Cannes: Uplifted?
Get ready for the great debate. Was it right to open the 62nd Cannes Film Festival with a Hollywood blockbuster, animation or not? Or was it the need of the hour to uplift (pun intended) the mood made gloomy by the recessionary trend.
Whatever it is, you will enjoy Up, directed by Pete Doctor. It is that typical Disney-Pixar animation film. But there are differences between this and the usual stuff.
First, it is made in digital 3D, but does not make gimmickry use of 3D (objects flying out at you, and the stuff). What it helps in getting an unbelievably fantastic viewing experience, as the screen gets a depth that takes the viewer into the scheme of things, rather than things coming out of it.
Then, its hero is an old man, not a superhero, but a common, old man, who is fighting the land shark developers to save his old house, his only memory of the dead wife, his childhood sweetheart.
How he goes on a magnificent adventure on his flying house – it flies with the help of 15,000 balloons! – is what the film is all about.
Here too, there are quite a few cute characters, like all Disney films do. But the film takes up quite a few important subjects, though dealt with in a simplistic, fun way. Things like the need to respect the elderly, the shrinking space for individuals in “modern”, development-oriented societies, and even a message about wildlife conservation get thrown in.
Going by the looks of it at the morning media screening hours before the official screening at the Opening ceremony, the film was liked by critics. There was even a large round of applause at the end of it, and hardboiled critics are usually known for speaking their mind, whether positive or negative.
Tags: 62nd Cannes Film Festival, Disney Pixar, UP
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
It is not the first time they are doing this, they chose ‘Fifth Element’ as the opening film, it was a bad action film which masqueraded for art…Cannes does suck up to Hollywood in the form of tribute or not… :-)
It was fun watching Fifth Element, though…despite its sci-fi-action-comedy-fantasy-art positioning fitted in with an outerspace opera…If Luc Besson’s movie could open up Cannes..why not ‘Up’? A tribute to excellence in animation, maybe…
If UP is anything even near to WALL-E, it will be worth watching.
UP might be the biggest animation hit ever, IMO!
I loved WALL -E , it was just brilliant and so far , going by the promo’s looks like PIXAR has a winner in UP
If it’s PIXAR, It’s got to be good! Although I see nothing wrong in opening with a Hollywood film!