I’m sitting in on the Pixar panel in Hall H right now. Not liveblogging because the hall’s internet is up and down, but I wanted to share the fact that Disney’s website for Up, Pixar’s next flick, has gone live at www.disney.com/up.
There’s a very brief, pretty teaser available now. Here in the hall we were shown two sequences. One of Carl Frederickson (Ed Asner) taking his house to the air for the first time under a heart-shaped balloon flotilla, and one brief proof of concept in which Carl and Russell, his young inadvertent stowaway are pulling the house along through a South American jungle through the magic of garden hose harnesses. Shades of Fitzcarraldo, as Beaks said a minute ago.
Probably goes without saying that the footage looks fantastic. There’s perhaps more Miyazaki in this than I’ve seen from Pixar before; Carl’s first flight, in particular, is quiet and beautiful as the house slowly floats up over the city. There’s a calmness that you don’t often see in American animated films. I’ll have more details on the film once I can get out of the hall in a couple hours.