WALL-E
I was going to fit this into the previous post, but that one got long enough on its own. As you can probably tell from the title of this entry, I saw Pixar's latest creation... and it is now my new favorite Pixar movie!!!
When I first saw a poster for it in the theaters almost 6 months ago, I was like... "oh great, another cheesy robot movie." Even up until like the few weeks before the release date, I was kinda ignoring everything being said about it. But then I started seeing the teaser trailers and getting more interested. This month's issue of PiQ (the sub-culture entertainment magazine that replaced Newtype-USA) had a quick spread about it and I became more intrigued.
First thing that caught my eye was the seamless, spic-n-span, deep-space utopian society setting. I absolutely love anything futuristic that takes place in an imagined utopia (it's the sociologist in me, leave me alone... FWIW, I also like the post-apocalyptic stuff). I love seeing what others believe a perfect society will look like a few hundred years (in this case, 700) in the future. Of course, the world in WALL-E was kinda grim... in terms of Earth's sustainability and mankind's ability to get off their fat asses (seriously... everyone weights about 300lbs and is glued to a floating barcalounger that zips them across their space colony). As a reviewer from the Chicago Tribune noted, it borrowed a few ideas from Idiocracy, a more satricial look at the future of humanity, except instead of everyone weighing as much as cows, they're all as dumb as them. This was the first thing I thought of, too, when the movie opened with shots of a city skyline that was half garbage-stacks. Oh, and there was the whole megaconglomerate monopoly over all facets of life... in this case, "Buy 'n Large"... reminescent of Idiocracy's "Brawndo" or Rocko's Modern Life's "Conglom-O". I should be able to think up a thousand more, but I'm drawing a blank.
Anyway, next point was PiQ magazine calling this Pixar's greatest triumph... IIRC. They said it was guarenteed to be good, I can remember at least that much. And that really means something when you consider the smash hits Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo were. I haven't seen Ratatouille (yet... I'll watch it tonight), but I've heard nothing but rave reviews about it.
The big challenge a lot of people were saying the movie had to face was getting the audience to emphasize with inanimate objects... especially objects that don't speak with actual English (or ANY language) words. I pretty much knew what to expect... I mean, come on, you can all tell when R2-D2 is pissed and when he's just being a smart-ass. It's all in the bleeps and bloops. I kinda wish the robots "spoke" a little more. I mean, yeah there were the random computery sound-effects being flung about, but once EVE learned how to say "WALL-E", that's pretty much the ONLY thing she said.... omg, so kawaii when she first uttered "directive?"
I was hoping for more in terms of an epic soundtrack, but sadly there wasn't much in that department. A lot of the music was touched-up versions of music we already knew. Apparently the budget for this film was spent on art and animation... but hey, no complaints here. Though speaking of visuals, one very cool thing to note is that, I believe, this is the first CGI movie to actually use real-life actors. Granted not an extensive pressence, but we do get to see Fred Willard as well as a couple dozen generic actors as they really are. There are still the standard character-design individuals on the supporting cast, but it's cool to see the mix like that.
Okay, enough rambling. You, go see WALL-E... I'm gonna go watch Ratatouille now since it's available on whatever movie channel it's on.
PS... the Pixar short before WALL-E is hysterical. So many ROFLCOPTORs were launched in that theater tonight, haha.