Pixar's Luca

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Dacey » February 21st, 2021, 3:42 pm

Well, someone at Pixar likes Aardman's teeth. ;)
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » February 24th, 2021, 11:52 am

Interview from the magazine:
Il Venerdì di Repubblica wrote:Enrico Casarosa: in "Luca", a sea of memories

If King Midas had had a pencil, he probably would have worked in California, in Emeryville, for them. Everything they touch while drawing becomes new. Google searches for clownfish have increased since we met Nemo and the little fish Dory eighteen years ago on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Urban psychology studies swear that the negative perception of Paris sewer rats has been neutralized by Ratatouille's Remy passion for cooking. Visits to the Wallace Monument near Stirling grew from 30,000 to 200,000 a year after little princess Merida, in Brave. The Brave, rebelled against canons and conventions in 5th century Scotland. Twelve-year-old Miguel Rivera, who in the Mexican town of Santa Cecilia dreamed of becoming a singer like his idol Ernesto de la Cruz, overturned decades and decades of criminal representations of the Latin American community in the collective imagination.

Now it's our turn: with its 24th feature film in 35 years of life, Pixar's internationalism touches Italy with its pencil. It happens with Luca, whose trailer on Friday was able to see a world preview, a story of magic, secrets and friendship, that brief experience of growth that as a child you live with a meeting over the course of a summer. Only that Luca's training will also be transformation. His nature is that of a sea monster, he comes from an underwater world and when he re-emerges he finds the panorama of the Ligurian Riviera under the eyes of the sun, ice cream, scooters.

The Italy designed by Pixar is that of the Cinque Terre because the director of the film is Ligurian, the fifty-year-old Enrico Casarosa, Genoese by birth, for thirty years in the USA, storyboard artist for Cars, Ratatouille and Up, director of the short film La Luna, seen in theaters before Rebel. "Deiva Marina was where I spent the summer," he says in a video link from California. He is having breakfast. His daughter brings him some eggs.

How did he convince America that Italy is not just Naples-Rome-Sicily?

And not even Venice. At Pixar they believe in personal films and individual experiences. I showed them pictures. I drew a comic 20 years ago with this background. Amalfi and Positano also have similar flavors but it is in the Cinque Terre that I he likes to go running and strolling. When I proposed it, I told him about these small villages that seem to have come out of the water and climbed up the rocks. A world that lies between the land and the sea. The perfect world for Luca .

Why "Luca"?

When you're looking for a title for a film, the search can take months. This is a deeply personal story, inspired by my experience, with my childhood best friend, Alberto, but I certainly couldn't put my name in the title. Luca yes, I've always liked it. It's simple. It is pronounced well in American too, there are many Luke's here too and many are not Italians. Pragmatism.

Summer friendships have something special, the charm of discovery and adventure, but also something melancholy. They are destined to get lost. They have an expiration date. Is there all this in the film?

And there are friendships to which by definition we must say goodbye. Separating each other to take their own path. Nostalgia for childhood is a large part of the film, nostalgia for those friendships in which you discover yourself different and which take you where you do not expect. I was a shy kid, with a family that was on me. Alberto had more freedom than me and a less present family. He seemed to be able to do what he wanted. So he got me out of the box I lived in. He taught me to fish. One day he bought a stone and took it to school. It made me grow up in a different way. In Liguria there is little sand and a lot of rock. There is a scene in which from a peak it pushes you into the water, you put on your gym shoes and jump around. It is the metaphor perfect for these meetings they make you grow up, they change and that you carry around when you say goodbye.

It was difficult to say goodbye while going from Italy to 20 years?

It's a double feeling. In English it is bitter sweet. Bittersweet, right? The sadness of a separation on the one hand - even from the family - and on the other the joyful hope of having a future ahead of me to go and get. It was right to leave, follow what attracted me to drawing and animation.

Do you find that today you are friends in a different way from then? Are you friends in a different way even in Italy and in America?

