think either movie had particularly bigger stars than the other, so i think the overall budget ratio gives an okay idea of how far your estimate is off for cinema animation.
The first minutes of Up stands up on its own as a masterpiece.
But Inside Out might be the only Pixar movie that I actively dislike. Any other is at worst an indifferent "meh".
Pete Docter has always been my favourite Pixar director. I feel like he doesn't get the limelight as often as the others, but his movies (Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out, and Soul) I think go considerably deeper than the rest of the Pixar catalogue as far as offering tender and humanizing insights about people and relationships.
So the opening scene to the Pixar movie, "Up"?
IIRC, the "Up!" film/documentary series kind of showed the way these people diverged. It's ages since I watched that series, but it was incredibly fascinating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)
To me this sounds a lot like that he's built himself a solid foundation in evading critical thinking about himself, possibly to avoid a more serious psychological harm which he thinks he may face if he looks at the bigger picture.
He compares himself to the animals: "They never ask for anything different for supper".
> "People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible"
As a bachelor, how will he know what it is like to look into the eyes of a loved with whom you form a new family? Without watching TV, how will he know that movies like "Up" (Pixar 2009) or series like "Breaking Bad" are well worth spending their time, without incurring a dramatic time penalty in your life? Take the TV out to the porch, if staying inside is such a pain. How can he be sure that a visit to the British Museum in London isn't worth the effort, or time, or whatever he thinks that speaks against it? Will he find laughing people in the cafes of the city?
All of this feels like a "too afraid to discover" that he disguises it as a "secret to a good life". Not a happy life, but a good life. His sheeps make him happy. Like his spouse or kids could make him happy, or a trip to the city or watching 40 minutes of TV once a week. Or a delicious steak. Or riding a bike on a trail, if he weren't so old by now.
I wonder if the Welsh radio station has told him about the current dilemmas which AI is confronting us with, or if he thought about where and under which circumstances all this gear he owns to exercise his role of a farmer has been developed and produced and if his lifestyle, if applied to everyone, would have made it possible for this gear to exist.
It's OK if he decides to eat the same supper every day, if he prefers not to live with people, but to me this feels more like an elaborate thinking system designed to avoid something which would cause him pain, which doesn't cause pain to others.
Sure there is a lot to criticize about our modern life, and many people aren't happy living in the city and with their day to day jobs, or with their family situation, but he has built himself a very tall wall in order to be shielded from him being possibly affected by these problems and calls it a good life. Not much of a difference to a suburban man who tolerates his job, hates his kids, but has the biggest amount of fun when he jumps into his glider on the weekends, watches his favorite TV series at the end of the day and loves to go jogging every day for an hour. Or have a beer with a friend.
At least his sheep are among themselves, maybe some of them enjoy spending their time together and are glad to get anything to eat at all. But how would he know, if he's just happy pretending to be a fellow sheep and calls it a day.
Then again, there are comments like the one from telesilla.
The main issue with land value taxes is it's easy to convince people that they're unjust. Think about the Pixar movie Up, where the old man doesn't want to sell his house. With land-value tax systems someone with enough money can drive up land values and instantly force people to move or sell, since, if the system is done right, the land is basically as valuable as the most productive economic use that someone wants to be doing on it would make it. This is, unfortunately, why land value tax systems do make sense to many: the most valuable land is taxed in a way that forces it to be turned over to a party that will develop it accordingly, but Americans (I think) already regard property taxes as somewhat unjust (witness how things are in CA), and I don't think a system that would make the perceived problem (that you ought to be able to buy a home once and live your life there regardless of surrounding economic growth) potentially worse is likely to win a marketing campaign. If anything, it will be claimed to be a worse version of eminent domain.
This comment made me flip. Just signed up for a 10 year archive account.
Never used pinboard but frequently enjoy and admire the whole story and the level of dedication that flows into it. It’s like watching the story of „UP“ (the movie) happening in the internet.
Most businesses are neither fair nor transparent in their business decisions which is often interpreted as a sign of strength and thus fosters trust by users. Moves like this are uncommon and could / should give us faith in the product, but don’t , because we interpret transparency as a sign of weakness.
For those arguing that asking for money is somewhat a moral question: try to run anything someone relies on for more than year, then come back discussing the right topics.
'Up' is one of the best films of all time, followed by an additional hour and twenty minutes of pretty-decent movie.
I like Pixar a lot. But maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste.
Letting go is a unifying theme in Up but my problem with the movie isn’t that it’s bad but that you had a table of all the guys at Pixar spitballing scene ideas and then glueing them all together. The result just feels episodic, in a bad way, and commercially manufactured. Up is a really good movie but I don’t want every CG film to have the Pixar preproduction process. (And I still think they are a bit overrated and that the technical side of their creative teams are doing most of the heavy lifting.)
I feel that Pixar’s mastery of storytelling is overrated. Coco was lovely but I find their movies to be needlessly sad and curiously episodic in form. In “UP”, each sequence was very well crafted but they fit together randomly as though each scene was brainstormed by a group.
They lack a singular vision in their films, there are no auteurs at Pixar: just art by committee. This isn’t to say that their stories are bad, though they are sometimes lukewarm. Except for the Pixar level of excellence in the visuals and animation, which to be clear are admirable on their own, I feel that their movies lack identity. I wouldn’t want their model to become adopted by everyone.
They love and study Miyazaki but don’t seem to trust any one person to direct a film. Everything must be put through a committee.
I would very much prefer a CG animation course by them. Or a full overview of their pipeline, asset management, USD implementation. Their technical chops are probably best in the world.
Maybe they could do something like release a public version of Presto. Or help out with animation and rigging code with the blender foundation.
I would be curious to see your list of movies, primarily aimed at children, where there are two protagonists who disagree in the beginning and don't end up reconciling in the end.
("Up", which you cited as the last Pixar movie that was 'worth it', is in fact largely a conflicted parent/child relationship)
It reads as if what causes you 'grief' is actually the intended format of the content you are consuming. Yes, it's nice that Wall-E had a layer of critique of rampant consumerism (among other things), but it also had a joke about an unkillable roach too.
My hunch is that the -primary- intended audience for these films spends a lot of time dealing with "conflicted parent/child relationships", and that you are simply not the intended audience.
I don't mean to be overly critical of you here, I think if you take two steps back what you're saying is "the majority of these kids movies don't speak to me."
A movie being "worth it" is pretty different from a movie "speaking to me", which is so subjective that it is hard extract actionable insights from. It's a hop, skip, and a jump from saying "I don't know why you like this flavor of ice cream, because I don't like it."
