Real Life Version of Simpsons

I did not know Lisa was red-headed!
I liked the fact that Simpsons are ugly in real life, but I bet there were better actors to represent them!

Daily Cartoon by Hugh McLeod

Up - Animation

So, as I am into animation movies lately, I watched "UP" yesterday night. It was a really funny and cool movie. My next film in line is Bashir. Watch out for its review!

UP

By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn't alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip.

A young Carl Fredrickson meets a young adventure spirited girl named Ellie. They both dream of going to a Lost Land in South America. 70 years later, Ellie has died. Carl remembers the promise he made to her. Then, when he inadvertently hits a construction worker, he is forced to go to a retirement home. But before they can take him, he and his house fly away. However he has a stowaway aboard. An 8 year old boy named Russell, who's trying to get an Assisting the Elderly badge. Together, they embark on an adventure, where they encounter talking dogs, an evil villain and a rare bird named Kevin.

Box Office

Budget: $175,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $68,108,790 (USA) (31 May 2009) (3 Screens)

Gross: $293,004,164 (USA) (5 November 2009)

TRIVIA

If Carl's house was approximately 1600 square feet, and the average house weighs between 60-100 pounds per square foot, it weighs 120,000 pounds. If the average helium balloon can carry .009 pounds (or 4.63 grams), it would take 12,658,392 balloons to lift his house off the ground. (20,622 balloons appear on the house when it first lifts off.)

Very first animated film, as well as the first 3D film, ever to open the Cannes Film Festival.

Russell is Pixar's first Japanese/Asian-American character voiced by an Asian-American actor, Jordan Nagai.

As per Pixar tradition, John Ratzenberger once again provides a voice in the movie, making him the only actor to do a voice in every Pixar film.

The term 'A113' is the number of the courtroom, and can be found on the gold sign Carl sits next to while waiting to be called (Courtroom A113). A113 is a frequent Pixar in-joke based on one of the room numbers for the animation program at Cal Arts.

The legendary singer Charles Aznavour performs the voice of Carl in the French version.

Dug's 'point' pose, where his entire tail, back, and head is in a perfectly straight line, is an homage to the identical pose that Mickey's dog, Pluto, often makes. Dug also shares a similar colour scheme to Pluto.

Co-director/co-writer Bob Peterson stated that Dug's line "I have just met you, and I love you," was inspired by a quote from a small child that he met when he was a camp counselor in the 1980s.

In June 2009, 10-year-old Colby Curtin from Huntington Beach, California, was suffering from the final stages of terminal vascular cancer. Her dying wish was to live long enough to see Up (2009). Unfortunately, Colby was too sick to leave home and her family feared she would die without seeing the film. A family friend contacted Pixar, and a private screening was arranged for Colby. The company flew an employee with a DVD copy of "Up", along with some tie-in merchandise from the film. Colby couldn't see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed, so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film. Seven hours after viewing the film, Colby passed away.

Russell's Wilderness Explorer sash has several in-jokes and tributes. The most obvious is a Luxo Jr. (1986) ball. One badge has a hamburger with a candle in it. This is a nod to Merritt Bakery in Oakland - which creates cakes in that shape - a favorite hangout of director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera. Another badge is a tribute to 2-D animation, showing a perforated paper that is used by 2D animators to line up their drawings correctly. He also has badges for First Aid and Second Aid, which may be a reference to a short on the Up website where Russell struggles to apply bandages to Carl. Yet another badge depicts a multicolored pinwheel - the "hang" icon of Apple's Mac OS X operating system, equivalent to the Windows hourglass icon. Several of these badges are shown in the credits. An additional tribute to Apple and Steve Jobs (former CEO of Pixar and still a primary shareholder) shows Russell trying to teach Carl how to use a computer.

Edward Asner plays Carl Fredricksen.

A code title used during production was "Helium".

Film debut of Jordan Nagai, who voices Russell. Originally, his older brother Hunter was auditioning for the part, and Nagai simply came along with him. About 400 children had showed up for the auditions, but Nagai stood out because he would not stop talking. Director Pete Docter later said that "as soon as Jordan's voice came on we started smiling because he is appealing and innocent and cute and different from what I was initially thinking."

Pixar's second most commercially successful film after Finding Nemo (2003).

SPOILERS
(DONT READ IF YOU DONT WANT TO SPOIL THE MOVIE)

Carl and Russell's hometown at the end is Oakland. We see Oakland landmarks Fenton's Creamery and the Fox Oakland Theatre (showing Star Wars (1977)).

All of the dogs except for Dug are named after letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc) although this could relate to rankings in a dog pack, where the lead male is known as the Alpha, then Beta and so on. This is supported by the fact that when Dug puts Alpha in the Cone of Shame, all the other dogs begin referring to Dug as Alpha. The voices of both Dug and Alpha are performed by the same actor, Bob Peterson.

When Russell flies past the airship using his balloons and the leaf blower, we briefly see several of Charles Muntz's dogs playing poker at a card table. This is a tribute to the famous "Dogs Playing Poker" series of paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge.

