Up Up and Away

I saw that National Geographic set out to make a real life version of the floating house in Up for a new series called How Hard Can it Be?.  They built a 16' x 16' house and attached 300 weather balloons to lift it up to a heady altitude of over 10,000 feet.  Granted, it looks like the Nat Geo crew only built a shell of a house and used pretty large weather balloons to lift it, but it looked like an amazing feat.  What about lifting a real house using standard party balloons?  In an interesting article, Slate calculated that over 9 million standard helium balloons would be required.

Scene from Up

Real life version of Up

We are pretty big Pixar fans and Up is probably one our favorite Pixar movies.  Up, along with Wall-E and Ratatouille, was the beginning of when Pixar started making adult movies with some nods to kids rather than kids movies with some nods to adults.  Any adult should be able to relate to the basic concept of the balloon house---how can you just float away from all of the stress and troubles of your life to the infinite possibilities just over the horizon.  I just don't know how many children would really understand that.

My wife and I saw Up the year that we got married.  Even beyond the general theme, an early opening sequence, a dialogue-less montage of Carl and Ellie's life together, always makes us tear up.  In a space of only four minutes, it perfectly captures the sweetness of love and dreams full of hope to the cruelty of reality and the bitterness of time.  It's probably one of the finest four minutes of film ever shot, and the perfect motivation to get out and do something before it's too late.