I was inspired the other day so I wrote a couple more haikus. Enjoy!

By Christopher Kelly, McClatchy Newspapers

In order to make their sublimely inventive and affecting new film “Up,” the tight-knit team at Pixar Animation Studios embarked upon a painstaking, complicated and, at times, even harrowing five-year journey.

More than a few times along the way, they thought that they had a disaster on their hands.

They closely studied an unusual group of other films, including Ron Howard’s “Cocoon” and a mostly forgotten George Burns comedy called “Going in Style” in order to refine the visual and emotional landscape of the film. They hired Tom McCarthy, the writer-director of adult-minded movies like “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor,” to work on two drafts of the screenplay. For months, they tinkered with and tweaked a shockingly emotional, four-and-a-half minute silent montage that chronicles 70 years in the life of the main character.

And despite a long list of previous triumphs, including “Finding Nemo,” ”Monsters, Inc.” and the “Toy Story” films, it was impossible to shake the feeling that this would be the movie that broke Pixar’s lucky streak.

“These films are really bad at certain points,” explains Jonas Rivera, the film’s producer, during a visit last month to Dallas to promote “Up.” At various points in the production, he says, test-screening audiences were getting restless, jokes were falling flat and the characters’ emotions felt thin.

All that worry has resulted in a masterpiece.

Like “Ratatouille,” ”Wall-E,” ”Finding Nemo,” ”Toy Story” and its magical sequel, “Up” turns out to be a one-of-a-kind vision that far transcends the ghetto of “children’s movie.” In this particular case, the film is a heart-piercing portrait of an unlikely friendship between an elderly man and a lonely boy that unfolds with the bizarre dream logic of a David Lynch fantasy. If there is a better animated picture released this year — heck, if there are two or three live-action pictures better than this movie released in 2009 — it will be a small miracle. (Further proof of the company’s boundless ambition: “Up” is Pixar’s first foray into digital 3-D.)

So how do they do it? In an age of endless, soulless blockbusters and cookie-cutter franchises, when so many people — in and out of Hollywood — are struggling to get their work done without collapsing from stress and frustration, how is it that one wonderfully merry band of filmmakers keeps raising the bar?

According to “Up’s” director, Pete Docter, they do so by listening to the audience and working alongside equally ambitious and creative souls. “I think there’s a bit of competitiveness (among the Pixar filmmakers),” he says, “but if anything, it helps. Everybody wants to say something even smarter (than the last person).”

Docter makes it sound easy and, in some respects, it is. Pixar has refined a way of working and living that should be obvious, but that so few other movies — that so few other human beings — are able to follow: Work hard. Surround yourself with the brightest people you know, and put your faith in their opinions. Check your ego at the door.

Above all, always keep trying to make it better.

Indeed, as “Up” stands poised to emerge as the studio’s 10th modern classic in just 14 years, perhaps it’s time to realize that this 850-person animation studio is more than just a peerless movie factory. It’s a way of life to which we should be all ascribing.

John Lasseter. Andrew Stanton. Brad Bird — the directors of “Toy Story, Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles,” respectively — form what Docter and Jonas Rivera describe as “our Pixar brain trust” — a group of men who work diligently not just on their own projects, but on the projects of other Pixar employees.

And despite the fact that they’ve won two Oscars apiece, ego or competitiveness never seem to get in the way of putting out a singular product.

“We kind of sit with them, and kind of hammer it out together, and we do the same with their films,” says Rivera, of the scripting, film and fine-tuning processes.

“Everybody is very selfless about wanting to make the movies as best they can, even if they’re not immediately involved with them,” adds Docter.

It’s a point that feels especially relevant in a time of collapsing industries and increasing free agency and layoffs. Pixar’s success reminds us that we need to get back to a place where we’ve all got one another’s backs.

Perhaps even more important: This studio truly grasps the importance of listening to the advice of others, and accepting that — no matter how many successes you’ve had in the past — you sometimes need to accept that you don’t know it all. “What we do is set up internal screenings at the studio,” explains Rivera. “We’ll invite different departments. People that aren’t going to critically look at it but react to it as an audience. We literally tell them, send us an e-mail and give us notes.”