When I was 20 I arrived in New York and stayed there for seven. New York is beautiful because it is mixed. You have friends of all kinds, from all over the world. It is not a very different situation from Italy. Today I have a 13-year-old daughter, I seem to perceive some differences in her generation, such as the lack of uniqueness of the friend of the heart. This year then it was a disaster. Friends come to the garden and have to stay at a distance.

Luca talks about growth and transformation. Like Pinocchio. What models did he give himself?

If you think about growth, Pinocchio is certainly magnificent. I wanted to tell you how different you feel. When you are a child, it is easy to feel wrong. Thus came the idea of sea monsters, of a relationship that arises from the need to hideone's true identity. The film talks about it in a fantastic way, but there are many young people in the world who feel different. A moment of growth is learning to show oneself. Revealing oneself. With the risks it entails. Friendship is connection. If not you reveal yourself, you cannot connect.

Coco had an explicit afterlife world, but already with Monsters Inc, already with Wall-E, Pixar invited people to reflect on themselves by reasoning on the concept of diversity. Of encounters with another world. Is this the same for Luca?

Luca is the country mouse who ends up in the city. His adventure in the Cinque Terre includes the need to keep a secret. His revealed world would be at risk. The encounter with the other is a danger. In 1700 people he did not understand that there really was in the sea, he sighted things and drew them as monsters. The unknown makes us imagine oddities. The culture of Ligurian fishermen is full of oddities. I was inspired by those. In Tellaro there is the bell-ringer octopus that comes out from the water to announce the arrival of the Saracens. In San Fruttuoso there is the legend of the dragon in the bay. I got the idea that it was the fishermen who spread these rumors to be alone in the stretches of sea where they fished a lot and good. For us Ligurians, the sea is charm and mystery. It attracts and frightens.

What books were there in his house?

The most important: Calvino. My short film is inspired by the Cosmicomics. Calvino you know him at school, but he stays with you when you reread it on your own. Fantastic, surreal. But as a boy I read a lot of Mickey Mouse books. To learn to draw. Especially Donald Duck. The funny thing is that we Italian kids grow up with Disney, with the Manuals of the Young Marmots, much more than the Americans, who have superheroes instead. I watched many Japanese cartoons. Conan the boy of the future of Miyazaki I made it known to Luca's animators to get inspiration.

Your first drawing?

I don't know, maybe Snoopy, I was addicted to Peanuts. At 13 I had a strange idea. That I only liked cartoons, not drawing at all. So I didn't go to art school but to science, and then to Engineering. I had taken the wrong path. I realized it when I realized that I was drawing on university texts. I arrived in Milan, at the European Institute of Design, I didn't even know the difference between illustration and graphics. They caught me in the military because I had suspended my exams and I lost a year. It was frustrating. So frustrating that I left 4 days after my leave for a workshop in Boston. They are proof that there is always time to correct bad choices.

What did his parents think of this restlessness?

My mother is not an artist, but she played the piano and had beautiful books by Degas. I mean: she understood me. They taught me that the key was to learn English. They were right. I was in London for 10 months. being a waiter. An important experience because it makes you want not to be a waiter. But in New York I needed it, I got by. It's a city where you can always make two bucks if you need to support yourself.

Think back to the Oscars for the Mediterranean, Life is beautiful, The great beauty. How much in Luca from Italy do Americans prefer?

Luca tells Italy with the eye of a curious child, a fish out of water who does not know the concept of normality. From Miyazaki I got a taste for the details of nature. I tried to reproduce the look of an alien , his wonder - as they say - amazement, wonder. If there is a pastel Italy, it is a golden pastel that represents Luca's first time in a small town square, the first time he sees the wind between the leaves of a tree or the light that filters through the branches. There is the specificity of a village, the old ladies who eat ice cream, a landscape that is not the modern one. It is perhaps a way of showing an Italy still in time. In Luca there are the years 50-60, maybe it is an idealized Italy but it is a beautiful Italy.

Have you wondered what will happen to the Cinque Terre after this film?

