2. 外语
  3. There’s a brief scene in the back half of Pixar’s Up in which 8-year-old Russell recalls how, years before, his estranged father

There’s a brief scene in the back half of Pixar’s Up in which 8-year-old Russell recalls how, years before, his estranged father

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问题     There’s a brief scene in the back half of Pixar’s Up in which 8-year-old Russell recalls how, years before, his estranged father used to take him out for ice cream. Butter Brickie was Dad’s favorite flavor, Russell’s was chocolate, and the pair would sit together, slurping their melting treats and counting passing red and blue cars. "That might sound boring," says Russell, pink-cheeked with embarrassment. "But I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember most. "
    If anything sums Pixar’s modus operandi, it’s loving the boring stuff. Finding salvation rather than the Devil in the details is one of the main reasons for the studio’s artistic(53 combined Oscar nominations and wins)and commercial(nearly $ 5 billion in worldwide box-office gross)successes. Up, the studio’s 10th full-length film, clocks in at a zippy 86 minutes and, like the nine before it, will rise or fall on the strength of its smallest moments.
    Still, for a film of small, finely observed scenes, the hype surrounding Up is supersized. It was the first animated film ever to open the Cannes Film Festival, and dangles from its own balloon fleet of big ambitions, a big budget and big expectations. Up also marks Pixar’s first foray in the currently hot market of 3-D films, and has the added pressure of following Oscar-winning Wall-E, which pulled in more than half a billion dollars worldwide.
    Is the answer Carl Frederickson, Up’s old-timer hero and the Disney-family antithesis of the studio’s current megaplex stable, the blow-dried Jonas Brothers and teen queen Miley Cyrus? Yes, in part because of the inspiration the film draws from The Wizard of Oz(obvious flying-house parallels)and, according to Pixar, 1941 s Dumbo. Up’s Technicolor purity and deliberately unrealistic animation is a throwback to those early Dumbo days, the studio says, when you could populate a simple adventure movie with caricatured heroes and have it be as powerful(and lucrative)as a realistic film. Joe Grant, the legendary Disney character designer who drew the classic elephant and to whom Up is dedicated, was a posthumous influence on Carl’s character and environs: "We went to(Grant’s)house, and there were even trails where someone had walked the path for 40 years," remembers Jonas Rivera, an Up producer who started at the studio as an intern in its Toy Story phase. "It was really inspiring to us, the patina and weight of age on that house. "
    Remarkably, the expectations haven’t changed Pixar’s wonky, director-driven focus on the teeny-tiny. "(I’d)walk into the story room and hear a half-hour argument about how Carl might sit down in a chair, or where his phone would go," Rivera says. "What we’re trying to do is not just argue about the details, but find ways to create a believable, implied history." Up’s details have an incredible tactile quality, from the jiggle of golden retriever Dug’s glossy coat to the sweet earnesty of Russell’s sewn-on scout badges. An early sequence shows Carl aging not through conventional tropes like seasons changing, but through a montage of his neckties as his wife lovingly draws up their knots. The texture and style of his ties change to reflect the decades, and the tie fibers are so closely rendered that you can almost feel their nubby weave. "We sent our shading art director...to the Fashion Institute to research fabric samples of different eras for the ties, even for Carl’s suits, like the houndstooth," says Rivera.
    The guiding principle is the same across all Pixar films: "Wonder and interest doesn’t have to come out of pizzazz and spectacle and huge idea. ...I always knew that the power came from the small, and not from the big," Wall-E director Andrew Stanton said earlier this year. "(Making Wall-E)got me thinking about, and this may sound commercial, but how good Spielberg was at making moments of the littlest things. " That minor details drive major plot points doesn’t happen without meticulous curation, especially in the opening, silent montages of both Wall-E and Up. "It’s not letting any stone be unturned," Stanton said about Wall-E. "It wasn’t a random choice to just pick this. It’s a conversation, like, ’Why are we picking this, why are we using this object, why are we in this set?’ And frankly, I know these are questions I know you’re supposed to ask yourself as a filmmaker with any film, but there’s something interesting about doing a film where—and I never see it as silent—dialogue is no longer one of the ingredients that’s giving you information. All I could do is give you intention and emotion. " As Up continues to remind us, sometimes that’s all you need.
Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
选项 A、Boring Success
B、Pixar’s New Wonder
C、Artistic vs. Commercial
D、Wall-E and Up
答案B
解析 主旨题。本题考查对文章整体内容的把握。第一段第一句中就提到了皮克斯的电影新作《飞屋环游记》，而且全文始终围绕这一新片展开，因此，文章主要介绍了皮克斯的又一成功作品，[B]为最佳答案。虽然第一段中出现了“boring”一词，但文章并没有体现出枯燥与成功的关系，而且该词也是为了配合影片《飞屋环游记》的风格才会出现，故排除[A]；第二段第二句提到皮克斯不管在艺术方面还是在商业方面都很成功，这两者并不冲突，故排除[C]；《机器人总动员》虽然在第三、六段中都被提到过，但它并不是文章的主体，故排除[D]。
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