Up is a computer-animated film directed by Pete Docter and co-written by Bob Peterson, and it was released in 2009. The film’s voices are provided by Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, and Bob Peterson. Carl Fredricksen (Asner) and Russell Nagai (Nagai), an elderly widower and wilderness adventurer, set sail for South America to fulfill a promise Carl made to their late wife Ellie.
Along the way, they meet a talking dog named Dug (Peterson), as well as a large bird named Kevin, who is being hunted by explorer Charles Muntz (Plummer). Up’s theme was conceived in 2004 under the working title Heliums, and it revolved upon thoughts of escaping reality until it became too painful.
He spent three days in Venezuela with eleven other Pixar artists, learning and becoming inspired. Animators were entrusted with creating realistic cloth for the characters, who were extremely caricatured and stylized. Pixar’s first three-dimensional film was released in this year.
Up debuted at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on May 13, 2009, and was released in theatres in the United States on May 29. The press praised the film’s characters, themes, plot, Asner’s vocal performance, and Giacchino’s soundtrack.
Organizations like the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named Up as one of their top ten films of 2009. It was the sixth highest-earning film of 2009, grossing $735.1 million worldwide. Up had five Academy Award nominations and won two of them, including Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score, as well as numerous other awards.
Carl Fredricksen considers adventurer Charles Muntz to be a hero. Muntz returns to South America’s Paradise Falls by trapping a living specimen, then vanishes after exhibiting a bogus huge bird skeleton.
Up is Michael Giacchino’s third Pixar film to include his music, following The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Pete Docter wanted the music to be about emotions first and foremost, so Giacchino created a character-driven score that producer Jonas Rivera thought fit the story well.
The first piece of music Carl hears in the cinema while seeing a documentary on Muntz is “Muntz’s Tune,” which begins as a simple happy theme and continues throughout the film until Muntz reappears 70 years later.
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