Up Up & Away

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Roger Ebert wrote up some thoughts today on Pixar's Up, which he has seen, although it's not a proper review just yet. It's more just some thoughts on the film that leads him off onto an anti-3D tangent... one that I sorta agree with him on. I'm fairly sure I'll be seeing Up in old-fashioned 2D for the reasons he lists actually. But then again nothing will come between me and Final Destination 3D: Death Trip in glorious brain-stems-flying-at-the-screen 3D... I guess what it comes down to is the film's intent. Up is going to have beautiful visuals that presumably do not rely on 3D trickery, just as Coraline did. I wish I'd seen Coraline in 2D in retrospect - the 3D there sort of gave me a headache. But when it comes to Final Destination... well that's what the gimmick is good for. Viscera all up in your face!

Ebert also makes a point of something I had not noticed that's worth noting - while laying out the story-line of Up he describes the little boy character in the movie thusly:

"Russell (Jordan Nagai), a dutiful Wilderness Explorer Scout, who looks Asian-American to me."

And he's totally right and in all the times I'd looked at the animated Boy Scout in press materials I hadn't even noticed it before.


I was looking at this gallery of stills from the film just this morning and noticed that the kid voicing Russell was Asian (presumably Asian-American) but still hadn't noticed that the character himself was drawn that way. Which rules - it's a shame that it's even something that must be commended or reflected upon but then you rack your brain to think up how many Asian main-characters there are in any movies and you feel good that Pixar has just given kids one in their big Summer movie. Animated movies and their characters have very long shelf-lives and it's just nice to have the only kid in a Big Summer Kid's Movie not be another white one this time, ya know?
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