The quality is reflected at the box office, where the grosses have ranged from $361 million worldwide (the original “Toy Story”) to $864 million (“Finding Nemo.”) It’s also reflected among critics (last year, “Wall-E” topped a number of nationwide polls as 2008’s best film) and Oscar voters (of the six awards handed out for Best Animated Feature Film, Pixar has taken home four).

But what distinguishes this test-screening process from the ones so many filmmakers disdain? Why doesn’t the Pixar method result in something that feels dumbed-down and compromised?

It’s a simple matter of confidence and belief in what you’re doing.

“I had this idea at school that previews were for sellouts, and why would a studio make you do that?” says Docter, who says he only realized that one of the most critical moments of “Up” wasn’t working when he showed a rough cut to an audience in Portland, Ore.

“But doing these previews that we’ve done … it’s a great gift as a filmmaker. (You get) to watch the movie with an audience and then go back and make changes.”

At least on paper, “Up” hardly sounds as if it would have the makings of a charming cartoon. It tells the story of a curmudgeonly widower named Carl (the voice of Ed Asner) who is the last holdout in a neighborhood that has been razed by a corporation erecting a state-of-the-art commercial development. Acting out of deep eccentricity or perhaps profound depression, Carl — who made his living as a balloon salesman — rigs thousands of helium balloons to his house and transforms the entire structure into a floating hot-air contraption. His plan is to journey to the Andes, where he had long hoped to travel with his deceased wife.

The only complication is that a young Boy Scout named Russell (voice by Jordan Nagai) happened to be standing on his front porch when the house went soaring into the clouds.

And if you thought “Wall-E,” with its portrait of a post-apocalyptic robot yearning for connection, pushed into new realms of surrealism and melancholy for Pixar, just wait until you get a look at some of this film’s stranger flourishes (a group of talking dogs whose master is an evil explorer, voiced by Christopher Plummer) and more tender exchanges between Carl and Russell.

In fact, keep your eyes peeled for that aforementioned montage, which comes very early in the story. In 4 1/2 breathtaking minutes, “Up” shows the highlights of Carl’s marriage to Ellie, including a miscarriage, a terminal illness and the crippling regret of never having fulfilled their most basic dreams. The anguish and despair on display would make the late Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman proud.

“We’re so focused on the story and what it is,” explains Rivera, “we never really stopped to think: ‘Who is this for, what’s the audience, is this a kids’ movie?’ We want our movies to be for everybody. But the mantra that we’ve set forth is, ‘Let’s just do what we want to do.’ So far, that’s worked.”

And maybe that’s the ultimate life lesson that Pixar can teach us all: Stop condescending and dumbing things down. Don’t be afraid to be bold and to experiment. The people around us, whether they are young or old, whether they’re colleagues or loved ones or complete strangers, are usually much more open to new ideas than we give them credit for.

Indeed, the emotional content of “Up” may be dark and unexpectedly complex. But the themes here — that you’re never too old to begin an entirely new adventure; that life is a journey with just as many “downs” as “ups”; and that friends can emerge from the most unlikely of places — are fundamental and more than a little bit timely.

Like “Wall-E,” which offered up an impassioned screed against the waste and sloth of consumerist America, like “Finding Nemo,” which illuminated the bond between parents and children, like “Toy Story 2,” which chronicled both the glories and the frustrations of lifelong friendship, “Up” is ultimately an examination of the most complicated mysteries of modern life.

It reminds us never to stop challenging ourselves and each other.

__

Christopher Kelly: cmkelly@dfw.com

___

(c) 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

JOSEPH WHITE, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s safe to say the best is yet to come for the new national spelling champion. She’s only just become a teenager. She’ll probably keep her competitive juices flowing by entering the International Brain Bee, the perfect contest for an aspiring neurosurgeon.

“But I don’t think anything can replace spelling,” Kavya Shivashankar said. “Spelling has been such a big part of my life.”

On her fourth and final try, the Kansas girl who flashed a sweet smile with every word won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, outlasting 10 other finalists to take home more than $40,000 in cash and prizes and, of course, the huge champion’s trophy.

“The competitiveness is in her, but she doesn’t show that,” said her father, Mirle Shivashankar. “She still has that smile. That’s her quality.”

