Word: birds
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...Floating Away Spanning two continents and seven decades, Up begins in a 1930s movie theater. A newsreel tells us that famous explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is just back from South America's remote Paradise Falls with the bones of a prehistoric bird. Denounced as a fraud by archaeologists, Muntz vows to retrieve a member of the species and bring it back alive. In the audience, wearing aviator goggles atop his thick-rimmed specs, is young Carl Fredricksen, who is enthralled by Muntz's motto, "There's adventure out there...
...more likely, Atlas, Carl carries his house and the world's burden on his back; his wish for escape is also a sacred responsibility, to take Ellie to Paradise Falls. Thanks to some extraordinarily favorable trade winds, that's where Carl and Russell land. Instantly they find the bird - a gorgeous, jollier version of Chuck Jones' cartoon Road Runner - that eluded Muntz for decades. He's dubbed Kevin by Russell, who has a knack for attracting exotic creatures, including a pack of electronic dogs. (Peterson lends his sharp vocal skills to the lead dog, Alpha, and the goofily endearing, polylingual...
...Except for The Incredibles, Brad Bird's obligatorily cartoony vision of a superhero family, Up is the first Pixar feature in which the main characters are humans. Up isn't realistic either. It revels in a minimum of dialogue, deft comic underplaying and a style the Pixar people call simplexity, a character design that stresses circles and cubes. (Carl looks like a trash-compacted Spencer Tracy in his later years.) "We tried to push caricature," Docter says, "and the language of shapes - to make these drawings an expression of the characters. Carl wants to stay enclosed...
...would get maybe 50%. So I'd tell him, 'Run around the room, run back here and say the line - ready, set, go!' We'd do it one line at a time like that." For a scene in which Russell is cradled and tickled by a giant South American bird, "I actually lifted him upside down and tickled him," Docter says, "which you probably wouldn't do with...
...inaccessible government information. Sound exciting? It isn't. Conspiracy junkies hoping to tap into secret CIA files or to find out who really killed JFK are out of luck. The data catalog includes just 47 documents - most of which would only appeal to those desperate for information on migratory bird patterns or unconsolidated stream sediments. (Read "A Brief History of the National Archives...