Anyone seen the new Pixar movie yet? The general word on it seems to be pretty good; a solid majority of the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are positive (a few reviewers even went as far to compare it to Chaplin and Tati):

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wall_e/

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/walle

I'll probably be too busy to catch it this weekend, but I hope to be able to see it soon.

There was a story on Aint It Cool News from a few weeks ago that mentioned that Roger Deakins served as some kind of visual consultant on Wall-E. Does anyone know anything else about this?

"pretty good"? "a solid majority"? Duuuude, it got 96 at Tomatoes and 92 at Meta!

I've loved every Pixar I've seen, but weirdly have missed the last couple (I didn't hear great things about CARS, admittedly). I won't miss this one.

I'd like to wait until others have seen it and have something to say about it, but I checked it out yesterday, and while it's quite good, and inspired in parts, I still think it's being overpraised.

I think it was great. The animation was amazing and Wall-E was such a perfect little character. It was a wonderful film all-around, I highly recommend it.

An article listing "easter eggs" and injokes in Wall-E:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/06/27/wall-e-easter-eggs/

Caught it last Friday.

The short before the feature, PRESTO, was a real treat. Very Tex Avery, which is high praise indeed.

WALL-E was good, with the first half, WALL-E on Earth, better than WALL-E in space (I was reminded, amusingly enough, of I AM LEGEND during the first half). WALL-E is definitely one of the most endearing characters Pixar has created. Want to see it at least one more time in a theater to see how it plays a second time, especially the second half.

I don't generally pay a lot of attention to the amount of money that movies make, but I'm very pleased to see that Wall-E made 62.5 million dollars over the weekend. I wonder if that is going to increase the odds of the John Carter of Mars movie (to be directed by Wall-E director Andrew Stanton) that Pixar is currently developing actually being made and not falling apart like the Robert Rodriguez, Kerry Conran, and Jon Favreau versions. I really hope so because I'd love to see someone make a good movie adaptation of A Princess of Mars. I'd also love to see more Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations since several of his books could be made into great action/adventure movies if done properly, and I think that the special effects technology has caught up to the point where any of them would be filmable (In particular, I think that a Pellucidar movie would be really cool). I'm surprised that there aren't very many ERB-based movies without Tarzan (Wasn't there some discussion a few months ago about Guillermo Del Toro doing a Tarzan movie? I'm not holding my breath for it to happen [especially with GDT attached to The Hobbit, but I'd love to see that movie).

I must be a victim of high expectations. The story did not captivate; the animation did not wow.

The first hitch comes in the opening scene. Our hero, Wall-E, is a roving trash compactor. But why is he necessary? If the amount of garbage on earth makes it inhabitable, why press it into cubes and pile it into soaring towers? If you want fields of green, aren’t you better off shredding rubbish and reducing it into the kind of matter that vegetation can take root in?

And if the co-starring robot, Eva, has been sent out to discover delicate new plant life, why is it equipped with blasters on each arm and a trigger-happy disposition? (And why are reviewers referring to Eva as “she”? Does this plant-seeking probe produce ova and bear young?)

The film is roughly in two parts: junkyard earth and outer space. Wall-E’s world is a sparse color palette of grime, grit and dust, which, I suppose, serves the needs of the story. But it does not give us the digital spectacle that has been Pixar’s stock-in-trade since TOY STORY, and especially since FINDING NEMO. There’s nothing here to gape at.

Curiously, the second, outer-space portion is even less impressive. Everything is drawn in sleek aerodynamic curves, but instead of giving us a perception of hyper-realism, it reminds us that what we are looking at is cartoonish, in the sense of something ridiculously oversimplified. Compared to Pixar’s last feature, RATATOUILLE, the second-half of WALL-E, with its futuristic cliches and bulbous, Flintstone-like humans, looks like early 60’s Hanna-Barbera.

I understand that the movie, a blunt indictment of pollution and rampant consumerism, marches to the beat of The Great Issue of Our Time. But is that sufficient to earn it unanimous raves?

+ Chaplin.

Shouldn't it get points for making use of that so-bad-it's-good film of HELLO, DOLLY?

No, not really? ;)

You gotta wonder, why HELLO DOLLY? Surely there are plenty of other, better, musicals, even set during the same milieu, featuring similar scenes. I suppose it could have been a rights issue; does Disney own HELLO DOLLY?

I haven't seen WALL-E, but the director said there was something very specific to those clips that suited them to the film (and they looked at many musicals and period pieces). HD is a Fox picture so they must have cost a fair bundle.

His answer from an interview with Capone at AICN.

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Capone: I'm always fascinated by the little choices that you guys make in your films, and using the HELLO DOLLY clips.

AS: That's the oddest choice I'll ever make in my career.

Capone: Do you have some great affection for the film version of that musical?