In recent months, jokingly, at Pixar we were saying that Luca would be the cheapest ticket to see Italy, without leaving home. Silver lining him we call here. A year and a half ago I would have said: better not to advertise in the Cinque Terre.Tellaro is one of those villages that has remained as it once was, where they have an idea of tourism that is both beneficial and maleficent. In 2016 we made some inspections and we interviewed many people, fishermen, poets, about this ambivalent relationship they have with cruises. , with the crowd. They ask a tourist who stays at least one night, to enjoy the trip, not to stop for two hours and go. I can understand that. We hope that the film is an invitation to travel again and to return to Italy.

Soul has rekindled a debate around the Pixar philosophy that would no longer make, or not only, films for children. Is this a question you ask yourself?

Not much. A film is tied to the director and the story he wants to talk about. Each of us offers different things. When I saw Soul, I found it very different from my film and I liked that it was so distant.that he could encourage children to talk about things they would have kept inside, or a family to talk to them about issues they would not have addressed. I admire Pete Docter and what he did, but Luca is very different and the next one will be different from Luca. We are not worried about dividing films into categories: this is for adults, this is for children. The goal is to find in each one its own originality and the specific voice of the author. Luca is not existential, he is not philosophical like Soul. my movie tells an adult: think back to your childhood and make a phone call to your best friend who you haven't talked to for a few years.

And how is Alberto, what is he doing now?

Oh, Alberto lives in Rome. He ended up in the Air Force. He became a pilot, a top gun, then he became an instructor. Very tough, him. A colonel. He had a more exciting life than mine. We kept in touch., we send messages, I haven't told him too much about the film, even if he knows something. Talking to him over the years has helped me rethink friendship. How it is necessary to separate in order to grow.
Teaser poster:

Image

Looks gorgeous, love the colors!

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Ben » February 24th, 2021, 3:24 pm

Hey Dan...placed that interview in a hidden text, not for spoilers but just because it was so long! Great piece, though, and another example of how Pixar's stories come from very heartfelt places, with lots of layered emotional beats to them. :)

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by gaastra » February 25th, 2021, 9:07 am


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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by danieltruchsess » February 25th, 2021, 11:27 am

This looks really cool! I am looking forward to it.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by EricJ » February 25th, 2021, 11:30 am

Dacey wrote:
February 21st, 2021, 3:42 pm
Well, someone at Pixar likes Aardman's teeth. ;)
I'm getting more of a "Trying to turn the current Gravity Falls-style 'CalArts look' into 3D CGI" feel. : ,

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » February 25th, 2021, 11:30 am

Boy, Did that Toy Story logo feel intrusive! Really digging the animation style and the vibrancy of the colors. Much like the teaser poster, looks gorgeous! So bright and fresh. Music sounds great and I like the story. Looks like a winner.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Ben » February 25th, 2021, 11:34 am

The Little Merman? ;)

What is this current obsession Disney (and by extension Pixar) has with blue and green on their magical creature elements!? :)

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » February 25th, 2021, 6:54 pm

The cat looks like it has a mustache. Funny marking. So cute!

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » March 1st, 2021, 3:47 pm

Details on characters and their voices.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » March 10th, 2021, 3:33 pm

Unused concepts for the films logo:

Image

Each of them have a certain charm. The left one on the top and bottom give me Dumbo vibes and the one in the middle Finding Nemo. My favorite of the batch is the bottom right. Like the loop and that it hints at the sea monster twist.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by EricJ » March 10th, 2021, 5:37 pm

And doesn't look as much like an ice-cream parlor logo.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » March 15th, 2021, 3:38 pm

Commercials have started to air. Pretty standard, but feels weird given everything. Love their transformation scenes.

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Daniel » March 23rd, 2021, 2:39 pm

Hollywood Reporter wrote:Meanwhile, the animated film Luca will skip theaters entirely and hit Disney+ June 18.
:shock: :(

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Re: Pixar's Luca

Post by Dacey » March 23rd, 2021, 2:46 pm

So Disney is doing more damage to the theatrical industry than WB's HBO Max decision is.
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift--that is why it's called the present."

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