Up!

[archerships]

In detailing all the good things I’ve experienced recently, I forgot to mention Up! Does anyone believe that “Nobody Knows Anything” nowadays? Pixar has made ten films to date, and all of them have grossed over $350 million worldwide (with the exception of Up!, which is too new to know the final figures). Four of them have won Academy awards for best animated feature. I don’t know exactly what Pixar does differently, but they seem to have found a formula for making consistently excellent, highly profitable films.

Up!, like the other Pixar films, is a delight to watch. By turns both funny and sad, the film made me tear up several times. I highly recommend it. My only criticism is that, yet again, a mad scientist is the villain. Thanks Liz and Sean, for the invite to go see it!

Original: craschworks - comments

Comments

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

B. and I were out running yesterday with our dog when she saw a squirrel. We both started laughing.

"Up" really was a good movie.

[fishsupreme]

In my opinion, what they know how to do is make family films -- this is somewhat of a lost art these days.

Most of the time, movies are either made for adults, or they're "kids' movies" -- centered around the sorts of things that kids find appealing but adults find off-putting. The usual compromise is something like the Shrek films -- kids' movies that are peppered with pop-culture references and in-jokes. But that's a bit different than a family film -- the kids & adults laugh at different parts. In a Pixar movie, the adults & kids laugh at the same parts (albeit sometimes for different reasons.)

They also make movies as movies, rather than an avenue to sell toys the way most producers of kids' entertainment do. Pixar doesn't worry about whether their characters are marketable. (I mean, really, a rat and an awkward French kid? An old guy and a fat Asian-American kid? These are not designed to become action figures.)

[kenshi.livejournal.com]

Pixar's success boils down to two things, really:

1) a focus on strong narrative and visual storytelling with compelling characters in an entertainment mode, and,

2) the use of a collaborative "studio" style system very similar to how major studios used to work during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. Scripts are produced in-house by staff writers in collaboration with each other plus producers and directors. There are very few "hired guns" brought in from outside to work on Pixar films. Most of the collaborators are part of Pixar itself or very closely aligned with it and its goals and methods.