Kavya became the seventh Indian-American in 11 years to claim the title, including back-to-back winners who want to be neurosurgeons. Her role model is the one who started the run: 1999 winner Nupur Lala, who was featured in the documentary “Spellbound” and is now a research assistant in the brain and cognitive sciences lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kavya, from Olathe, Kan., was an obvious favorite, having finished 10th, eighth and fourth in her three previous appearances. Her winning word was the proper adjective “Laodicean,” which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. As with all her words, Kavya wrote the letters in the palm of her hand with her finger as she called them out.

“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for; it’s a dream come true,” Mirle Shivashankar said. “We haven’t skipped meals, we haven’t lost sleep, but we’ve skipped a lot of social time.”

One way the family plans to make up for it will be a belated celebration of Kavya’s birthday. She was too busy preparing for the bee to make a fuss over turning 13 last week.

Second place went to the only finalist yet to become a teenager. Twelve-year-old Tim Ruiter of Centreville, Va., matched Kavya word-for-word until he misspelled “Maecenas,” which means a cultural benefactor.

“I had absolutely no clue about that word,” Tim said. “I was just racking my brain for anything possible that could help me. I’ll probably be spelling it in my sleep tonight.”

Aishwarya Pastapur, 13, from Springfield, Ill., finished third after misspelling “menhir,” a type of monolith.

The 82nd annual bee attracted a record 293 participants, with the champion determined on network television in prime time for the fourth consecutive year. This year there was a new humorous twist: Organizers turned the sentences read by pronouncer Jacques Bailly into jokes.

“While Lena’s geusioleptic cooking wowed her boyfriend, what really melted his heart was that she won the National Spelling Bee,” Bailly said while helping explain a word that describes flavorful food.

Then there was this gem, explaining a room in an ancient Greek bath: “It was always a challenge to tell whose toga was whose in the apodyterium.”

But the laughter turned to shock when the speller, Sidharth Chand of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., flubbed the word, spelling it “apodeiterium.” Sidharth was last year’s runner-up and a favorite to take the title this year. He buried his head in his hands for about a minute after he took his seat next to his parents, while the audience and other spellers gave him a rare mid-round standing ovation.

Among the spectators was Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, who kicked off the championship rounds by telling of a bout with nerves that caused her to drop out of a sixth-grade spelling contest.

“I know that confidence is the most important thing you can give a child,” she told the audience.

___

Associated Press writer Ben Greene contributed to this story.

By Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel

UP

Rating: PG for some peril and action.

What it’s about: Cranky old man and chatty little boy float into great adventures in a house suspended from balloons.

The kid attractor factor: Two words — “Disney” and “Pixar.”

Good lessons/bad lessons: The real adventure is the life you live while waiting for your “big” adventure.

Violence: Dog attacks, dogfights, shots are fired.

Language: Disney clean.

Sex: None.

Drugs: None.

Parents’ advisory: A winning blend of sentiment and whimsy that parents won’t mind taking the 10-and-unders to.

___

DRAG ME TO HELL

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of horror violence, terror, disturbing images and language.

What it’s about: A banker is cursed and spends three days avoiding being dragged to you-know-where.

The kid attractor factor: Alison Lohman and PG-13 horror, catnip to kids.

Good lessons/bad lessons: Foreclosing on a gypsy could get you cursed (and, no, that’s not a good lesson).

Violence: Horrific, but with little blood or gore.

Language: Some mild.

Sex: None.

Drugs: None.

Parents’ advisory: Teen friendly, not too violent, though the gypsy stereotyping might be offensive to some.

___

(c) 2009, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A court-ordered round of chemotherapy is set Thursday for a 13-year-old Minnesota boy who fled Minnesota with his mother rather than undergo chemo.

Daniel Hauser of rural Sleepy Eye met Wednesday with cancer specialists at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Family attorney Calvin Johnson tells the Star Tribune that the hospital “welcomed Danny and his mom with open loving arms.”

Daniel has Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He received a single treatment of chemotherapy in February, but stopped after enduring the harsh side effects. The family prefers natural healing practices suggested by a religious group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

After Daniel and his mother returned to Minnesota this week, both his parents told a judge they will let Daniel undergo chemotherapy.