I suppose "art" is meant as "technique" here. Modern large productions are so standardized today it is not an uncommon feeling one is watching the same movie ever end ever. I think the last Pixar movie that was worth is "Up" (OK I have not seen them all).
My main grief is that surprise is only obtained with a combination of visual effects, fast rhythm and loud sounds, and no more with the story. Relationships between characters is déjà-vu, so many times a conflicting parent/children relationship, where the parent is reflective but wrong and the child impulsive but right and they end up reconciling and admitting they were both partly right in the end. In "Soul" they play a bit with this pattern although I would hardly call this creativity.
And finally many animation movies are also shameless green washing (here thinking of Wolfwalkers). Remember the critical tone of Wall-E?
There's also the Up film series which concluded last year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)
They might be the best action movies, but I don't consider them the best Bond movies, bc they're so different than every other Bond movie. They're a different genre all together.
It's not that I don't like them, or even like them any less in general; I just have a hard time considering them to be Bond movies at all. They're so serious, even when being sarcastic and dry. They're not fun, and not something I probably would have been excited to binge watch as a kid, as the other ones are/were. I try hard to convince myself this is just temporal bias, but I'm less convinced the more I think about it.
And I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Goldeneye and Casino were directed by the same person.
I say this as someone who has 4 different actors in my top 5 Bond movie list, and none are Craig. So probably not a popular opinion- but also as someone who's never read any of the books, but seen every movie multiple times.
Then again, I also consider Brave Little Toaster to be a better version of Toy Story 3, for almost opposite reasons, while I still consider TS3 to be objectively the best Pixar-formula movie made. (Unless counting the first 10 mins of Up as it's own entity.)
I try to watch movies that show me who/what I am, where I came from to better understand myself for the future wherever I can find it. One requirement however, is that it cannot be a reflection of current events except that is of my own making.
Not in any particular order and may repeat many of the fine recommendations already said....
1. The Five-Year Engagement https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1195478/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
2. The Trigger Effect https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117965/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
3. Sweet November https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230838/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
4. Les Miserables (1978) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077936/
5. The Vow (i got married to the music from The Nationals - England (instrumental) :) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606389/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
6. The Family Man (Nicolas Cage before he gone off the edge) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218967/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
7. Boyz n the Hood https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
8. Up (I'm a new dad and I did Big Brothers to 3 boys so Up means a lot to me) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
9. Ghost Town https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0995039/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
10. People Like Us https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1716777/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
11. One Hour Photo (Reminding us how incredible Robin William...was ) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
WOW...few things..
1. I realize a little psych profiling can show how old you are ;-) [EDIT] I mean how old I am!! :)
2. I'm a sucker for romcom light hearted shows that gives me time to reflect.
man.. I realize I need to look into this list, grow it and rewatch.
Enjoy!
I really like most of the Pixar movies. I find them enjoyable both from a children and adult point of view while still touching pretty deep subject (inside out, up...)
An aside: I saw "Up" (the movie excerpted in the demo video) years ago, but I never stopped and thought about the physics until today. The house would have started rising as soon as sufficient balloons were inflated inside the house. Releasing the balloons doesn't magically start making them buoyant-- they're already buoyant when they're inside the house.
I've seen all the episodes of the "Up" series. And I think it's affected the way I approach and talk to people at my high school reunions. 30th and 40th were the most interesting -- seeing people at their peak maturity (in the 30th) and starting to decline (at their 40th)
I caught wind of the series a few months back, and hunted the episodes down as well as I could. I'm up to 56 Up and I've found it really interesting especially given the timeline on camera is roughly in line with my father's (before he passed away a few years ago.)
The biggest takeaway for me was that, while you can't necessarily 'see the man' in a seven year old, you can most certainly see the seven year olds in the adults. Everyone's just trying to get along; but we're all still just kids inside, a little scared and a little uncertain about how to deal with the world at large.
>You're the slob from the movie "Up".
Which character are you talking about?
As the article states, once automation hits a rural area, people there spend less energy than in cities.
Very much observable in the US, where rural and suburban population never WALKS. You need to supply artificial sources of movement (aka sports) to make up for the delta.
In cities, you walk more by default - your baseline energy expenditure is higher. Take the stairs to the subway, walk to work, get out for lunch ... all of that counts.
Driving around in your F150 and have everything as a drive through? You're the slob from the movie "Up".
This is completely nonsensical.
Toy Story? Cars? Inside Out? Up? Coco?
None of these follow that template. Sure, some like a Bugs Life and Rattatouille follow this, but in quirky ways. All conventional narrative structure involves an external incident. That sets up the central conflict of the narrative.
Disney movies like Big Hero 6, Moana or Frozen are more likely to follow it, though again, there’s a lot more craft in the story and surrounding context than the base structure suggests.
I created the Wikipedia article on “You Are Old, Father William”, about a decade ago. One of my strokes of good fortune is that I had read the original by Southey before reading Lewis Carroll's parody in Alice, so I was able to appreciate it more and found it hilarious!
Original: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_How_He_Gained_Them
Parody: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William (current version of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Father_William&oldid=888080936)
A quote I scoured for the article then (the line about the “idiot questioner”) is also in this article. The author of this article may have come across this quote independently rather than via Wikipedia, but this sort of thing has happened often enough that I've come to realize writing for Wikipedia has surprisingly large impact.
---
As an aside, the article is about changing perceptions of old age: from the “sententious piety about old age” current at the time of Southey/Carroll, to their “invisibility” today. (A general paucity of works featuring old people at their centre, with a few examples collected in this article: I'd add films too, like Pixar's Up, or these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_old_age.) It ends with “I would like to see more of this salutary belligerence among my fellow oldsters.” In short, it's about old age in general, and today's “cult of youth”.
But many comments here so far are about taxes, the economy, “Boomers”, social security,… none of which is touched on by the article at all, beyond the first clause of the first sentence. I wonder whether there may be a cultural component here; is it the case that people who don't grow up with experiences of highly valuable conversations with them in childhood and youth, are inclined to think of them primarily in economic terms? Or is it that any discussion of “old people” in general is impossible without reference to the entire generation of “old people” one happens to know?
Anyway, here's another “old writer” the article didn't mention: a wonderful interview with P. G. Wodehouse at 91 (and a half): https://web.archive.org/web/20150814120619/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3773/the-art-of-fiction-no-60-p-g-wodehouse
Good Dinosaur and Up are both interesting cases of Pixar's environment team exploring if they could use Google Earth (and equivalents) for location scouting, to the point where Good Dinosaur used a lot of direct satellite imagery and terrain data to bootstrap the animation process. Which is fascinating technically, but absolutely an interesting comparison to the less realistic approaches of everything else in the film. Up they managed it quite well because the real place they found as example is fantastic enough to support the rest of the film and the pulp adventure storyline supported that uncanny valley realism; The Good Dinosaur did not find something fantastic enough nor did it really support the story near as well.
