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Old 2008.06.28, 08:12 AM   #1
Tokyo Jihad
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Default Wall*E is the best anything ever! GO WATCH IT, FOOLS!

Everyone knows that I'm Pixar's #1 shill at EMF. I remember years ago, after The Incredibles came out saying to myself, I'm not sure about Cars or Rat (as Ratatouille was called at the time), but they're Pixar so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But Wall-E is going to be a classic." I have been hyped about this movie since 2005. So naturally I ravenously watched it the first chance I got.

And, like always, Jihad was right.

Wall-E is the best romance movie ever made. It doesn't matter that it's animated. Animation is the only way you can possibly show the story between Wall-E and Eve and show the relationship of the two. So all of you might want to put Before Sunrise down and give Wall-E a gander. It's the sweetest movie I ever watched. Almost any scene with Wall-E and Eve together had me tearing up, and twice did a tear actually roll.

Now then, this is the internet. And nerds will not possibly allow themselves to think this movie is better than their beloved Incredibles*, and they'll likely point to the "think green" attitude prevalent in the movie as a detractor. Perhaps it's a bit heavy-handed at times, but it's not the modus operandi of the story at all (and you can argue all you want about it's inclusion to the story. But considering many children will watch it I think some of the visuals are better motivators than any other "think green" or "be active" presentations in media.)

One person said of Wall-E that it's "the first movie where Pixar stopped making a children's movie everyone can enjoy and started making an adult movie everyone can enjoy." In an argument with my friend last night I said, "Nemo will be in film textbooks. The Incredibles will be in Sci-Fi Magazines' top 10 lists," and then added, "...Wall-E will be in both." Wall- E will most certainly be right there with Apocolypse Now in every Audio Production/Sound Design Class, if not in every Screen Writing class because it is THE example of "show don't tell."

The Incredibles and Ratatouille both had a buzz that they should be included in the "Best Picture" category at the Oscars. I can't imagine there will be 4-5 better, more effective, movies than Wall-E in 2008.

Why are you still reading this? Go out and see it. And so help you if you watch tripe like Kung-Fu Panda instead.

*: not that I don't think The Incredibles is great. Prior to Wall-E, I favored it second only to Finding Nemo.

EDIT: Let's talk about Wall-E's b/w short, Presto. I loved it, it was an olde timey Disney Short to a T. Just in 3D. Complete with physical violence you cant show in children's tv anymore!

Just for the record. Here is my "scoreboard" for Pixar: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc.,
Ratatouille, Toy Story 2, Toy Story, Cars, A Bug's Life. I'm excluding Wall-E for now cuz right now I wanna just slap it in front of Nemo, but I might still be in the "honeymoon" period. So I'll hold off til my second viewing at least (or third ) Altho, I cant imagine it not being in my Top 3 (and I think very possibly, ultimately my fav Pixar movie.)
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Old 2008.06.28, 09:47 AM   #2
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I think I will always be fondest of Luxo Jr.
Nice review in The New York Times this morning.

In a World Left Silent, One Heart Beeps


By A. O. SCOTT
Published: June 27, 2008
The first 40 minutes or so of “Wall-E” — in which barely any dialogue is spoken, and almost no human figures appear on screen — is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in. The scene is an intricately rendered city, bristling with skyscrapers but bereft of any inhabitants apart from a battered, industrious robot and his loyal cockroach sidekick. Hazy, dust-filtered sunlight illuminates a landscape of eerie, post-apocalyptic silence. This is a world without people, you might say without animation, though it teems with evidence of past life.

We’ve grown accustomed to expecting surprises from Pixar, but “Wall-E” surely breaks new ground. It gives us a G-rated, computer-generated cartoon vision of our own potential extinction. It’s not the only film lately to engage this somber theme. As the earth heats up, the vanishing of humanity has become something of a hot topic, a preoccupation shared by directors like Steven Spielberg (“A.I.”), Francis Lawrence (“I Am Legend”), M. Night Shyamalan (“The Happening”) and Werner Herzog. In his recent documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” Mr. Herzog muses that “the human presence on this planet is not really sustainable,” a sentiment that is voiced, almost verbatim, in the second half of “Wall-E.” When the whimsical techies at Pixar and a moody German auteur are sending out the same message, it may be time to pay attention.

Not that “Wall-E” is all gloom and doom. It is, undoubtedly, an earnest (though far from simplistic) ecological parable, but it is also a disarmingly sweet and simple love story, Chaplinesque in its emotional purity. On another level entirely it’s a bit of a sci-fi geek-fest, alluding to everything from “2001” and the “Alien” pictures (via a Sigourney Weaver voice cameo) to “Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out.” But the movie it refers to most insistently and overtly is, of all things, “Hello, Dolly!,” a worn videotape that serves as the title character’s instruction manual in matters of choreography and romance.