___

Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.co

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Dakota Zoo in Bismarck is organizing a “Zoovivor Kamp,” a survival-type camp for boys and girls ages 8-12.

The camp time is 1 to 8 p.m. June 4 and costs $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers.

The camp provides challenges for competing teams, but will be appropriate for their age group and will not involve danger or personal hardship. Food will be provided and teams will be involved in cooking their own food.

Camp registration forms are available by calling or stopping at the zoo. For more information, contact Andrea Hewitt at Dakota Zoo at 223-7543.

North Dakota’s top speller is not among the semifinalists at the 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington.

West Fargo seventh-grader Shantanu Srivatsa correctly spelled “luxurious” and “batiste” on Wednesday, but it wasn’t enough.

The results of the two oral rounds were combined with scores from an earlier written test to determine the semifinalists.

It was Srivatsa’s second trip to the national bee. Last year, he qualified as a regional champion in Ohio, where his family lived at the time. This year, he won the North Dakota Spelling Bee in March.

- Associated Press

Last week my sister and brother-in-law were home with their new baby. Cordelia loves babies and loved meeting her new cousin. That is until I held the baby. Cordelia threw a tantrum to end all tantrums. She has been extra clingy lately so a baby in mommy’s arms did not go over well. By the end of the week Cordelia was used to having baby around and I did get to hold her some more. While Cordelia still wasn’t pleased about me holding the baby, she at least didn’t throw a massive tantrum. I even let her hold baby, which she thought was so neat. She gave baby kisses and hugs and when I pulled baby away from her, Cordelia pulled baby back into her lap.

Time, death, baldness. Each of these things – and probably many others – has been referred to as “the great leveler.”

By the very nature of the phrase – note the “the” – there can be only one “great leveler.” And none of these things are it. The great leveler is … 

Pink eye.

Old and young, rich and poor, Mensa or moron, anyone with eyeballs and hands to rub them can succumb. And when you do, there’s only one path out, and it runs through a doctor’s office and a pharmacy.

My mistake, I now believe, was not buying everyone in the house a diving mask the moment the first of our four kids’ eyes started turning red. What better way to contain the eye goo and keep kids’ hands away from their peepers? 

The first case, in one of our 4-year-old twins, started out so mildly it was almost charming. For a couple hours, his big droopy eyes actually glistened like one of those “Precious Moments” figurines. But then the glistening graduated to goobers – our name for those rock-like dried deposits that cling to every eyelash and seal slumbering eyes shut.

Our timing was off. Usually we get horribly sick on the weekends, and our first pink-eye victim actually got it early enough that we got in to see our normal doctor on a Friday. A nurse practitioner with foresight told us to call with the first sign of its spread to our other kids, and she’d just phone in a prescription for more eye drops right away.

We did everything right. Lots of hand-washing. Separate towels. Minimal eyeball-to-eyeball contact, though who can stop kids from running into each other altogether. 

True to form the rest of our kids infected each other over the weekend, when foresight or no, there was no nurse practitioner to call. At the risk of unleashing a flood of letters to the editor, my first reaction was to share – very, very carefully – the prescription eye drops Kid No. 1 got until we could get subsequent kids in to the doctor.

But by Sunday morning, Kid No. 2, our 8-year-old daughter, had gone from pink eye to raging red eye, so we hit the urgent care center, where they know us by name after frequent night and weekend visits. This time we got ointment that you apply with a swab inside the lower eyelid.

Later in the day, Kid No. 3, our other twin, said his eyes were bothering him, and around dinnertime Kid No. 4, our 11-year-old, started to look a little glassy-eyed, and it wasn’t a result of a weekend’s worth of Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes and Skittles ingestion. 

Try as I might to explain suppositories, my kids believe eye drops and ointment are the most diabolical methods to administer medicine ever created. And by the end of the weekend, we had three kids on medicine and one who was just a phone call away. The drops are given every four waking hours, generally four doses a day. The one who had the ointment got it three times daily. That meant 11 wrestling matches in a day, and despite the fact that I outweigh all three medicated munchkins put together, I’m out of shape and they’re all wigglers so it felt like my wife and I spent all our time and energy either chasing or pinning down our kids. The howling and crying was horrible, and that was just from me.