This is why every kid I know has only one Pixar film they rave about and that's Cars, objectively one of their worst films. Pixar films used to appeal to everyone now they just seem to try to appeal to people who grew up with Pixar and are now adults.
I'm not talking about the gender politics angle, I'm more just talking about they have moved from telling stories about a simple whimsical idea that captures all imaginations which follows through to emotion to maybe trying to be too clever and maybe poignant with their ideas, it's almost like they're writing to the target of an adult Pixar fan that needs validation for their interests rather than everyone.
Just feel like they've lost the joy along the way, putting a Pixar film feels like I'm going to be in for a emotional slog now rather than something enjoyable, can't imagine any child getting excited about watching Inside Out or Up (I understand this is a fan favorite for good reason, but is it any child's favorite?)
Monster's University was not the first Pixar movie to use global illumination, but it was the first Pixar movie that used path tracing (combined with rasterization for the primary visibility). Earlier movies such as Up and Toy Story 3 used Point Based Global Illumination.
This news breaks my heart because Every Frame is my favourite youtube channel bar none. I feel empty knowing that I won't get to watch another video from them.
I did enjoy reading this though, because learning more about their creative process helps me appreciate them that much more. It now makes sense why the Jackie Chan video was amazing - it was a 150 hour labour of love from knowledgeable professionals who spared no effort.
For me, watching this channel was more than just an enjoyable 10 minutes - it helped me understand and appreciate film for the first time ever. I could always say that I loved the opening sequence of Pixar's Up, that it brought tears to my eyes, but I could never express what made it so special. Tony and Taylor gave me the vocabulary and the ability to do so, and I'm forever indebted to them for that alone. Thanks guys.
Thanks, that makes sense, the family is the center of love. Good background and perspective. I still think for the sake of storytelling there's a lot to be gained by the inclusion of romantic interests. There was just Hector. Look at wall-e and eve, the couple in Up, Ratatouille, Toy Story; most Pixar movies before they became part of Disney?
Top in 2017 -
Petty criminal, probable drunkard.
Workplace accident, I wouldn't say criminal.
Probable drunkard, not criminal (I also once made a ethernet ladder, yes it does not work well, no I didnt use it at a deadly height)
Not criminal, a bit silly. Funny because racism. I'd guess alcohol related.
Not criminal, probably alcohol involved, just a vehicular accident.
1 and 3 I'd also say involved mental illness. True if you want to be harsh we don't want the mentally ill or those susceptible to drug abuse to breed. I kinda think killing them off is not great why not just sterilize them?
Larry Walters who this story would have been inspired by (Not sure why people are saying the movie Up) also got a honorary Darwin award. He killed himself eventually. So he had issues I guess. But he was a legend as far as I'm concerned I'd prefer a world full of him over people making fun over people dying.
> Small experiment: searching for "movie old man balloons" on Google and Bing.
Your experiment's results are not repeatable. When I do that here:
* Bing gives me 8 pages about Up (including that spoof site), one about Danny Deckchair, and a page about a magician who re-creates old movies with balloons.
* Google gives me 13 pages about Up (also including that spoof site), a book of best movie scenes on its page for The Third Man, and an article from The Rotarian from 1948.
Of course, some knowledge of how these things work teaches that this is a terrible methodology, given that it does not account for the fact that both Bing and Google tailor their search results to the searcher. One should at the very minimum log out of one's Google and Bing accounts, which you made no mention of doing.
> At least it's honest about not having results whereas Google presents 5 billion, all of which are missing one of the three keywords (which it notes in a small, light grey text, which you only notice after the first three results were completely unrelated and you were wondering what went wrong).
Yes, that's really bad; it's what killed Altavista and could really be Google's undoing.
Still, Google is miles ahead of the competition.
Small experiment: searching for "movie old man balloons" on Google and Bing.
On Bing there is a first line of 4 videos, none of them related to the movie "Up" in any way. The second link is to Up on Imdb (good). The 3rd link is to a crazy religious fanatic site page titled "Disney PIXAR's, 'Up' - The Sugarcoating of Pedophilia!" (WTF??!? - but at least related to the movie). The 4th link is again to a youtube video with no connection to the movie.
On Google, the first 8 links are to the movie. There is a line of images, all from the movie / movie poster. There's a list of 4 questions "People also ask" that shows questions about the movie ("How many balloons would it take to lift a house?"). To be fair, the crazy Baptist site does show up on Google too (God has good SEO!), but way down below the fold.
Anyway, my point is, when answering the question, Google is certain you're looking for information about Up, and tries to give it to you.
Bing seems to have doubts and tries to guess if maybe you're looking for a funny video of a man in the subway wearing a balloon hat (??!? it's not a "movie"!!) or the hit song "99 Luftballons" from 1983 (not a "movie" either!)
Bing tries hard, but is obviously more than a little clueless.
But I think we can agree that Alien 3 is a pretty mediocre film, while Wall-E, Up, or Inside Out are superb film making that at least I would recommend to just about anyone.
In terms of how this is done, the Big 5 personality theory is like a squirrel in the movie, Up. The powerful tool is testing how individual level data predicts the incremental impact on behavior of actions (ads etc.) that the campaign promoters can take. The behavior you care about ultimately is voting, and you can't train models on voting, but you can train models on campaign donations, Facebook liking, sharing, and copying-and-pasting. These are behaviors that are likely to correlate with voting later. The role of a theory like Big 5 is to help guide the selection of what to test, and is ideally balanced with what is easy to test.
Take a 6 year old to see"A bugs life" and watch the kid instead of the movie.
When you see the child in absolute terror, ask yourself "is this the right way to entertain a child, through pure terror?"
Or do the same thing with the Pixar movie "Up", a fabulous and gentle movie until it gets the mandatory part where they go all out to scare the living shit out of the kids watching with attack dogs.
I was not impressed! Pixar's Up is the only 3D movie I have seen that I thought really looked good and made up for the screen being dark as a result of the glasses.
I agree - the best, by far, 3D movie I have seen is Pixar's Up
"Things like land title, equity rights or non-expropriation (government's taking/buying private assets) are centuries old doctrine in the west. Those looking to invest billions into 'next-gen' manufacturing facilities want legal stability, stability measurable in decades. China isn't there yet."
There are stories in the news from time to time about situations where you have an old woman who's been living in the same place for decades (see the movie "Up" for a fictional example), and she's the last person on the land to accept payment for the land and move. The builders - either a company or the government, wind up having to build around. The way they do it is very passive-aggressive, but there /is/ law over there when it comes to land ownership. It's not all state property.
