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Archive for June, 2008Wall E Movie PhotosMonday, June 30th, 2008
Wall EMonday, June 30th, 2008
WALL E Director: Andrew Stanton CAST: Ben Burtt … WALL•E / M-O (voice) SYNOPSIS: In the 2100s, the company Buy ‘n Large supplies almost every service on Earth and eventually becomes the world government. Overrun by consumerism, humanity pollutes the planet until it is uninhabitable. In an attempt to clean the planet, Buy ‘n Large sponsors an exodus to space aboard several Executive Starliners, one of which is the Axiom. In the meantime, thousands of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) units are left behind to convert the garbage into a disposable form. The recovery plan fails, and by 2815, only one WALL-E (the protagonist, voiced by Ben Burtt) remains operational. This WALL-E has developed a personality and stores human knick-knacks in his station, including a sprouting plant that he discovers, and a treasured videotape of the film Hello, Dolly! that teaches him emotion, particularly holding hands. EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) (Elissa Knight), a robot from the Axiom sent to find plant life, lands on Earth. After multiple misunderstandings, WALL-E shows her the plant he found. Following her directive, EVE stores the plant inside herself and shuts down. WALL-E goes to great lengths to protect her body, and eventually she is recovered by a spacecraft and flown back to the Axiom. Chasing EVE, WALL-E latches on to the outside of the ship and rides it back to its destination. At the Axiom, WALL-E escapes notice by other robots and explores the ship. Consumerism has made humanity lazy and morbidly obese, with every task being automated, including captaining, which is done by the autopilot AUTO (MacInTalk). WALL-E follows EVE’s body to the captain’s room, where the captain (Jeff Garlin) is to be shown the plant. However, EVE’s body no longer contains the plant; she blames WALL-E. The captain assumes EVE has malfunctioned, and sends her to the robot repair room. WALL-E is spotted and also sent to the repair room, where he accidentally liberates all the malfunctioning robots. WALL-E takes EVE’s gun arm and is carried away by the celebrating newly-freed malfunctioning units. EVE chases the other robots and WALL-E to recover her arm but during the process is accidentally labeled as a rogue robot, mistaken for helping lead the other crazed robots. Seeing the chaos WALL-E has caused, EVE tries to send him back to Earth in an escape pod but he refuses to go. While she tries to put WALL-E into the pod, AUTO’s assistant, GO-4, arrives and reveals that he had the plant the whole time and tries to dispose of it in the escape pod. WALL-E becomes trapped in the pod when he tries to recover the plant and he soon discovers it is set to self-destruct. By using a fire extinguisher to propel himself, he escapes with the plant at the last second. Realizing that the plant has been recovered, AUTO again triggers the alert against WALL-E and EVE. EVE brings the plant to the captain; curious to see images of Earth, he projects EVE’s memories and security camera footage from when she shut down, where she sees the lengths that WALL-E went to protect her. The captain is shocked by the environmental devastation on Earth depicted in the recordings and decides they must return to make amends. AUTO mutinies and tries to dispose of the plant, and is forced to reveal to the captain that Buy ‘n Large quickly abandoned recolonization plans after realizing that Earth was too toxic to support life; as a result, AUTO is programmed to never return to Earth. AUTO locks the captain in his bedroom, electrocutes WALL-E and throws him and the plant into a garbage chute, and deactivates EVE. EVE awakens in the Axiom’s disposal facility where gigantic WALL-A (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Axiom-Class) units are compacting garbage and launching it into space. EVE saves WALL-E, whose hardware is heavily damaged and rapidly losing battery power, and realizes that they must return to Earth in order to fix him. They recruit the malfunctioning robots and fight their way back to the main part of the ship. Meanwhile, the captain tricks AUTO into bringing him back into the cockpit. He tells WALL-E and EVE to put the plant on the holodetecter, a pedestal that rises from the floor. AUTO forces the holodetecter back into the floor and turns the ship on its side, and EVE is forced to save several humans as they slide into a wall. WALL-E uses his body to jam the holodetector, and EVE places the plant in the holodetector. The captain shuts down AUTO, and the Axiom jumps to Earth. WALL-E’s crushed and electrocuted body runs out of charge and shuts down. Once they arrive on Earth, EVE frantically pieces him back together from spare parts