My description of UP as Disney/Pixar's Gran Torino isn't entirely off-base. "Cranky old man stuck in his ways whose wife is dead teaches a young Asian boy with an absent father figure life lessons" describes both movies, right? In all seriousness, I just like that there are two pictures I enjoy very much that use such similar components with starkly different styles, narratives, and outcomes. More broadly, Pixar simply does so much more than other animation studios with the same seconds and minutes of time.
A rare look inside the notecard-filled organizational process that I have in place.
UP is among my favorite 2009 releases thus far, and Monsters, Inc. is one of the few 2002 releases that quickly come to mind seven years later. November 11th saw the paired release of both on Blu-ray. Respectively, they embody among the most thoroughly enjoyable new and catalog disc releases of 2009. The biggest surprise for me was a pair of BD-Java games that I actually found worthwhile.
Monsters, Inc. was originally set for Blu release alongside Bug's Life earlier this year. The movie itself greatly benefits from the 1080p upgrade, with riveting detail that makes the wait worth it. The "Door Vault" scene, in particular, is absolutely jaw-dropping. Monsters contains all of the previous DVD extras and a couple new ones. Similar to the recent Bug's Life Blu, there's a Filmmakers' Roundtable retrospective that touches on such things as Monsters being the first post-9/11 Pixar movie. They recorded it at a coffee shop they all frequented near the old Pixar campus. Also added in there is a featurette (Monsters, Inc. Ride and Go Seek: Building Monstropolis in Japan) on the building of a Sully, Mike, and Boo-centric ride at Tokyo Disney. There's a surprisingly challenging BD-Java game called Roz's 100 Door Challenge that ate up an hour without my noticing.
UP sprinkles just a few extras on the first disc to use the bulk of the space for picture and audio quality. What is ordinarily called an Audio Commentary is instead called Cine-Explore here and features pop-up storyboards and photos during the movie. The two shorts are the theatrical short Partly Cloudy [5:46] and new to the DVD Dug's Special Mission [4:40]. In a very short amount of time, The Many Endings of Muntz [4:56] covers a surprising amount of ground regarding the progression of the character of Charles Muntz in the development process. Adventure is Out There [22:17] covers the genesis of the project and the majority of the development process in broad strokes in addition to the "field trip" to South America. Specialized topics are separated into their own "mini-doc" featurettes on the second disc.
More notable to me than the seven mini-docs [47:34 total] on disc 2 is the Alternate Scene: Married Life [9:15] piece that covers the evolution of the sequence that firmly glued everyone to their seats upon first, second, or tenth viewing of UP. All seven of the mini-docs are interesting. They're ten times the quality of other CG-animated studios' DVD featurettes second-for-second, facet-by-facet. The mini-docs cover Carl, the dogs, Russell, "Kevin", the design of Carl's house, the physics of flight employed, and the score by the virtuoso Michael Giacchino. The UP Promo Montage [6:00] is composed of the various in-store promo shorts that ran in Disney retail stores during UP's theatrical run. There's a Russell/Wilderness Explorer-themed game on there as well. I probably shouldn't admit that I invested well over 90 minutes playing it and learning how little I know about European and Asian geography. For the first time, I can actually recommend a BD-Java/BD-Live game as reasonably well-designed (within its limits) and educationally substantive.
The most notable thing about both sets is that not one piece of either package feels like someone said, "ah, whatever" and just set their brain on autopilot. Monsters, Inc. retains its existing For Humans/For Monsters menu design, and UP uses what I consider the Pixar Standard Menu Template for Blu-rays that unifies everything into a single, straightforward structure. You can get both along with Cars for $30 and change by adding UP (and then Monsters & Cars) at this link and using the coupon code PIXARBLU.