Further, do you really "own" your land here in the US? Nobody I know does. You either pay rent (taxes) to the government on the land or the land is taken from you.
There is no such thing as totally private land ownership.
WRT manufacturing plants:
Every new company in China has to be majority Chinese-owned. The government has smartened up over the decades and left behind the "everything is owned by the state, even your toothbrush" to something in between total private ownership and public ownership. So they have rules like the above which anger US investors, but are geared to the interests of the Chinese public.
They take care of their own. We used to do that here in the US, but it's all become "fuck you, the free market fixes everything!!!" wharrgarble.
I thought I was the only one.. yes. Up - it said more emotionally in those first 10 moments with no dialog than most movies do in 2 hours.
The recent Jungle Book was similar, my eyes were misty the whole movie. The Martian had similar effects.
I hardly ever cry otherwise.
Not really, neither Up nor Toy Story 3 did it for me as movies (a very unpopular opinion I know). I choke up watching a movie or TV show from time to time, maybe more than I'd like to admit, but I don't share the popular opinion about those two movies.
40 yard old with basically the same story as the guy from `Up`. Can't have children, long term very solid relationship. As much as I cried at the opening to `Up` - and it was a whole lot, `Marley and Me` is just absolutely devastating. Can't even look at the cover to that movie.
"Up" definitely triggered the strongest emotions in me of any movie to date. Perhaps it reminded me of the loss of my grandma a few years earlier.
The first ten minutes made me so upset that I spent the rest of the movie fighting my body so that I wouldn't start bawling. It would have been such an intense and loud cry that I absolutely would have had to run out of the movie theater. After the movie I drove my friend home (~30 min), but I couldn't say one word to her because I was still so deeply upset that my lips were trembling.
I don't cry much, in fact, I really can't cry when most people ordinarily would. But in the rare circumstances where something can make me cry (whether it's very sad, or just incredibly beautiful) it is always with maximum intensity.
Seconded for "Up". All the sad scenes involving the wife. This movie, and only this movie. Makes me cry every time. I'm a 40 year old man.
Since we all seem to be in a sharing mood...
Also a guy -- no beard -- but (and I'm not joking here)... I watched that exact trailer just now and teared up a little.
As for movies, I have two examples: Up (pure emotion) and The Fountain -- the scene towards the end where he talks to the high priest and Clint Mansell's music takes over.
For me, I think it's generally sort of really EPIC things that do it. Really huge scales also tend to do it, for example some of the star size comparisons, or David Deutsch's talk about relativistic jets[1], or just contemplating the fact that some black holes swallow a solar mass per day.
Sometimes it's just "beauty", e.g. I couldn't help tearing up when Carolyn Porco showed the "Saturn Eclipse"[2] picture in her Ted Talk[3]. Some of that, I think, was because of the realization that we humans had actually sent a thing out there to take that picture.
(Btw, I think I'm generally considered a bit of a cold fish among my friends/acquaintances, FWIW. Humans are weird.)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQliI_WGaGk
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Saturn_eclipse.jpg (WARNING: Image is HUGE!)
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usqdjsr6Vw (I won't link you to the exact time because the video deserves to be seen its entirety. If you really want to skip, skip to 15m15s.)
Seriously? ANY pixar film puts those to shame in terms of depth. The entire back story of UP was about a widower; Finding Nemo, same story - talk about darkness and light. How about The Incredibles, Wall-E, Monsters Inc, all fantastic story telling and incredible depth. It even goes further back than 80s, to movies like The Sound of Music with the Nazis.
Again, your biases are only fuzzy nostalgia and it seemed bigger to you then cause your brain couldn't contextualize it as well.
It streams 1080p h264 just fine, haven't had a single issue yet.
The only movie so far I've had problems with was a raw Blu-Ray rip of Pixar's Up that I streamed from my NAS. It has some crazy high bitrates and just refused to play smoothly even with all caches turned up to 11.
But that's the only one from hundreds of movies I've tested.
The trailer completely turned me off seeing the movie. I don't think I'm going to bother watching it, or showing it to my kids. Especially after "Up!" and "Wall-e" failed to deliver.
The trailer was ridiculously sexist in a way I don't think is helpful to anyone. The sexism was extremely negative IMHO. Surely you'd agree that the level of sexism shown isn't really necessary?
While we're at it, can hollywood please stop using "they've drunk too much coffee and are now 'wired'" as a joke in kids movies. Overdosing on drugs isn't all that funny...
edit: Downvote me? Why not respond instead.
What about Toy Story, Incredibles, Cars, Up... Oh wait they completely invalidate your point, I get why you left them out.
Or are you saying the sexism bias came in after the acquisition? So it's a Disney thing? Ignoring the fact that they are a company based around a massive Princess franchise, you are wondering why they like to manufacture princesses?
Did you forget the two male leads in Frozen? (Kristof and Olaf).
Do you point out the sexism in almost every facet of life to your kids? Or does this dilemma just hit you at disney movies? If your children are daughters, do you explain to them they should expect less from the world, because historic statistics show they are going to get less? Or if they are sons, do you explain how they will get more simply by being male?
I'm not a huge fan of Pixar either, they're always so by-the-book -- just like these storytelling rules here. Even Disney in the '60s was taking much larger risks in feature animation.
The weird thing about some of Pixar's better movies is that there seems to be a lovely short film at the core, and then it's wrapped into a forgettable Saturday-morning plot to pad out the feature length. Wall-E and Up come to mind as particular examples.
That really spends on the movie. I don't feel like Ratatouille is really a kids movie nor is The Incredibles. I'd even argue Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are pretty adult. I could certainly relate to Woody's feeling scared of the shiny new hire (TS1) or his being lured to probably the wrong job (TS2). Up seems like an adult movie with stuff added for kids vs the opposite. So did Wall.E IMO. Lots of parents found Saving Nemo very close to their hearts (not a parent so not one of my favs).
Cars, on the other hand ......
I wasn't referring to the format (episodic) but the content. Shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad are not only addictive because they're episodic, but because they're well written and have something to take with after watching. The characters are extremely elaborate. Those shows feature stories that don't rely on exhausted tropes or even deconstruct existing tropes. I think TV shows are better produced and their bigger budget is a plus which makes it more accessible to a broad audience. But when I read how avant-garde and never-seen-before the next hot TV show is, I can probably name an anime that did it before. Lately though, I'd say I probably like TV shows more and it almost seems as if animes are in a generational change, which is for the worse.
