If you get one movie for the Holidays, let it be UP.

Even if your kids are too young or too old for Disney movies, get UP.

If you don’t have kids, at least rent UP.

UP is my favorite Disney Pixar movie, and you know the good company it is in, coming from the Pixar family. UP makes you cry, UP makes you laugh and you will sit on the side of your seat just waiting what will happen next in this amazing story of what happens when you get old to realize that your life has been full of then-when’s (you know – then we’ll travel when kids are older), and you have once last chance to make it right.

I saw Up with my family a few months ago, but I can’t wait to get the DVD and watch again with my kids. Such a touching story, and something for everyone in the family to think about regardless of age.

AN INTERVIEW WITH PETE DOCTER: DIRECTOR OF DISNEY/PIXAR’S UP

How did you come up with the movie’s storyline?

Pete Docter: A number of years ago, I was sat in a room, throwing around ideas with co-director Bob Peterson and a lot of the themes we came up with were about ‘escape’ and ‘getting away’. We kept coming back to the idea of this floating house that felt cool and poetic – and the idea of ‘getting away from the world’ seemed to strike a chord with us.

What made you choose a 78-year-old man as the protagonist in Up?

Pete Docter: Well, we had always wanted to do something with an old man – specifically, someone with a lot of attitude. We had fun playing around with the idea of this grouchy guy who would slam the door in people’s faces. It was something we hadn’t really seen before in animation.

You’ve created a story about a 70-year-old man in a society that’s obsessed with youth… Carl doesn’t have hairs on his ears or too many liver spots. Are you trying to keep an ideal vision of growing old?

Pete Docter: It’s definitely idealized and caricatured, but I look at the veins in my own hand and I think, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to see that on a cartoon character.’ Everything is simplified to be more appealing – and we certainly did that with Carl’s wrinkles and the pockmarks on his nose. He’s definitely a senior citizen with his hearing aid and walking stick, but he also has a fun look to him.

In the movie Carl travels to South America, why did you pick South America?

Pete Docter: Early on, the story was set on a tropical island because I’m a big fan of tropical islands. I thought to myself, ‘Well, if we have to do research on a tropical island, that won’t be so bad.’ But there have been so many movies where a character gets stuck on a tropical island and we wanted something different, so we had to think up something new. We needed a location where Carl could get stuck with this kid. It couldn’t be somewhere where he could just turn to the police and say, “Here, take care of this youngster.” We wouldn’t have a movie if that was the case.

So you decided on the tabletop mountains of Venezuela?

Pete Docter: Exactly. One of the guys at Pixar had a video of these mountains in South America called the tapuis – and they were perfect. Why? Well, one of the major themes of the movie is adventure. If you think about adventure, South America is one of the few places in the world where new things are being discovered all of the time. Even to this day, you hear stories of a new species of monkey being discovered that nobody has heard about until now. That’s amazing. This place is so full of secrets, darkness and mystery. That seemed like a good setting.

Where did you get the idea of the talking dogs?

Pete Docter: The dogs came from an idea that Bob Peterson and I developed early on. We tried to make the dogs think about subjects that real dogs think about, like food and squirrels. We had one idea where Dug was a failed science experiment from a Russian satellite that crashed in the mountains, but ultimately we came up with the idea of Charles Muntz – the main villain in the movie.

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Pixar is famous for incorporating sneaky hidden references throughout their movies… What hidden gems can fans find in Up?

Pete Docter: There are loads of hidden references, but I’m not giving everything away here. At the end of Monsters, Inc. Boo holds some toys and one of them is a fish, which is Nemo from Finding Nemo – but the audience didn’t know that at the time. Finding Nemo hadn’t been released at that point, so he was a secret character put in there. There’s a character from Toy Story 3 that you don’t know about yet that turns up in Up. Good luck finding it…

INTERVIEW WITH JORDAN NAGAI – THE VOICE TALENT IN UP

Jordan Nagai provides the voice of a wilderness explorer Russell in Up. Like Pete Docter, the director explains in the video clip above – Jordan was pretty new to acting before being a voice talent in Up.

Tell us about your new movie, Up

Jordan Nagai: Up is about a young wilderness explorer called Russell. Russell needs his last wilderness explorer badge – the Assisting The Elderly Badge – so he goes to his elderly neighbor, Mr. Fredricksen, to see if he can get it.

What happens when Russell meets Mr. Fredricksen?

Jordan Nagai: Mr. Fredricksen has just lost his wife and he is about to lose his house, so he decides to go on an adventure by attaching balloons to his home. He sails into the sky, but Russell accidentally goes along for the ride.

What is Russell like?

Jordan Nagai: Russell is an active, enthusiastic and determined 8-year-old boy. He loves animals and he loves the wilderness, so he has a great time exploring when they land near Paradise Falls. Russell is a funny, helpful and smart boy – and he wants to get this last badge to please his father. I like the way that he’s funny. He makes a lot of jokes – and he sometimes shows off what he knows from his wilderness explorer camp. He shows Carl – Mr. Fredricksen – different knots and the different calls of animals.

How did you get the part of Russell?

Jordan Nagai: The principal at my school sent out an email to all students saying there was a audition for 9 and 10 year old boys. My brother was 9 years old at the time and he went to the audition, so I went along with him. Even though I was only 7 years old, I was allowed to do the audition too. I did several auditions after that – and finally, I got the part!

How difficult was it to record your voice in the sound booth?

Jordan Nagai: It wasn’t very difficult, but I had to repeat the same lines over and over again. I also had to stand for a long time, so it was a little tiring. The director – Pete Docter – tried to make it easier for me, so I took a lot of breaks. I had a lot of fun recording the voice!

What do your friends think of your new fame?

Jordan Nagai: They are all very excited for me. We went to see the movie together on opening day. They like the movie a lot and they think that I’m very lucky.

Get the Disney/Pixar UP on DVD on November 10th.