AS: It didn't come right away. I really wanted old-fashioned music against space. I just knew that would be a great juxtaposition of the future and the past to start the movie with. And this is going as far back as 2002 that I had that thought. And then TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE came out, which I loved. And here's this great pantomime movie that's using all the French swing music, which is what I originally had there, so I was like, "Well, I can't use that now." But it was the best thing that could have happened because it forced me to look a little deeper at other old-fashioned songs, and I started going into standards, which led me to musicals. I did enough musical theater to know what the staples are, like "Fiddler on the Roof," "Guys and Dolls," things like that. And I got into playing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," and that first phrase out there, without making any sense, just fit. And I was like, "Wow, what a great start." And I thought, "This is the oddest thing I've ever come up with," and I turned to my wife and said, "I'm going to get asked for the rest of my life why I chose this if I do this."

But I just couldn't drop it, but I kind of kept it as a private little choice until I could justify why. And I told my co-writer Jim Reardon about it, and he was like, "Well, the song is about these two guys who are naive, and they've never left this small town and they just want to go out and experience life for one night and kiss a girl." And I was like, "Gosh, this is WALL*E." And he said, "Well, maybe he found that movie in the trash." And then we started looking at the movie, and when I saw the two lover holding hands on that other song ["It Only Takes a Moment"], this huge light bulb went off, and I said, "That's how WALL*E can say I love you, because he can't say it." And that was such a gift from the heavens, that idea; I had to use it, it was fate, and I'll put up with answering that question for the rest of my life.

I thought WALL*E was wonderful. The decision to go almost without dialogue for most of the story was very good, actually drawing more into the story. The story itself is very simple. It's all about the visual presentation, the approach of which works in this case.

I liked some of the 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY references, and a future where people are waited on hand and foot by technology to the point where they can barely take acre of themselves is actually not that far from home.

As to Wall*E's purpose, I got the impression that his actual usefulness was long past. The glimpses of others like him who seemed to have expired long ago, would give weight to that. I think it accentuates not only the inability of the humans to control their problems, but also WALL*E's lonely life. What else can he do now, but just build these trash buildings?

WALL*E is a beautifully made film. Shot in widescreen, with almost photorealistic visuals, especially during the first half, humorous without being gross, and in the end, really good Sci-Fi.

Hundreds of years before, he was, probably creating trash cubes for Wall-D's that were a little bigger, and who made bigger cubes for Wall-C's who made bigger cubes for Wall-B's who made bigger cubes for Wall-A's, who we actually get to meet later in the movie.

Eva is clearly feminine -- did you have similar problems with the genders of the cars in CARS? And as far as the blasters? Perhaps she'd have to use them to excavate a mass of trash to get to samples?

Oh man, I LOVED the look of the first half. The sparse palette was something that struck me as very artful and probably, very difficult to pull off. I WAS gaping at it.

They clearly weren't going for hyper-realism, and that was simply a concious choice on the part of the filmmakers. This is made clear when we see the Fred Williard character and clearly human actors at various points in the film. What you refer to as "ridiculously oversimplified", again, is simply an artistic choice -- the intent -- of the filmmakers.

And why do we have to compare to it RATATOUILLE? Different creative team. Different story. Different style. Different intent. Different film. The only thing they share is a studio and the fact that they're both animated.

What you see as "blunt", I see as elegant and profound. I believe that portaying humanity 700 years in the future as grotesque, immobile, and "human"less was pretty damn bold. It DOES deal with issues of our time, but why diss it for doing so?

>Eva is clearly feminine

Yep, and note that she also has a womb.

I saw Wall-E yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part, even though I wouldn't rate it as highly as some critics (arguing that it's a new religion, as one critic quoted at RottenTomatoes.com did, is definitely going a bit too far).

I watched Werner Herzog's Wild Blue Yonder (IMO, it's one of the less successful recent Herzog films but not without a few interesting aspects) a few days before seeing Wall-E, and oddly enough, I think the two films have some few elements in common (even if the treatment of those elements is radically different in the two films).

Something about two-thirds of the way through the movie really took me out of it:

POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILER
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How exactly does a plant survive expose to the vacuum of space? That's a moment that really bugged me, especially since Wall-E is a science fiction film that otherwise doesn't demand a great deal of suspension of disbelief (well, other than the whole concept of robots having emotions and falling in love and all that). Sci-fi movies in which people survive exposure to vacuum (which even 2001 is guilty of to a certain extent) always bug me, so the moment in Wall-E where a plant does it really took me out of the movie.

Of course, if I were more consistent with my scientific nitpicking, movies that have sound in space would bug me just as much (and for that matter, most sci-fi movies with faster-than-light space travel not involving wormholes or string theory or anything like that). Maybe the way to deal with that is to look at sound in space as being non-diegetic, sort of like the score (I'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense).

I thought WALL-E was mostly superb and certainly a must for fans of sci-fi, animation... and probably Chaplin fans as well. This definitely sits among the best post-apocalyptic sci-fi films I've ever seen. The endless details of the ruined future Earth made it all too convincing for me. Just like Marty, I was gaping at the imagery the whole time. WALL-E. EVE, and the other robots were fully convincing characters, instantly endearing me to them with all these little emotion-filled gestures. And as a recent Mac adopter, it made perfect sense to me that the ultimate perfect babe robot would look just like the latest thing from Apple.

And yet, it was the brilliantly-realized and photo-realistic world depicted that leads me to my one nagging problem with the film...