I may be a tad harsh about Pixar, but I think they're merely "good" for adults. There are some exceptions to this rule (Wall-E and Up for instance) but overall they are more or less Lion King or Ariel with a different setting e.g.: you know what will happen. Ghibli movies have this sense of mystery and uncertainty that'll keep an adult watcher hooked. I also like that they are a bit more merciless, even though that makes them unsuitable for a very young audience. Pixar movies can be watched 6+ with certainty whereas you'd better check if the Ghibli movie is suitable for your child.
This hasn't been the case for a long time, although for some reason it remains a common misperception. I think it's mainly a marketing problem because people are always reading comments like this online, or hearing about such-and-such series that "is on Netflix" but disappointingly isn't currently available in the UK, while simultaneously being unaware of all the content that is available in the UK but not in the US.
For example, Netflix UK has the first 2 Hobbit movies, Pixar's Up, the original Danish versions of The Killing and The Bridge, all of Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, 24 and The Shield - none of which are currently available in the US. There's a load more I can't remember off the top of my head. The UK also got Breaking Bad a few hours after it was aired in the US, whereas US customers had to wait several months, presumably due to an exclusivity deal with AMC.
Obviously the UK also gets all the Netflix original content. Occasionally a new season will launch a few months ahead in the US, but that's not really a big deal. I can only assume this is done for same marketing reasons that blockbuster movie launches are typically staggered worldwide.
There are a small number of US shows like 30 Rock and Better Off Ted that I wish were on the UK service, and Star Trek DS9 is conspicuously absent, but that list is much smaller than it was 2 years ago.
The worst of it was that most of the fitting wasn't necessary. There is no need for there to be a link between Up and Toy Story - both stories can exist in the same universe, as there is nothing contradictory.
In fact, the author of the page doesn't seem to want all the films to be in the same universe. S/he could more accurately be described as trying to reduce the number of "magical" artifacts necessary to explain all of the things in the films that don't exist in real life. So we have the discovery of magic in Brave, and the creation of unlimited energy / strong AI in The Incredibles, and everything else flows from that. Of course trying to tie everything to just these two root causes ironically makes them all less believable than the suspension of disbelief for each individual act of "magic".
I appreciate the clear description of local vs global illumination. This isn't quite what the article is discussing though.
Pixar have had a global illumination system in place at least since Up, and maybe earlier [1]. However, it was one that integrated with their rasterizer.
The article is now claiming that Pixar have switched to Raytracing exclusively, which really is actually a HUGE change, as Renderman only introduced raytracing at all with Cars 2. Every prior Pixar movie exclusively used a micropolygon rasterizer for rendering.
The article also claims:
> ray tracing is a relatively advanced CG lighting technique
Well, not really. Ray tracing - at least Whitted-style ray tracing - is about as simple as physically-based rendering gets. It's making it fast that gets complex, but it's possible to write a basic ray tracer in a few hours if you know what you're doing.
[1] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PointBasedGlobalIlluminationForMovieProduction/paper.pdf
I like that you ask for mindfck movies. They definitely hold a special place in my heart. A lot of the entries here have been very sci-fi. I tend to like more historical or present-day dramas with great acting that expose some sort of undesirable human behavior, but I snuck a sci-fi movie on the list ;). You can't take the nerd out of the cinephile!
There Will Be Blood - No "great movie" list is complete without a movie that stars Daniel Day Lewis. Go watch all his movies if you want to see what it's like to take acting to the extreme.
(M) The Spanish Prisoner - Probably my favorite suspense movie, along with a Hitchcock or two like Vertigo or Rear Window. This is one of David Mamet's best, in my opinion. All these random things happen in the beginning of the movie that make you question why they bothered mentioning them, and then the catalytic action ties it all together expertly.
Pirates of Silicon Valley - This is the lightest contribution on the list, but probably the most relevant to HN. For what it's worth, both Woz and Bill Gates have described their portrayals as fairly accurate.
Alien - Definitely plays out more like a space horror film than an action movie like the sequels, the acting and suspense is fantastic, not to mention the costume work that went into the alien on the part of HR Giger (if you want a true mindfck, skip the movies and go read his website--terrifying).
Grave of the Fireflies - I wanted to include an animated film on my list, but I really had trouble deciding between Interstella 5555 (Daft Punk's Discovery set to an anime with no talking whatsoever. Great concept) and a Pixar movie (personal favorite: Up). I went with this because I figured you've probably seen Pixar movies. Grave of the Fireflies is a super depressing Ghibli film about the aftermath of the Kobe fire bombings in WW2. The way the movie shows the horrible living conditions and bleak outcomes of the two main characters (the boy is in his early teens and his sister must be around 4 or 5--I can't recall). The movie manipulates your emotions more than any other film I've included on this list. I don't think I've ever had as strong an emotional reaction to a movie as when I saw this one.
> I agree (for now), but i'm not sure this would be a bad thing. You might not be able to make Transformers 3, but you could make most (all?) of Hitchcock's movies.
In addition to "Transformers 3", we also might not have:
WALL-E: $180 million
Toy Story 3: $200 million
Up: $175 million
How to Train Your Dragon: $165 million
Could these same stories be told more cheaply? Sure...but I think they would have just been good stories then, not masterpieces.
Here's the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/9687977/Jonathan-Trappe-flies-a-house-on-helium-balloons-like-the-PixarDisney-film-Up.html
Here's the IndieGoGo page for the project: http://www.indiegogo.com/upacrosstheatlantic
Why are you considering only the unbroken line when theres obviously more than that? The patent is for the entire thing.
Considering just the outline, the nest thermostat is just a circle. Considering just the first ten minutes, Up is a movie about a couple growing old together. This isn't a pick and choose thing.
That's just it though while Doctor Strange Love (1964) was #32 and Up (2009) was #924 there both vary good movies. There was plenty of recent and fun movies vary low on the list, consider:
Bowfinger (1999), Solaris (2002), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), From the Village to the City (1974), Going Postal (2010), Legally Blonde (2001) that's that's 4913 to 4918.
PS: Granted, rating movies is a huge multi dimensional problem, just ask Netflix, but you don't need a lot of accuracy to find a good movie.
While I will grant that Tim Burton can be clever I have never seen anything of his that carries the same emotional weight of Pixar's best works. Toy Story 3 was an amazing success and pulled off being a very emotional film while being a comedy/adventure. I know many people who cried or nearly cried toward the end who are parents with kids leaving their childhood behind. The first several minutes of UP are amazingly melancholy. The "dance" in space from Wall-E is downright beautiful and Wall-E's devotion to the girl robot when she is broken is rather heartwarming.
Incidentally according to BoxOffice Mojo Wall-E made 521 Million dollars.
> Pixar didn't enjoy iPhone-like profitability.