Many death scenes were proposed for Charles Muntz; in one of them, his obsession with catching the giant bird took him inside the dreaded labyrinth against his own recommendation, where he would eventually get lost and die (much like Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining (1980)). As they animators wanted to keep the climax situated in the air, they considered that Muntz be lured into Carl's house by the bird, and then die as the house fell off the zeppelin with him still in it. However, they did not want to associate the house, which symbolized Elly, with a violent death. Another ending that almost made it was Muntz getting tangled into some balloons and getting lifted away, instead of falling down. But this did not give a proper closure to the character. In the end, the directors decided that this was Carl's story, and Muntz' ending was therefore to be kept simple.

If you have movie tips for me, please, comment or email.

I would love to receive your suggestion!

Mary and Max

I am all into animation movies lately. I am about to watch "UP" in a few minutes and all excited about it. Friends said it was cute and lovely! Awww!

MAX

MARY

I watched a great one last week called Mary and Max by Adam Elliot. A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.



Soundtrack



Interview with the Diretor Adam Elliot

Academy Award winner Adam Elliot discusses his feature debut, Mary and Max, the stop-motion animated story of a friendship that defied the distance between two different worlds, a film that opened the Sundance Film Festival on January 2009 and went on to win the Cristal at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival afterwards.




Adam Elliot on Sundance

Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot and Producer Melanie Coombs sat down with the Daily Californian at the Sundance Film Festival to discuss Mary and Max, their first feature-length film, selected as the festivals opener.

The claymation film catalogues the relationship between an 8 year-old Australian girl and her pen pal, a 44 year-old New Yorker with Asperger Syndrome. The film treats their relationship with sympathy rather than condescension, and black humour that had the audience at the first press and industry screening yesterday chuckling for its duration (quite a feat). Geoff Gilmore, the Sundance Film Festival Director, called Mary and Max his favourite opening film of the past 19 years.

A full review of the film will be available on the Daily Cal's website on blog.dailycal.org/arts/.



"I think it's a fantastic film about keeping something old-fashioned, friendship, alive. Beyond the hyper technology of social networking and such, Mary and Max coax each other out of her and his shell. One could say that the ending is too depressing or melodramatic or convenient, but I think it's just right -- they could never meet face to face. That would defeat the purpose of their pin-pal bond and bring it into an ordinary veneer."

This is a good suggestion of lovely & cute movie. I thought it was a little bit slow on its 3/4 part, but it was GREATTTT and poetic!


LINK: http://www.maryandmax.com/

Hugh Mc Leoad's Cartoon

Hugh McLeod's cartoon

Creative Mess - Hugh MC Leod

Creativity starts off messy. Youthful creativity is very messy.

Often starting off randomly, and then as one thinks, and works, its form takes shape.

Over time, when one works their creative muscle over and over, creativity gets easier and less messy, more precise.

That is the challenge of being a creative professional. Exercising your creative muscle sufficiently so that your ability to create is not so random, or messy.

That goes for visual artists, writers, marketers, managers.

Focus, intent, exercise, repetition.


* This was written by Hugh MC Leod - a great cartoonist.

Hugh McLeod's Cartoon

Oh yeah!

When you do what you like for a living, you explode of joy !!

Yupiiiiiiii

Hugh McLeod

Get off your phone, you backberry-evil, your computer, your twitter, you facebook, Ipod, Ipad, and come to life!

Its time! We are here...alive and next by!

Unrealized Potential by Hugh McLeod

As per the one cartoonist I like a lot: "This cartoon is a bit of a self-portrait of myself, just after leaving college. Young, kinda goofy, full of dreams and unarticulated ideas.

But it was that dissatisfaction with "unrealized potential" that kept me going. Even back then I knew, potential isn't enough. It never is."

Inspire Me Dammit

Here again I post about Hugh's cartoon. I love his work. Check out today's drawing.

And here is what he has to say about it:

Some might say that i'm in the inspiration business. I draw, I write, but in order to do that, I need to find inspiration.

Having worked in many industries over the years, I find the least inspiring people are in businesses that are insular and run by cliques. Everybody thinks, says and does the same things. The UK wine trade is like this, for example.

One reason why I love tech is that folks in this business thrive on creation, reinvention, and an innate curiosity about the world around them- they live in a world where there are no boundaries.

Like I've said to a bunch of non-tech clients: Run your business as if it was a tech start up. Yes, especially if you are in an old fashioned business. You'll be inspired every day.

Intoxicated by possibility

This is a cartoon by Hugh McLeod. His work was featured in one of the firsts posts of this blog. I always get amazed by his witted thoughts and simple drawings. I beleive the one above is a true reality for every artist. There are so many paths, possibilities and connections that lots of time we can´t even start of finish a project, because of the delighfulness of the other choices.

The paradigma of the other choice is self-provoking. We choose a path wether it is to teach painting, draw cartoons, record an independent album, and the other choice we had in the way seems easier and more enriching that you caught yourself wondering " what if ".

Know that the path you´ve chosen is the best one, because it is a dream becoming true through your action and passion. Stick to it and be happy. "What ifs" are just a red apple tempting you.

Cartoons

I drew these cartoons in my note paper during a meeting.

Guess it was productive! ;)

Gaping Void

Recently, I´ve came across a great cartoonist, Hugh MacLeod. He has the ability to take the most complex subjects: Emotions, Business Challenges, Angst, Love, and reduce these feelings into a few words and some scribbles.

You can check his gallery online or purchase his work. Also, you can receive a daily cartoon in your inbox if you subscribe to his site!