Up Movie
Dogs and Birds and Old Folks, Oh My!

Up movie was released in May 2009 and is Pixar's 10th feature film. It is also the first movie I took my son Aidan to in a theater because he was FINALLY old enough to sit relatively still through an entire feature film. Needless to say, he loved it!

Docter came up with a storyline in 2004 about getting away from it all when life became irritating. The story is about an old man who mourns the loss of his wife and a young wilderness explorer who misses his father. Together they fill a need in one another's company and they learn much. Having an old man play a lead character didn't concern Pete Docter so much because children can relate with their grandparents.

The Up story line is about an old man named Carl Fredricksen who misses his deceased wife terribly and sets out to fulfill his promise to her by going to Paradise Falls in South America.

Carl meets some colorful and unusual characters along the way who teach him important lessons about what is important in life. These characters are divided into three sections:

• The Main Characters
• Charles Muntz's Dogs
• The Minor Characters

The setting of Up is in Venezuela, South America. Pete Docter and other Pixar artists went to the tepui (table-top) mountains of Monte Roraima to study the landscape for the movie.

And technically speaking, the number of balloons needed to lift a house would have been over 1 million. Obviously that's not practical. So instead there are between 11,000 and 20,000 or so balloons, depending on the scene. It certainly LOOKS like enough balloons to lift a house!

The Pixar Shorts with Up

Up has two Pixar shorts associated with it. The first is Partly Cloudy, which was released with Up theatrically in May 2009.

The second short is Dug's Special Mission, which was created for the DVD release of Up. Dug's Special Mission, like Jack Jack Attack and Mike's New Car, is a side story involving the characters of the feature film.