SPOILERS


I felt the bubbly cartoon humans were juxtaposed oddly with the future Earth, especially in the light of the message-heavy "Save The Planet" ending. Yes, this is just supposed to be a cartoon and a fable. But I simply don't buy those people saving the planet. Even with that big ship to protect them, most of 'em won't survive the first few waves of those dust storms and typhoid and Lord knows what else is crawling around there. The filmmakers did too good a job of wrecking the planet to convince me it could be saved with a quick Peter Gabriel seed-planting coda. Label me a hopeless cync, but it just didn't jive with me. I was happier sticking with the robots' story.



SPOILERS END

And the short cartoon proceeding the feature? Pure classic cartoon gold, a real godsend for those who miss the good ol' days. I could almost sense the quality of the air in the cinema improving as all those awful trailers for Pixar-wannabees ended and the real stuff began.

Despite my quibbles, Pixar continues to raise the bar. I highly recommend WALL-E, but be prepared for a really disheartening view of the way things are going in between all the laughs and slapstick.

Doran, people can survive exposure to vacuum and have done so. Despite films like OUTLAND, they don't explode, their blood doesn't boil and they don't freeze solid (vacuum is actually a good insulator, which is why astronauts generally have more problems with overheating). Animal test subjects have survived up to ninety seconds of vacuum without any apparent ill effects. In 1966, a NASA technician was accidentally decompressed to vacuum while testing a space suit. He was exposed to it for 30 seconds without any ill effects beyond passing out until his atmosphere was restored.

You'll pass out after ten or fifteen seconds, you can damage your lungs if you try to hold your breath and if if you have really congested sinuses, you may blow out an eardrum, but other than that, there's no immediate tissue damage. Death from hytoxia will of course result at some point after about ninety seconds, but if you have an oxygen supply, limbs or other body parts can actually sustain exposure to vacuum without undergoing significant damage for considerably longer than that.

In other words, Clarke and Kubrick knew what they were talking about; Peter Hyams did not.

I respect Pixar's storytelling chops. They make economic, character-driven films without an ounce of fat on 'em; their directors pack every shot, camera movement, music cue and line of dialogue with as much information, emotion and narrative drive as possible. And still, I haven't liked one of their films front to back, head to toe. Despite solid scripts, fine performances, and sometimes sublime music scores... is it fair to dislike a film for the basic medium of its creation?

Besides a deep-seated, old-schooler's resistance to computer animation, I wasn't sure why, exactly. Not sure why the stylized 2-D opening credits of MONSTERS, INC., and RATATOUILLE were 1000 times more entertaining than the features. Not sure exactly what wasn't working for me in all their shorts. Scratch that. I hated Pixar's shorts.

But in the first hour of WALL-E, everything was clicking and satisfying and dazzling. But only after PRESTO was over. I figured it out during PRESTO. Actually... I figured it out during the ghastly MADAGASCAR 2 trailer: it's the too-advanced level of photorealism being applied to cartoon character design. Animation timing is a delicate, complex thing, and after years of consideration, I'm not sure that CG animation can adopt the timing practices of hand-drawn animation. The unrealistic tics, quirks and distortion of animation acting don't work on realistically textured and shaded figures. The gag writing, rhythmic escalation, and invention in PRESTO are all expert; it should be hilarious, but it looks grotesque and makes me, well, uncomfortable. Another problem is that great animators and cartoon directors - not competent directors, not Friz Freling or Don Bluth, but GREAT animators - aren't beholden to character models. Pause a Bob Clampett short in the middle of any scene, action, slapstick, dialogue, whatever, and look at the characters. Odds are, the drawings look twisted and bizarre, distorted beyond recognition. Off-model, fine, because you won't notice at normal speed; it's about the acting and the rhythm. CG characters either 1) stay on-model constantly, making them wooden, inexpressive, horrid, or 2) are allowed to distort slightly, but because they look tangible and real become unnatural and also horrid. I guess we're talking about some suburb of the Uncanny Valley here, but as specifically regards cartoon timing. We got glimpses of a related squirmy weirdness when Ralph Bakshi fell in love with rotoscoping, which sapped animation timing out of cartoon drawings to disconcerting effect.

WALL-E was working so beautifully for me, because like some of the toy characters in TOY STORY, the limitations (human bodies don't do that!) and risks (don't get too gross because it looks too real) of human or anthropomorphized animal cartoon designs aren't applicable. WALL-E and EVE are stiff, hard designs, just abstract enough, to walk the line between cartoon acting and realistic physics. This is all kind of out the window once human beings show up. And somebody knew it, because the perfect spell of WALL-E on earth is unbroken by the appearance of non-CG Fred Willard.

SPOILERS... sort of!


Still, terrible Peter Gabriel song and sap-head sentiment aside, nothing in WALL-E was as thrilling as the end credits. That ambitious final sequence tells a little story of a culture's relationship with the planet, conveyed through a mini-history of civilization's art styles... climaxing with an 8-bit video game cut scene recreation of the film's plot. So in the end, though it was probably computer generated too, the 2-D ending still kicked the rest of WALL-E square in the trash compactor.