Put simply, WALL-E is the reason I’m a movie fan. I’ve been a PIXAR fanboy for many years. In fact, I’ve been a fan of theirs longer than most others, because it predates Toy Story. I’ve been a follower of the technologies of computer animation ever since seeing (and loving) Tron when I was 7 years old. It’s no secret that PIXAR was partially born out of John Lasseter seeing the production of Tron, having worked at Disney as an animator while it was being produced at the studio (though he didn’t have any involvement with said production). During the 80’s, PIXAR formed and started producing animated shorts, including the likes of Red’s Dream, Tin Toy, Knick Knack and the historic Luxo, Jr. When I initially heard they were going to produce the first fully CG feature film, I was thrilled to see the final product. And I wasn’t the only one, as Toy Story changed the world of animation forever. Since then, PIXAR has been firing on all cylinders, producing hit after hit, in stark defiance to those who continually predicted each film to surely be their first failure. Always imaginative, PIXAR continues to come through, time and time again. They are easily the best thing to happen to Walt Disney Pictures since Walt himself.

Writing: Despite the fact that PIXAR is on the leading edge of technology, always a step ahead of anyone else, it’s not the technical aspects that primarily drive a PIXAR film, it’s the story and character. WALL-E is a different film compared to the rest of their feature length productions. It actually has more in common with their short films. It has a minimal amount of dialog (their short films are notable for their lack of dialog) and is much more rooted in physical performance and precisely choreographed energy and blocking. The character of WALL-E himself may very well be one of the most fundamentally engaging and sympathetic characters ever committed to film (or saved to disk). The determined nature of the character combined with the effortless charm makes it basically impossible to not love him. I’m not typically much for action figures, but I think I will pick up one of the inevitable WALL-E action figures/toys. The story itself is actually rather simple, rooted in a great many science fiction staples and character stories. While PIXAR has proven themselves perfectly capable of more complex storytelling, they have an amazing talent at nailing the most simplistic of ideas and making them endlessly entertaining. Their animated shorts are just such examples. Speaking of which, WALL-E is preceded by yet another wonderful animated short, Presto.

Production: Having said all that, I continue to have my mind blown with each successive PIXAR movie I see. The technical aspects of this production are peerless. The cinematography is simply gorgeous, not to mention wonderfully dynamic. Production design is also spectacular, from the garbage-strewn, used up Earth to the hyper-real world on board the spaceship Axiom. The editing is extremely slick, keeping a brisk and smooth pacing throughout. The computer animation is breathtaking, not just in texture and quality, but in character animation. WALL-E is a remarkably animated character, both drawing on previous robots such as Number 5 or R2-D2, but also as a fantastically original design. We also get to meet a number of other fun robotic characters.

Cast: With such a small amount of dialog, it’s hard to think of the performances in the film in terms of casting. The real star is Ben Burtt, who is interestingly credited as the cast performer for WALL-E, as well as M-O, pretty much giving him top billing. It’s well deserved, as his sound design is a key component to making the character of WALL-E work so well. It’s no surprise that he is able to do such a good job, given the fact that he’s the man responsible for R2-D2 himself. I will be rather shocked if Burtt isn’t at least nominated for a sound award or two come Oscar season next spring. Other voice castings are amusing, such as having the Axiom ship’s computer voiced by none-other-than Sigourney Weaver. Fred Willard gets to perform a first for a PIXAR movie, that of an actual live action character. He’s a fun choice for the role. And of course it wouldn’t be a PIXAR movie without John Ratzenberger performing one of the voices. This time, they amusingly just went ahead and named the character “John.”

Music: While not his greatest score, nor the greatest score for a PIXAR film, Thomas Newman’s score is very good. Actually, Thomas Newman’s other PIXAR score is the best of the PIXAR scores, for Finding Nemo (also for writer/director Andrew Stanton). For WALL-E, Newman balances the ethereal sci-fi with the action and emotion of the film quite nicely. Of course it features Newman’s typical rich orchestration and unique instrumentation. A worthy score to a fantastic film.

