Blog Post 5 (REVISED) February 23, 2010

I have had a hard time thinking of some topics to write on for this weeks blog post. This past weekend I watched UP! for about the 200th time, and realized…I have cried every time. SPOILER ALERT: there are sad portions to this movie. Call me a wimp, but I believe that with the movie UP! Pixar wanted to branch out and create a not so perfect story.

In all of the previews of UP! there were fun characters, a grumpy but adventurous old man and a boy who just wants to fit in. But it was what they didnt show the audience that made this film different than all the others that Pixar has created over the years. There was still the message of perseverance and believing in oneself, but the situations that the different characters faced in their every day life were what caught the attention of so many people.

The story of UP! is a generally happy one, but it is not what many thought it may be when they walked into the theater. It was not their usual movie. It was a story of two people who came together out of tragedy that happened to them. Carl, a man who had fallen in love as a child with a girl named Ellie, grew up and married her. Carl and Ellie spent a good portion of their lives together trying to fulfill their dreams. This is the first not so perfect part of this movie. The movie touches on the subject of Miscarriage when Ellie becomes pregnant, then we see her in a doctors office crying. This is something that cartoons for children do not normally touch on. It is a subject that most children do not even know about. Tragedy then hit the family when Ellie passed away and Carl was left alone. His life is turned upside down by this and other things. Then we are introduced to Russell, a small boy who lives only with his mother and is out looking for an adventure. He is desperate for his fathers attention who does not come around all that often. They accidentally end up on a journey that helps both of them become better people, and allows them to gain back something that they had lost in the friendships they discovered.

Pixar did something new and different with this movie. They touched on things that most animated movies had not touched on at that level. It was something that today’s audience needed to see, and could relate with, possibly on many levels. I can imagine that some were upset with the way that this was portrayed though. The question that comes to mind in this instance is: is this appropriate for the ages that this movie was geared towards? Or should animated movies be happy-go-lucky all the time. I think this goes back to the messages and jokes that many movies put out in order to appeal to the parents that take the kids to go see the film. This movie was not geared towards children, it was geared towards family. I wouldnt imagine that a child would understand the scene with Ellie at the doctors, but the parents would. It opens up a line of communication from the parents to the children. A topic that maybe some people are uncomfortable talking about could be brought up in a way that would make children understand that not everything always goes according to plan. While this film has its dark moments, it has the ability to touch almost everyone at some point.

Pixar certainly is not the safe animation studio, and with this film they proved that. I believe that this not so perfect story is exactly what the public needed to launch a new acceptance of a different kind of film. Hopefully in the future this trend will continue.

Blog Post 4 February 15, 2010

I think that almost every little girl has grown up watching some sort of Disney Princess movie. I watched all of them Im pretty sure. I would watch them and think about the perfect love story that each of these movies held within them. It has long been said that Disney creates unrealistic life expectations about love…which is probably true, but the fact that people still watch these love classics is the thing in which Disney capitalizes on, and they do it quite well.

There have been a number of Disney Princess movies made. Up until a while ago with the making of Mulan or Pochahontas (which i dont really consider “princess” films) the stories were generally the same. A beautiful princess had something bad happen to her in her life, she had to live with this issue for a while, she met a prince who instantly fell in love with her, and he took her away to live a better life in a large castle. The princess lived “happily ever after”. Little girls grew up dreaming that “someday her prince would come” and all would be right with the world. This message that Disney portrayed left little girls everywhere wanting more. More love stories, more heroic princes, and more evil women that wanted to destroy these girls. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not cynical when it comes to love, I was this little girl when I was younger, but now it is almost laughable when I see the amount of money spent on the Princess industry. Little girls are still growing up on these classic stories.

Disney did shy away from these films for a while, producing things like Aladdin (which did have a princess, but i don’t consider it a “Princess film”) and other movies with Pixar. But each film did have the undertone of love stories in it. Disney just couldn’t leave those out of any great story. Enchanted came along a few years ago, and now The Princess and the frog has debuted bringing back the Princess films. Disney knows what sells with these films…love. But could Disney make a film without any love story in it and have a hit? I believe that Disney needs these unfathomable love stories in their films to sell…And that is somewhat saddening to someone who grew up thinking someday a prince would come and sweep her off to a castle.