I actually came to doubt that there’s any medicine in the drops or ointment. I think they’re all placebos, and the idea is that their use causes so much crying that the pink eye gets flushed by tears. But, of course, I’m not a doctor.

We weren’t alone. Like a tornado or a naked, wet kid just out of the tub, it was easy to track this pink eye outbreak’s path of destruction. We saw every kid – and lots of the adults – around us with it before, at the same time or after. Despite our care, I’m sure my kids gave it to someone, just like I’m sure someone gave it to us.  

As I write this, I seem to have dodged the bullet, although one of my eyes is a little itchy, now that I think about it. Oh well, I’ve got four kids, one to hold down each limb while my wife gives me eye drops. I’m sure everyone but my wife would get a kick out of helping medicate me.

(Dave Bundy is editorial director for the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. Reach him at dbundy@yourjournal.com or 314-744-5772.)

It was an innocent question, but the banker had no idea the trouble he’d gotten himself into.

“Occupation?” he’d asked my wife as we added her name to a checking account.


“Homemaker,” my wife replied.

“OK, how ’bout I just put down ‘unemployed?’”

How ’bout you take your desk chair and cram it down your esophagus, was what my wife’s eyes said. I don’t remember what her mouth said. But my wife was mad. Madder than I’d ever made her. 

I thought I understood. Here was a woman who is better educated and prepared to do the job I have as a journalist, a woman with talents and skills that would make her a fantastic breadwinner, who has decided to use her abilities to do the most important work a human can undertake. And this yahoo wanted to call her “unemployed.” Yes, I felt smugly, I get it.

And for 10 years I really did think I got it. 

Until a few weeks ago.

That’s when, for the first time in my life, I had to spend more than a week straight as primary parent for two of our four children. That’s only half of them. And it nearly killed me. Holy cow! How does my wife do it? With four. Every day.

It started when I found myself with a free week in April. Our big kids were in school, but I thought I’d take our 4-year-old twins on a 400-mile drive to my folks’ house in Ohio. How hard could it be? Then when I get there, my parents play with the little guys and I snooze and snack in relative peace.

The kids were especially thrilled at the prospect of a road trip in dad’s car. They think my Toyota Avalon smells much better than the Suburban they usually ride in. Three hours, two gassy twins and one spilled chocolate milk into the trip, we figured out why the Suburban smells funny.

Our five days in Ohio flew by without even a bit of crying or homesickness for Mom (OK, maybe I shed one or two tears, but not many). There was a little tension surrounding someone’s excessive between-meal jelly-bean intake. And I spent much of the break carrying a Fisher-Price walkie-talkie, listening for the words “Code Pineapple,” which meant someone had just gone to the bathroom and needed a little extra help. But it really went pretty smoothly, as did the drive back.

Then the real challenge began. We got back on a Thursday night, and on Friday morning, Mom and the two older kids hopped a plane to Arizona for another grandparent’s surprise birthday party. So the twins and I had three more days alone – this time at home – before our family was reunited and I went back to the office.

These were – without doubt – the longest 72 hours of my life thus far. I planned meals to minimize mess and friction (doughnuts for breakfast, sandwiches and chips for lunches and dinners). We ate on a blanket in front of the TV that I just shook out over the backyard after meals. We watched “Bolt” on DVD eight times. I used food for bribes. I ran the kids hard, hoping they’d wear out early. I lived for that moment when the twins fell asleep at night. Then, suddenly, in the silence I felt so alone I wanted to wake them up and start “Bolt” again.

When my wife and two older kids barreled through the door late Sunday night, I’m not sure I’d ever been happier. My travel-weary wife had to sit up for hours while I recounted every scene from “Bolt” and each horrific “Code Pineapple.”

Honestly, I’ve never taken my wife for granted. I’ve always appreciated the sacrifices she makes for our children and the effort she puts into making their lives more fun. But now my appreciation has become understanding and I marvel at the strength she has. She lives this life every day. If I’d had to make it a 73rd hour without her, I’m not sure I could’ve.

Nope. After my ordeal, I’ll never look at pineapple or my wife’s work the same. And my car won’t smell the same, either.

(Dave Bundy is editorial director of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. Reach him at dbundy@yourjournal.com or 314-744-5772.)