Personally, I'd say Pixar seems to be the Apple of the movie industry. A few products, done right, and hugely profitable:
> As of February 2012, its films have made over $7 billion worldwide, with its $602 million average gross by far the highest of any studio in the industry. In addition all the films produced by Pixar are among the fifty highest grossing animated films of all time, with Finding Nemo (#26), Up (#43) and Toy Story 3 (#7) all in the top 50 list of highest-grossing films of all time. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar
> My point is that (1) no, they really can't product another iPhone-like hit (that's a once-a-generation thing)
They've already put out three in a generation - iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Lumping those three distinct systems into one is intellectually dishonest.
My first result in Google for that query is: "National Geographic real-life floating house: Pixar's Up! can be ..."
In any case, I think I have my search-fu already optimized for Google: I'd search "animation film flying house" instead, which results in:
Google → 1st result, Wikipedia page for Up!
DDG → 3rd result, reference to Up! in the title, although not a page about the movie specifically.
Bing → Up! nowhere to be see on the first page.
"So what have they done lately?"
Not even counting foreign films, here are some darn good productions from the past five years:
Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Drive, Warrior, Black Swan, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Whatever Works, The Limits of Control, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Ratatouille, The Departed, and The Prestige.
Completely agree that the questions should be asked honestly and with an eye on social benefits and costs. I'm no fan of the copyright system as-is precisely because I think those tradeoffs are poorly balanced given modern technology.
As for whether it is "bad" to lose capacity to do things like "Lost" I think (for my value system) it's clearly very bad even if 9/10 such projects are not of lasting value. These kinds of mega-projects allow us to push the frontier of what is possible as entertainment and human expression. If you don't particularly like "Lost" for artistic reasons (fair enough ;-), then perhaps substitute anything by Pixar; losing society's ability to make "Wall-E" or "Up" means a duller, less inspiring world.
Of course, you could similarly disagree with the artistic merits of Pixar films as being a worthwhile tradeoff. But at some point that line of reasoning just becomes "I'm personally happy with art made on the cheap by a small group and no marketing or distribution costs; I'm ok sacrificing everything else."
Cars and Cars 2 suffer from some of the same problems that Shrek 2 & 3 suffered from: creating a self-consistent universe based on adult puns based on characters of modern society.Unless it is done with restraint and real skill it soon behinds to feel insincere and contrived (see Sharks Tail, Chicken Run).
Toy Story & Shrek did something far cleverer. Shrek especially is smart, sophisticated humour for smart, sophisticated kids. The references are all from children's literature and culture. Kids know the references and are able to understand the clever puns.
Shreks 2&3 are dumb adult humour forced into the Shrek world. Many of the puns are above children's heads and are not sophisticated enough for the adult audience. Adding plot-lines about lawyers, unions etc just confuse small kids and leave adults slightly cringing.
Pixar and Dreamworks are at their best when they choose their target audience and focus on it. Toy Story & Nemo are for smart young kids; Ratatouille & The Incredibles are for smart older kids. Then enough is added for the rest of the family: everyone gets a clever joke every few minutes; the stories are understandable by all. Wall-E and Up are very adult in the big story (but full of great fun in the small story) I thought they were wonderful but I do understand your point (although they are I no way 'awful'—even if you are 5).
I'm not convinced that Pixar have mad a bad film yet. Cars grows on me the more I see it (and believe me if you have kids you end up seeing these films any times). Nemo (by far the funniest film Pixar have made) still makes me laugh despite having seen it 20+ times.
{I'm told that Cars 2 is relentless: too fast and too complicated for young kids, but as I haven't seen it I can't judge. The fact that I haven't seen it says something: I normally see every Pixar film the week it comes out.}
The problem that Pixar has had is that we have had to judge Pixar by Pixar standards as until recently no-one was making anything as good. This has now changed. Wonderfully for us Pixar now has serious competition. Dreamworks has made a number of films that are as good as Pixar's. Some of them are as good as Pixar's best: How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind, Kung Fu Panda. Walt Disney Animation Studios is back on form with Tangled (Monsters v Aliens wasn't bad either).
How to Train Your Dragon & Tangled are thankfully free of transfer-modern-society-into-cartoon-world puns. Instead you are given a detailed, self-consistent world that complements the story (rather than being the story). This is a very good thing—something I hope that Pixar will move back towards (although I don't hold out much hope for Monsters Inc 2).
I remember seeing it in the theater w/ family and my (then) four year-old niece saying "this movie is really sad". The first 20 minutes are about how the old man lost his best friend and wife and is left all alone.
It wasn't sad in the same sense that Toy Story 3 was sad, because I don't think little kids can really relate to Toy Story 3 story like adults can. Kids could realize, at least on some level, the loss felt by the old guy in Up.
I think what "Up" succeeded was even more significant than that: they took animation into the affective territory of live-action movies. Frankly, I don't even really remember the voices.
Making cartoons (which I sincerely believe 3D has been) has been one-upmanship of technology that pretty much builds its own history in lockstep, but to combine that with writing and the animation choices for something that can bring a tear to the eye of an adult is truly great work. The first act of "Up" really is a landmark to me.
Early animated movies mostly did well, and resonated with people, because of excellent voice acting from recognizable actors. (Think Toy Story.) Up's gambit is to show that well-orchestrated music and animation can surpass that. It isn't technically superior, but it is far more important.
I have the image of the injured bird in "Up" limping along burned in my memory. I actually thought the scene was a little mature for the kids watching the movie, so I agree with you about them convincingly conveying emotion.
I've noticed a kind of arms-race in most of the Pixar/Dreamworks movies I've seen (not nearly all), where in the first 5 or 10 minutes there will always be some new technique being foregrounded. Sully's hair is a great example, they lay the new tech out right away both as a "we're cool" (in a positive sense!) signal to other animators and as a far point of expectations for the animation to the rubes like me. "If this goes over, everything else falls into place." I'm a little sad to see you neg "Up," though, because I thought the technical gambit there was much more sophisticated: conveying emotion convincingly from what is basically a cartoon. I think they succeeded in spades on that one.
Hair rendering always blew my mind. I remember seeing Monster's Inc in the theater, and the first shot of Sully was when he was asleep in his bed breathing heavily, and you could see the individual strands of hair on his arm flowing back and forth. I felt the world of animation change right at that moment for me, and now I wait with great anticipation for every new Pixar film that comes out. For me, "Up" was the only real let-down.
There's a more comprehensive coverage by ABC on this. With Video. (Warning: Annoying ads) http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/recreating-scene-disneys-up-movie-magic-engineers-kids-cartoon-computer-animation-entertainment-13068921
Great read. I agree with less immersion in 3D films.
I saw Pixar's "Up" in 3D. Such a touching story.
But at the sad scenes, when my eyes started to water up, I became super conscious of the fact that I had silly oversized glasses on my face, and it ruined the moment.