Blog Post 3 (REVISED) February 8, 2010

For the Birds is a Pixar animation that the studio released in 2001 for the beginning of another one of their films, Monsters Inc. As with most of the shorts that were released alongside films in the theatres, For the Birds received a lot of attention, and laughs, from the Public. It won an Oscar for Best Short Animated film in 2002, and many other awards earlier. The thing that stuck out to me the most about this short, as with a lot of Pixar’s animations, was that none of the characters spoke. The message was conveyed through expression and sounds that the characters made. Pixar has mastered the ability to evoke different feelings of characters in situations purely through the technique in which they create those characters.

Pixar’s website states “For the Birds is deceptively simple. Take a closer look at the birds in this Academy Award-winning short film and you’ll notice each one has countless feathers that look natural and move like they would in real life, but Pixar was able to work with its existing technology to make it happen”. I noticed not only the movement of the feathers, which eventually get stripped off, but the eyes and the exaggeration of this feature. Much like in The Owl Collection, the eyes of the birds are exaggerated and show clear signs of emotions and feelings. The birds are enjoying an afternoon of chatting on a wire, when a larger, more awkward bird comes into the picture. He wants to make friends with the smaller birds, but they do not want him to be a part of their clique. Their eye movements and body language show this quite well. Their feathers move with them which, as stated above, is quite impressive and gives them a truly life like quality.   Not only do they show the emotions of the little birds, but they can show the ignorance of the large bird through facial movements. What sticks out to me…no pun intended…is the large beak placed on the big bird. It was put there to show the awkwardness and ignorance of the bird…and does it quite well.

This animation is a lot like the first one that Pixar released with Toy Story. The lamps do not speak, but it instead is with their movements that they evoke emotion and create a relationship. This animation has a one up on that with the fact that the small birds all look the same and the large bird looks dramatically different.

This cartoon, which is pretty sad until the very end, has the ability to evoke emotion in people through the characterization of these birds.  It is a classic story in the fact that this bird wants to be a part of the “cool” crowd and tries very hard to do so. The small birds make fun of him and dont want any part of his participation. But eventually the big bird wins, and the evil little birds get whats coming to them. With this we see the annoyance in the little birds, and the happiness in the big one. He is no longer an outcast…because he is the one in the feathers now!!

Alice in Wonderland… February 2, 2010

Disney’s 1951 version of the film left something to be desired when it first appeared on the big screen, but grew to be a cult film and soon a classic to children everywhere. The Film itself, according to IMDB, is actually based upon not one but three of Lewis Carrolls masterpieces. It depicts all the nonsense that Carroll wrote about, and touches on pretty much all the main topics of the three books, only leaving out a few details…and adding some in as Disney is so famous for doing. Being that the stories that Carroll wrote are some of my favorites, I grew up loving this film. Upon further inspection however, I can see how this movie was a flop when it first arrived on the scene.

Alice in Wonderland was not the first animated feature for Walt Disney, and you can see similar styles of the company in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The exaggeration of features is predominate in this film just like all of Disney’s others. Eyes on people and animals were enlarged and the faces had memorable features. The flowers show this very well in their scene. Disney had the ablity to take an inanimate object and breathe life into it. This was done not only with faces, but in the scenes with the oysters, they were dressed up in clothes…giving the appearance of lifelike and relate-able qualities. The secondary action was thought of in almost every clip. However, sometimes it was TOO over-extended looking odd at times. Watch Alice’s hair and you will see what I am talking about. This could be a good or a bad thing depending on who is critiquing the film. It is deliberate, but it could also be that this was the way things were done at the time.

I am surprised however that a film like this came out AFTER the amazing Fantasia. So much was accomplished with that film, that this seemed lackluster compared to it. The scenery was flat and often different colors than plants or other things that Alice would walk through. At times the lighting was off, and I couldn’t differentiate night and day, and finally, the movements of the mouths on the characters were off…which could drive anyone insane. In the scene where Alice becomes trapped in the White Rabbits home, we hear her say “Oh no, not again”, but her lips never moved.

According to Wikipedia, Walt Disney had been toying with the idea of an animated Alice since 1923. There were many things that he did beautifully with this film, but I can see why critics would vote it a flop when it came after such great films like Fantasia.