in his home. As WALL-E recharges, he appears to lose the personality he has developed and begins to perform his programmed task by crushing nearby trash into cubes. EVE, despondent over the loss of WALL-E, holds his hand and leans foward “kissing” him, causing a spark to jump between the two. The spark reboots WALL-E’s memory and he suddenly recognizes her. With a renewed sense of purpose, humanity and robots together work to restore Earth’s biosphere. The Good: The film’s first half is literally perfect, nearly devoid of dialogue as we get to know Wall-E, his life on Earth, and attempts to communicate with Eve. It’s a masterpiece of pantomime animation that recalls the earliest Pixar short Luxo Jr., and the romantic comedy is better than many live action ones starring real humans one might call actors. The Bad: The robots are such strong characters, that once the relatively lackluster humans are introduced, the film drags. Our future, marshmallow-body-and-brain selves are so devoid of personality, and their leader is such a dud, that it was hard for me to relate to or care about them. Their physical and mental state fits with the movie’s message, but dramatically it bogs things down. Wall E QUOTES: Statler1976: so what’d you think of “wall-e”? Waldorf1975: or that “the great mouse detective” affected the pro-animal sleuth movement. Sound Department Special Effects Visual Effects Animation Department Editorial Department Music Department Other crew
Meet The BrownsMonday, June 30th, 2008
MEET THE BROWNS Director: Tyler Perry CAST: Tyler Perry … Madea / Uncle Joe SYNOPSIS: Prolific playwright Tyler Perry adapts his popular stage play of the same name in this family-oriented comedy concerning a desperate mother who connects with the family she never knew. Brenda is a single Chicago mother of three who has been struggling for years to keep her kids off of the streets. Suddenly let go from her job with no warning to speak of, the eternally optimistic mother begins to experience a suffocating sense of hopelessness for the very first time in her life. When Brenda receives a death notice claiming that the father she has never met has passed away, she quickly gathers up the kids and sets out for Georgia to attend the funeral. Upon arriving in the Deep South, the once fretful mother is pleasantly surprised to discover that there is a whole side of the family she never knew existed. A crass but good-natured clan that welcomes Brenda and her children with open arms, the Browns’ lazy summer afternoons and frequent trips to the county fair offer a much-needed contrast to the stress of surviving in inner city Chicago. Writer/director/actor Perry reprises his role as indomitable, law-breaking grandmother Madea in a comedy that proves sometimes second chances come when you least expect it. Stop LossMonday, June 30th, 2008
STOP LOSS Director: Kimberly Peirce CAST: Ryan Phillippe … Brandon King SYNOPSIS: After serving his tour of duty in Iraq, a young American soldier who is ordered to return to the front lines as part of the military’s controversial stop-loss opts instead to go AWOL in a thought-provoking military drama directed by Kimberly Peirce. Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Philippe) is a decorated Iraq War veteran who once served his country with pride. After his tour of duty comes to an end, King returns to his Texas hometown and attempts to pick up where he once left off with a little help from his family, as well as long-time best friend and war buddy Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum). But just as Brandon, Steve, and the rest of their war buddies begin to setle back into civilian life, Uncle Sam comes calling on them once again. Suddenly ordered back into active duty, the disillusioned war veteran begins to question not just his ties to family and his longtime friendships, but his capacity for love and sense of honor as well. Superhero MovieMonday, June 30th, 2008
SUPERHERO MOVIE Director: Craig Mazin CAST: Drake Bell … Rick Riker / Dragonfly SYNOPSIS: How many superheroes does it take to save the world? The creators of The Naked Gun and Scary Movie answer this question in hysterical “David Zucker” fashion with the uproarious comedy Superhero Movie. Meet Rick Riker. He’s young, he’s cool and he’s got superpowers. Now, if he only knew how to use them… but the world is in danger and no one is safe when Zucker and the gang — headed by the hilarious cast of Drake Bell, Leslie Nielsen, Tracy Morgan, Pamela Anderson, Regina Hall and many others — take aim at some of the biggest blockbusters of our time including Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men, and Fantastic Four, to name a few. On March 28th, learning to fly, spinning a web and busting a gut has never been this much fun. |
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