Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) takes off on the adventure of his life in the Pixar animated film Up.

Pete Docter’s Pixar production Up is not just the best animated film of 2009, it is one of the best films made in any style, genre and country. But, like each of the studio’s 10 feature films, it was a disaster at some point along its journey until the Pixar brain-trust and filmmakers worked it into its final, Oscar-worthy version.

“Yup!” Docter, a 41-year-old native of Minnesota, tells Sun Media in an exclusive Canadian interview. “There was a lot of ‘working’ on this one.”

Docter laughs knowingly. He is on the telephone with his producer, Jonas Rivera, from Pixar Animation Studios in picturesque Emeryville, California, across the bay from San Francisco. The occasion is tomorrow’s debut of Up on DVD and Blu-ray. Docter’s marvellous children’s fantasy from 2001, Monsters, Inc., is also making its Blu-ray debut tomorrow.

Both films are available in four-disc combo packs, a Disney innovation. These packs offer the main feature in both formats — standard DVD and high-definition Blu-ray — along with extensive bonus materials and a digital copy. For flexibility, there is no better way to own both films. Meanwhile, Up is also available as a two-disc DVD set with digital copy for transfer to portable devices. But there are fewer extras than in the combo pack.

Monsters, Inc., which Docter co-directed with David Silverman and Lee Unkrich, is a charming story about monsters in a parallel universe. They scare human children to harvest screams, which are converted into electrical power. John Goodman and Billy Crystal voiced the heroes, lovable giant Sulley and one-eyed wisecracking Mike.

Up, co-directed with Bob Peterson, is a heartfelt story about a lonely, curmudgeonly widower voiced by Ed Asner. The old man attaches balloons to his house to travel to South America. His great adventure is undertaken to honour his late wife, but it is complicated when a young boy scout, voiced by Jordan Nagai, hitches a ride as a stowaway.

Up turns out to be a sophsiticated adventure in relationships, and not just in what happens to the characters on their journey and in Venezuela.

“I remember the feeling in the room,” Docter says of his original pitch at Pixar. “From early on, we latched onto this idea — the thematic thrust of the film — that adventure is out there but it is also in relationships. The specifics of how it was manifest in the story changed along the way but I do feel that the sense of what we were after we were able to capture in the film.”

One of the outstanding — and most emotionally shattering scenes — is a lyrical montage depicting the entire glorious marriage of the couple, from their wedding to her funeral. “When I first heard the pitch,” says producer Rivera, “even the way it was explained with no visuals was emotional for me. It made me worry as a producer: ‘How will we ever be able to replicate this through imagery?’ So I worked very hard with Pete and the rest of the crew to protect and honour that. To me, it is now the thing I’m most proud of with the film. I just think it comes from a true place. This is a movie about nostalgia and memory and grandparents.”

Up is also gorgeous to look at, as is Monsters Inc. Docter is delighted about how great his films look now, especially on Blu-ray.

“When Monsters, Inc. came out, people were still watching stuff on VHS. And that was ultimately so disappointing because you would go to somebody’s house and it would be way too green and was really fuzzy and just awful.” On Blu-ray, he says of today’s best technology, “the detail and accury of colour is just fantastic! (With Up), it almost looks the best that it ever has!”