Watching the Blu-ray, in the comfort of my own home, I'm bawling like a baby.
UP was strange. It was like two different movies that never quite came together. I like slapstick, but man, slapstick and cancer doesn't work. It's like there was a great and weird (good) movie in there but it got cheapened by the clowny Disney mascot kid thing.
I couldn't stand the kid and the bizarre dog voice, but I haven't thought enough about it to see a solution.
Wall-E had some nice moments -- mostly when it was trying to be Star Wars. The Eco-story and human characters were ludicrous.
I want to see what Brad Bird makes next. Incredibles and Ratatouille are by far my favourite Pixar movies.
I think the point is that Wall-E and Up! weren't movies targeted at kids. Any entertainment value kids can derive from such a movie is purely coincidental. Any entertainment value the target market of such a movie can derive from such a movie is brilliant success.
Once again, they were not kids movies. Stop criticizing them for not being fun for kids.
Fair point, there's a market for adult animated movies. But I think it's small.
The scene in Up! which showed the old couples life story was well done, but I doubt any child would really remember it or rate it. It was for sentimental adults and critical acclaim from adults.
Again, the scenes in Wall-E where the robot does boring things for ages without saying anything seemed to be there for adults, and to get oscar nominations, rather than to entertain children.
Just my opinion, but I'm really glad to see them revisiting Cars and Monsters Inc which are favorites with my kids, whilst Up! and Wall-E barely registered with them.
There are a significant number of people without children, such as myself. The entire world doesn't revolve around kids and its nice to see movies and other entertainment options that cater to adults. Besides, we're the ones that have money to spend, not the little wee ones.
Both Wall-e and Up! were excellent movies. In particular, Up! was one of the few movies in many years that actually emotionally moved me in serious ways. Wall-e was also a great movie that deserves the many accolades it received.
I liked Cars. I absolutely hated Up! and Wall-e with a passion.
Cars is obviously a reasonably simple storyline, but it's a good movie with good characters. Kids like cars shrug it's a movie about toy cars... what's not to like?
Better than an obese highly irritating boy scout kid hitching a lift on a house with an old guy :/
I really worried they'd lost the plot after Wall-e and Up! (The 2 worst releases imho). So Toy Story 3 was great to see.
Story outlines usually sound rubbish IMHO. So I'll give cars 2 the benefit of the doubt. Glad there's a new movie with characters my kids love in it.
Wall-e and Up! catered mainly to parents/intellectuals so it's nice to see some good fun movies in the pipeline.
>Even some very successful animated movies like Lion King end up with the bad guy being killed. Either intentionally or not, kids end up satisfied that the bad guy had what he deserved and that all become happily ever after.
This is something that I'm disturbed by. Did they really have to kill off Charles Muntz in Up and Syndrome in The Incredibles? Those guys weren't that bad.
I would keep my kid away from as much violent anything as possible, and gradually introduce critically renowned and age-appropriate entertainment as they grow up. Kind of like how I was raised I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an adult who enjoys good entertainment like Sin City and Blood Meridian. I had read a lot of Mark Twain and Dickens as a kid, and those were thoroughly entertaining too. I didn't feel deprived at all. Parents just kind of suck.
I think it may be Pixars influence... Up! and Wall-e were both pretty adult intellectual movies (yawn).
Hopefully Toy Story 3 has something for the kids as well (Haven't seen it yet).
3D seems to work significantly better on 100% animated movies. Both Coraline and UP were better with 3D than without, IMO.
Pixar worked hard to make sure their use of 3D cinematography in UP was properly integrated throughout their creative process so that it would be something that added to the movie experience and not a gimmick.
It's just more of an adult / documentary thing IMHO. They spent way too much trying to make some principled point rather than entertain. Same with 'Up'. I think perhaps they were catering to people who nominate Oscars or something.
My kids were bored. Gimmie Princess and the frog, Hercules, Aladdin, Little Mermaid etc etc any day.
I would strongly disagree that 3D in UP can be dismissed as merely a "post-process like VHS." All future Pixar films are going to be in 3D, and Pixar does not make story / layout choices on a whim. Just because the movie is enjoyable in 2D doesn't mean a lot of thought / early planning went into the 3D, it just means the core story was not strongly affected by it. Here's the first part of this interview with the director of UP talks about the use of 3D in the development process:
http://www.movieretriever.com/blog/336/interview-pete-docter-director-of-up
Some choice quotes:
"We just focused on telling as strong of a story as we could and then the 3D group followed up with the 3D. And they did use it creatively. We tried to use it like color or like camera or anything else - to emphasize emotion."
Development is pipelined at Pixar, starting with Story. So this sounds like 3D was integrated as soon as Animation got their hands on it.
"If people really embrace it and feel it's the way to go, then we'll do them all that way. This one, you can see either way, which I think is nice. Some people find it really engaging and interesting but other people are kind of put off by the glasses and whatever. I don't think you're losing anything by seeing it in 2D, it's just a different way to see it."
As an extreme analogy, I bet that watching UP with a black and white filter, I would still laugh / cry while watching the film.
Extensive interview on 3D with some of the people in charge of 3D:
http://www.awn.com/articles/reviews/pixar-goes-3-d
"Yes, the most gratifying thing is that we put a lot of time and energy and thought in our approach to 3-D and we never really knew if people would get it. To see some of the online reviews coming out of Cannes, it seems that people really got our nuanced, subtle approach. We want to pull people into the movie and not push them away from it with a lot of gimmicky stuff coming at ya."
"What was really interesting was, not knowing how 3-D was going to work with editing and with composition, how good camera and staging play really nicely in 3-D. And this turned into a motto for us. We did about eight minutes of Ratatouille as a test and it was really stunning."
Gee, I would really like to see that one... anyways there are a bunch of interesting interviews on this stuff.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bob+whitehill+interview+up+3d
> Up is a tremendous movie; it made me laugh and cry, and was intended to be seen in 3D.
Wrong.
Up was made, first and foremost, as a 2D film, just like every Pixar film before it. 3D was very important to the overall box office strategy, but the primary medium was the 2D big screen, and the 3D was done as post-process, secondary (just like VHS or DVDs are).
The technology behind and amount of artistic energy given towards the 3D version has increased over time, for sure.
I believe Dreamworks has started building their films with 3D as the primary version (staging cameras and shots with 3D in mind) but I have no first hand knowledge of that.
Why does everyone here hate Flash so much? I agree that Flash has weaknesses...but the combination of animation tools and concepts - combined with software controlled interactivity is a direction I wish the entire web would embrace. Flash is visually appealing... some of the movie sites like UP (http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/up/main.html) are simply amazing.