That old, half-forgotten musical, with its Jerry Herman lyrics crooned by, among others, Louis Armstrong, is also among Wall-E’s mementos of, well, us. He is a dented little workhorse who, having outlasted his planned obsolescence, spends his days in the Sisyphean, mechanical labor of gathering and compacting garbage. His name is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class. But not everything he finds is trash to Wall-E. In the rusty metal hulk where he and the cockroach take shelter from dust storms, he keeps a carefully sorted collection of treasures, including Zippo lighters, nuts and bolts, and a Rubik’s Cube.

Wall-E’s tender regard for the material artifacts of a lost civilization is understandable. After all, he too is a product of human ingenuity. And the genius of “Wall-E,” which was directed by the Pixar mainstay Andrew Stanton, who wrote the screenplay with Jim Reardon, lies in its notion that creativity and self-destruction are sides of the same coin. The human species was driven off its home planet — Wall-E eventually learns that we did not die out — by an economy consecrated to the manufacture and consumption of ever more stuff. But some of that stuff turned out to be useful, interesting, and precious. And some of it may even possess something like a soul.

Observing Wall-E’s surroundings, the audience gleans that, in some bygone time, a conglomerate called BnL (for “Buy N Large”) filled the earth with megastores and tons of garbage. Eventually the corporation loaded its valued customers onto a space station (captained by Jeff Garlin), where they have evolved into fat, lazy leisure addicts serviced by a new generation of specialized machines. One of these, a research probe named Eve (all of the robot names are acronyms as well as indicators of theoretical gender) drops to Earth and wins Wall-E’s heart.

Their courtship follows some familiar patterns. If “Wall-E” were a romantic comedy, it would be about a humble garbageman who falls for a supermodel who also happens to be a top scientist with a knack for marksmanship. (I’m pretty sure I reviewed that a while back, but the title escapes me.) Wall-E is a boxy machine of the old school, with creaks and clanks and visible rivets, his surface pocked with dents and patches of rust. He is steadfast, but not always clever or cool. Eve, shaped like an elongated egg, is as cool as the next iPhone and whisper quiet, unless she’s excited, in which case she has a tendency to blow things up. She and Wall-E communicate in chirps and beeps that occasionally coalesce into words. Somehow their expressions — of desire, irritation, indifference, devotion and anxiety, all arranged in delicate counterpoint — achieve an otherworldly eloquence.

That they are endowed with such rich humanity is as much a Pixar trademark as the painstakingly modeled surfaces or the classical virtual camerawork and editing. The technical resourcefulness that allows “Wall-E” to leap effortlessly from the derelict Earth to the pristine atmosphere of the space station is matched by the rigorous integrity the filmmakers bring to the characters and the themes.

Rather than turn a tale of environmental cataclysm into a scolding, self-satisfied lecture, Mr. Stanton shows his awareness of the contradictions inherent in using the medium of popular cinema to advance a critique of corporate consumer culture. The residents of the space station, accustomed to being tended by industrious robots, have grown to resemble giant babies, with soft faces, rounded torsos and stubby, weak limbs. Consumer capitalism, anticipating every possible need and swaddling its subjects in convenience, is an infantilizing force. But as they cruise around on reclining chairs, eyes fixed on video screens, taking in calories from straws sticking out of giant cups, these overgrown space babies also look like moviegoers at a multiplex.

They’re us, in other words. And like us, they’re not all bad. The paradox at the heart of “Wall-E” is that the drive to invent new things and improve the old ones — to buy and sell and make and collect — creates the potential for disaster and also the possible path away from it. Or, put another way, some of the same impulses that fill the world of “Wall-E” — our world — with junk can also fill it with art.
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Old 2008.06.28, 11:40 AM   #3
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I love WALL-E, plain and simple.

I wasn't sure if it could replace Ratatouille as my favorite from Pixar, but it managed to pretty easily.
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Old 2008.06.28, 04:04 PM   #4
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Watching Kung-Fu Panda now that Wall-E is out is like listening to Headquarters once Sgt. Pepper's came out.
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Old 2008.06.28, 06:04 PM   #5
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Ouch! Not fair! All Music Guide gave that album 4&1/2 stars.
Their movie Head was good too, but I wouldn't try watching it while tripping on acid (trust me).