I can’t praise this movie enough. Everybody get out there and see this one. I’ll be seeing it again very soon.

• I meant to continue my run of movie reviews, but my posting to the blog got back-burnered when things at work this week went completely off the rails. I’ll resume postings here now that things are under control.
• I may not have particularly loved Be Kind Rewind, but it has spawned the “sweded” film movement. While many of these attempts are as lame as one would expect, you have purely brilliant efforts like this sweded version of Tron. It’s shot-for-shot perfect.
• Check out this sanity-numbing flash animation of something that Minolta has done. If this stuff wasn’t pretentious enough, they had to add the aimless piano plunking to it. As I sat there watching this animation of their stupendously fantastical accomplishments in such a globally groundbreaking breakthrough, I couldn’t help wondering who on Earth dreamed up this presentation. And if that weren’t enough, I was presented with the final screen at the end, which is probably the single most hubris spouting piece of drivel I’ve read in a number of years. I won’t repeat it here. You must suffer through the animation if you want the depraved pleasure of that final screen. Now, if Minolta spent .0005% of this effort developing print drivers…
• The SCO legal case never seems to cease, which is amusingly become enough of an annoyance to those involved that they have stopped using properly reserved legal speak in their filings and are openly venting their frustrations.
• An amusing Star Wars advertising campaign from SpikeTV
• Here’s some great online ad targetting
• Adobe has opened up a beta of their new, free, online Photoshop Express program. I played with it a bit, but not too much. What I saw looked fairly nice.
• I would in no way get my hopes up about this, but the powers that be are trying to shop Jericho around for a new home.

• OK, video release screw-up of the month goes to 20th Century Fox for their Blu-Ray release of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. For what possible reason did they leave off every single special feature of this disc, as they previously announced? I mean, this format provides for 50gb of storage space. The movie is 94 minutes. What *POSSIBLE* reason did they have to not include the features? I mean, they certainly had enough room to toss a handful of trailers for their other films in the mix. So, I guess I’ll have to hunt down a pirate copy of the standard definition DVD online somewhere to get content they originally promised. Fox continues to go out of their way to torture early adopters, from their use of the awful, anti-consumer BD+ component on the format to their typically overpriced releases, to their constant feature-anemic releases. For a studio which has for years been my favorite theatrical release studio, their home video department has gone completely off the rails. And I used to have such great respect for 20th Century Home Entertainment. What the heck happened, Peter Staddon? Boo! Hiss! Incidentally, the score for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium may easily grow into one of my favorites in recent years. Alexandre Desplat & Aaron Zigman did a phenomenal job with this score.
• Perhaps Jericho has a fighting chance after all
• The CW has announced a number of pick-ups for next season. Great to see Supernatural get the good news. You know, I wouldn’t have guessed that Smallville would last this long when it started oh so many years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I like the show, it just didn’t strike me as a likely candidate to last more than the 5 year magic point.
• Proof that some people actually get what’s coming.
• And, not to file this away as the last entry in a post, but here’s yet another piece of news on a possible Tron sequel, this time in 3D. Once the thing goes into production, then I’ll begin to get excited.

• Wow, the Tron sequel is back out of development hell again. Here’s hoping it can finally get off the ground.
• If they had to lose Rachel Weisz for the next Mummy movie, they cast a wonderful replacement - Maria Bello.
• Harry Potter: all time biggest movie franchise?
• Coolness - 7 Amazing Holes. That red arrow pointing at the big truck is wild.
• A hilarious personal profile
• The amusing 12 Most Ridiculous Similes In Music History list
• Some cool stats about Google Reader
• Man attempts to return Walmart ammunition at 1300 feet per second. Great headline.
• So, they’re doing a sequel to Pulse, and this time out it’ll be Jamie Bamber making me want to see it rather than Kristen Bell.
• Arrested for salting a police officer. Hardy har har.
• While this isn’t really a tornado, it’s still awesome footage. Be warned to mute the audio immediately when you play the video.