May be they can have these floating around like in Up movie.
Actually, I thought I had added additional information about technical proficiency in that same post but I got it mixed up with something else I argued some weeks ago on here.
The only way to accurately compare the two would be on a technical proficiency and currently, Dreamworks edges out Pixar in that department, but by such a small margin that it's almost negligible.
If we were to do a year by year comparison, UP and Monsters Vs Aliens were very similar (although some of the lighting in UP was fantastic, Jeremy Birn does some great stuff, I've read his book, fascinating stuff)
Last year though, Kung Fu Panda was simply astounding from a complexity issue. Fur + Cloth and having cloth interact with that fur, especially when you're considering the fact that the character rigs have to do very complex manouvers to perform the kung fu moves... that's simply astounding.
Even moreso when you consider that when the cloth was interacting with fur, it would flatten it when it would move over, with the fur springing back up afterwards (eg, master shifu) - Cloth + Fur are typically the hardest things to do in 3D, so having both work, plus on the scale that some of the scenes did (the revealing of the dragon warrior + the crowd) shows just how amazing the film was.
There's a bit of the whole Dreamworks vs Pixar thing.
Monsters vs Aliens was cute, timely, and throughly enjoyable. UP was downright brilliant and clearly timeless. Pixar consistently produces a form of the art that is simply higher than Dreamworks can even approach.
We see this in stand up as well. There are comedians who are topical, or who test social norms. And then there are comedians like Brian Regan who tell jokes which appeal to everyone and always will. And then there are comedians like George Carlin who tells jokes which are topical, test social norms, AND manage to age well.
There's nothing wrong with telling jokes which don't age well. It's easier. If you're going to do a show which runs every night, or every week, for many many seasons: for goodness sake, tell some jokes with short shelf life! You'll never make it otherwise.
If you make a great animated film, and people pay to come see it, and they walk out with a smile on their faces, and that's what you set out to do: you have succeeded. If you wanted to make sure they were still smiling, after the 100th viewing, 20 years from now... well... then you're going to produce fewer movies, and you're going to work harder to do it. And maybe you go home more fulfilled at the end of the day. Or maybe you don't. shrug
The film breaks out of the mold of 3D animated film art direction with stylized characters and it prefers graphic shapes over the hyper-realism so common in the genre
They did this with WALL-E first, with the juxtaposition between the two main characters.
WALL-E was a square, while Eve was essentially a circle (Andrew Stanton's words, not mine).
Same thing is happening in UP, Carl Fredrickson (the old guy) represents the square, while Russel (boy scout) represents the circle and it is really more prevalent, even with Carl's finger's having a rough rectangular shape.
Pixar used to be lauded for its originality and commitment to high quality.
A little anecdote on just how committed they are.
During the production of Finding Nemo, a couple of Pixar artists climbed inside the mouth of a dead beached whale in California just to get a good idea of the textures inside of it for the scene between Dory and Marlin when they were inside the mouth of a whale.
That's commitment to quality.
Up is an amazing film. It's funny, endearing, classic, and artistically excellent. The film breaks out of the mold of 3D animated film art direction with stylized characters and it prefers graphic shapes over the hyper-realism so common in the genre (you'll have to trust me).
While the characters are not toys, cars, or fish (which are easily merchandised) they are still cute. It will probably sell (at box office and toy shelves) at the same level as Ratatouille, but that is still a major success for any other studio on the planet.
Pixar used to be lauded for its originality and commitment to high quality. Suddenly, it's being panned for those same things.
I don't know, I disagree with a couple of these points.
Here is the basic recipe for a Pixar film. The main character has to "grow" throughout the film while facing what are essentially adult problems - using animation as the vehicle for story telling.
I think that can be said about most stories with a non-tragic hero.
Dreamworks animations are aimed directly at children because of this influence, the stories are often not as complex and the jokes are simpler.
Of the several PDI/Dreamworks films I've seen, I would say they are at the same complexity level as Pixar's stories. These stories usually have a couple of layers of depth to them, and you only need to follow the obvious one to get the main points. In my opinion, the Dreamworks films are not articulated as well (in both plot and characterizations) as the Pixar films and actually end up feeling more convoluted.
I first saw Toy Story as a child. Looking back on it as an adult, I remembered that I had a pretty good grasp on the plot and characters as a kid, so I was assuming it had been a simplistic film. When I watched it again, I saw lots of things I didn't notice as a kid.
Their marketing teams absolutely blitz the public and this is probably why Shrek 2 is still the highest grossing animated film of all time, even though several films from both studios are better.
Definitely.
Now if the NY Times really wants to make an article about Pixar's future success, they should perhaps write about how the next few films after UP won't be directed by Pixar's main stable of directors (Stanton, Lasseter, Bird and Docter) instead seeing a generational change with new directors handling old franchises.
True. One thing Pixar has going for them is that they haven't made any movies even close to bad. I would say that they haven't even made any movies that aren't great. (Though I'm kind of on the fence about Cars.) They've built up a pretty solid momentum now, and it would take a series of bombs (like Disney after the mid-90s) to shake it.
The people getting upset about Up not being as marketable as past Pixar films will have to get over it. If you're going to get great creative types together and have them make stuff, you have to give them freedom – otherwise you end up like PDI/Dreamworks. In summary: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3472/3398960470_05527c04b1_b.jpg
It still amazes me that analysts fail to see Pixar films for what they really are: Aimed at everyone, not just children. This is why the franchise aspect of the films is a little harder.
Here is the basic recipe for a Pixar film. The main character has to "grow" throughout the film while facing what are essentially adult problems - using animation as the vehicle for story telling.
Compare that to Dreamworks - who's style is heavily influenced by Jeffrey Katzenberg who is responsible for Disney's great run of films in the late 80's and early 90's (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast & Aladdin) before leaving in 94 and founding Dreamworks with Spielberg.
Dreamworks animations are aimed directly at children because of this influence, the stories are often not as complex and the jokes are simpler. They're geared for pumping out 2 films a year instead of just the 1 and are heavily backed up by merchandising. Their marketing teams absolutely blitz the public and this is probably why Shrek 2 is still the highest grossing animated film of all time, even though several films from both studios are better.
Now if the NY Times really wants to make an article about Pixar's future success, they should perhaps write about how the next few films after UP won't be directed by Pixar's main stable of directors (Stanton, Lasseter, Bird and Docter) instead seeing a generational change with new directors handling old franchises.
As Brad Bird of Pixar said during their documentary The Pixar Story
"This is an anomaly, this place is really freakishly alone in this hit after hit aspect"
It's not really a case of if they will make a film that fails, it's when - I personally hope that it never happens, but I'm not that naive.