AMG review:
After the release of More of the Monkees, on which the band had little involvement beyond providing vocals and a couple Mike Nesmith-composed songs, the pre-fab four decided to take control of their recording destiny. After a well-timed fist through the wall of a hotel suite and many fevered negotiations, music supervisor Don Kirschner was out and the band hit the studio by themselves. With the help of producer Chip Douglas, the band spent some time learning how to be a band (as documented on the Headquarters Sessions box set) and set about recording what turned out to be a dynamic, exciting, and impressive album. Headquarters doesn't contain any of the group's biggest hits, but it does have some of their best songs, like Nesmith's stirring folk-rocker "You Just May Be the One," the pummeling rocker "No Time," the MOR soul ballad "Forget That Girl," which features one of Davy Jones' best vocals, Peter Tork's shining moment as a songwriter, "For Pete's Sake," and the thoroughly amazing (and surprisingly political) "Randy Scouse Git," which showed just how truly out-there and almost avant-garde Micky Dolenz could be when he tried. Even the weaker songs like the sweet-as-sugar "I'll Spend My Life with You," the slightly sappy "Shades of Gray," or the stereotypically showtune-y Davy Jones vehicle "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind" work, as they benefit from the stripped-down and inventive arrangements (which feature simple but effective keyboards from Tork and rudimentary pedal steel fills from Nesmith) and passionate performances. Headquarters doesn't show the band to be musical geniuses, but it did prove they were legitimate musicians with enough brains, heart, and soul as anyone else claiming to be a real band in 1967.
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Old 2008.06.28, 06:35 PM   #6
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Headquarters was good. (and I LOVE Head...the movie, and other connotations) I know, its a cheap shot, and the Monkees really desrve the DAP for that album.

But hey, I like taking punching at Dreamworks!
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Old 2008.06.29, 05:26 AM   #7
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Send one of those punches courtesy of me, TJ! Pixar is America's Studio Ghibli. Japan kicks our pants at traditional animation, but our rendering skills rule. And Dreamworks is shit.
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Old 2008.06.30, 06:01 PM   #8
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So I gave Wall-E a second viewing today, a more critical viewing.

It's no doubt my fav/the best movie Pixar has made. I was thinking of taking the girl to see it, but I'm double-thinking that because I can NOT keep my shit together during this movie. Knowing what's gonna happen only seems to make it more impactful.

Nerds of course, can't just "love" something, they have to bitch about something, and for Wall-E its the "preachy think green/anti-consumerism" subtext." -- First off, for something to be preachy I'd imagine someone needs to, y'know, verbally preach. The anti-consumerism is purely visual and sub-textual. The "think green" sentiment is only strongly indicated in ONE SCENE that accounts of maybe 2 minutes in the 100-something minute love story. The rest is underlying and sub-textual.

Give Pixar whatever sound Oscars and of course the Animation Oscar right now. It doesn't matter how entertaining Horton and Kung-Fu Panda may have been. If Wall-E doesnt get the best picture nod...it will be very frustrating. It was more universal than Juno, more engaging and entertaining than Atonement, and just plain better than George Clooney's movie last year. If La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful,) a foreign language movie, can get the nomination for Best picture AND best foreign lang picture, then Wall*E certainly has the merit to be nominated.
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Old 2008.06.30, 06:22 PM   #9
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Wall-E is better than Kung Fu Panda?!? Hmm... I can't wait to see it this weekend, but I'm afraid it'll make me cry because the preview made it seem like a really sad and lonely movie.
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Old 2008.06.30, 06:54 PM   #10
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I watched the movie today after being put in an interesting situation. The only reason I said yea was because I read jihad's thread. And thats the only reason! Boy am I glad I saw it....

First off this movie, imo was a silent film, the main characters maybe said 7 different words the whole film. Most talking was explaining circumstances. I thought that it was terribly moving (didn't shed tears like jihad though, but I understand why he did...). Oh yea and eve and wall-e were 2 of the words...

Well I would write a whole review, but why bother. I will just say I like it. Eve is the HOTTEST robot I've ever seen in my life. Her personality was too cute and I found myself calling her "kawaii" in more than 3 or 4 situations. When she gets involved with wall-e, I see her so much like a girl, the robo-blush was abound in this movie. EVE is the reason to see movie, plus she has an itchy trigger finger, lol.

I think this film has an excellent commentary on the direction we are heading in with our "get it faster, without working" mindset. We will become these people in the future. "I didn't know we had a pool", lolololol how long have you been on the ship, lololol. That will be us in a short time.

Well there is nothing more for me to say, I'll let others offer their professional reviews and such, I just geeked over what I liked in the movie. But I will say it is the most touching thing I've ever seen with minimal dialog in a looong time. The most touching story with no dialog is super metroid... that story makes you want to cry, nd has NO words at all!
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