Jan 8: The Good Dinosaur (2015) dir. Peter Sohn
I wrote most of this blog post some years ago when I first had the idea to do a blog looking at the geographies of film and had recently seen the film.
One thing which hits you straight away from the opening scenes of the film, was the amazing animation of the landscape, and the part that the landscape and in particular the river, and flash flooding had in the story.
One thing which hits you straight away from the opening scenes of the film, was the amazing animation of the landscape, and the part that the landscape and in particular the river, and flash flooding had in the story.
Details of the way that the film makers researched the landscape and how to portray it can be seen in a number of articles from the time.
Apparently the USGS were also involved in ensuring the accuracy of the landscape and the way that it was portrayed. I enjoyed the movie very much, and this was inevitably down to the care that the film makers had taken. There was a lot that I read about how the 'technology' and even the housing was designed in such a way that they believed they were possible structures that could have been built by the characters.
The representation of the landcape, the weather and the raging river was characteristically excellent.
Before the main feature, there was another short film called 'Sanjay's Super Team', which was an excellent comment on cultural globalisation.
Wyoming was hoping to cash in by making the most of its link with 'The Good Dinosaur', and the Grand Tetons area in particular. The Grand Tetons formed the model for the mountains in the movie which the main characters are searching to find in the movie, using the river as their navigation tool.
Before the main feature, there was another short film called 'Sanjay's Super Team', which was an excellent comment on cultural globalisation.
Wyoming was hoping to cash in by making the most of its link with 'The Good Dinosaur', and the Grand Tetons area in particular. The Grand Tetons formed the model for the mountains in the movie which the main characters are searching to find in the movie, using the river as their navigation tool.
According to Wikipedia, the filmmakers wanted nature to be the antagonist for the main character Arlo.
According to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi, this gave Sohn "the freedom to shoot in any direction he wanted to make the world feel big and real." In addition, The Good Dinosaur features three-dimensional, volumetric clouds. In previous Pixar films, clouds have been "painted" onto the sets.
One of my planned projects has been to develop a resource on the Geography embedded in Pixar films. For many years, each of my SAGT presentations had a reference to that year's Pixar film, and how it connected to the geographical theme of the conference.
I will also return to Sanjay's Super Team later.
I'll return to this idea in future posts: the research that goes into making Pixar films as accurate as possible, spending weeks trying to capture the 'essence' of the main film locations.
One of my planned projects has been to develop a resource on the Geography embedded in Pixar films. For many years, each of my SAGT presentations had a reference to that year's Pixar film, and how it connected to the geographical theme of the conference.
One of the greatest geographical references of course occurs at the start of the film, when an asteroid heading for the Earth actually misses it rather than hitting it, meaning that the dinosaurs stick around quite a bit longer.
I will also return to Sanjay's Super Team later.
This was the short film that was included with the main film. The link with superheroes and cultural connections can be seen in a piece that Simon Oakes wrote some years ago on the Indian Spiderman (PDF download from this link), a Jason Dittmer piece on the globalisation of comic strips, and a more recent piece on the African Avengers comics.
There is a lot more here to unpick and explore...
The new Spiderman film's success is a reminder of the longevity of this particular character as well.
Films watched today:
Cast Away (2000) dir. Robert Zemeckis - excellent performance by Tom Hanks, and discussions with Wilson as he tries to survive and get his final FedEx package delivered after years marooned on a desert island.
It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island.
The island became a tourist attraction after the film's release
I also liked this story. Spoiler alert.
A FedEx commercial during the 2003 Super Bowl parodied the final scene of the film, in which Chuck Noland returns a package to its sender. In this version, the woman answers the door, and when Noland asks what was in the box, the woman replies: "Just a satellite phone, GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds. Just silly stuff."
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