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It Might Get Loud

Where The Wild Things Are…!

How many remember this freaking awesome book? Think the movie's going to be good?

UPDATE: Looks like YouTube may have pulled the trailer. You can see a better quality version from Apple here

Star Trek Trailer

Now that's a Star Trek I'll watch!

Wall-E Review: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies in Years, Disguised as a Cartoon

Wall-E might be the most sympathetic, lovable robot ever created on film. While R2D2 was hilarious and endearing, he had the benefit of C3PO to translate for him and a cast of human characters to carry the weight of the story. At the end of the day, R2D2 was simply comic relief, but his descendant, whose voice was also created by Ben Burtt, is so full of humanity that you feel like your heart might just burst. Simply put, Wall-E is a masterpiece.

The first 40 minutes or so of Wall-E are almost completely without dialogue. Instead, the story is told visually, as we see Wall-E, the abandoned garbage bot, puttering around a staggeringly rendered post-apocalyptic Earth. He goes around doing his job, as he has for the past 700 years, compacting trash into cubes and stacking them into immense towers. On the side, he collects remnants of humanity to keep for his own amusement. Zippo lighters, Rubik's Cubes, Christmas lights: these are what Wall-E surrounds himself with. Because he''s so alone (except for a little cockroach), these dirty, abandoned objects are his companions, his contact with humanity.

He watches Hello, Dolly! on an iPod that he somehow hooked up to a VCR, emulating the dancing and learning about love. (That's not the only Apple reference in the movie: he makes the classic Mac bootup sound when he turns on, and his love interest EVE was designed by Jonathan Ive). When you see Wall-E try to imitate the dancing using a hub cap he collected just for that purpose, you know that this is more than a piece of machinery. Proving Pixar's raison d'etre, this little silent robot has more humanity in him than most movie characters played by actual humans.

Immediately, we realize this isn't your typical kiddie cartoon. No pop culture jokes? No instantly-recognizable celebrity voices? A decimated, humanless landscape full of towers of garbage and decrepit buildings? A lonely robot trying to learn about love and humanity through centuries of its trash? This looks more like a beautiful, haunting sci-fi movie than a children's movie, because that''s exactly what it is.

Wall-E features loving nods to everything from Brave New World to 2001 to Star Wars without ever feeling derivative. Instead, it builds on them, making what has the potential to be an almost relentlessly bleak world into one full of complete joy and levity. It always has that undercurrent of melancholy just under the surface, as we never really forget that humanity has utterly destroyed the planet and turned itself into a race of pudgy, helpless babies, but heart of the story is Wall-E and his longing for love.

And isn't that the sign of great science fiction? While on the surface it's a movie about robots and spaceships set centuries in the future, deep down it's about humanity and it's place on Earth and in the universe. It uses its out-of-this-world settings and characters as a lens to reflect our own world back at us, showing us both the beauty and the ugliness of our existence through the eyes of a guileless, trash-compacting robot.

In a movie season that's overpopulated with tired superhero movies, remakes and sequels, it's incredibly refreshing to see a movie that stands on its own as a completely new and unique creation. It's safe to say you"ve never seen anything like Wall-E, and you might not see anything like it again. Go. Go see it as soon as you can.

The Search For Perfect Love

Bella is more than just a film about romance

"True love goes beyond romance." That's the tagline for Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde's first feature film, Bella, which earned the People's Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and debuted nationwide in October (and still in theaters across the country). In Bella, Monteverde weaves an unexpected love story through the restless streets of New York City and prepares a sensory feast in the presence of true love's enemies—fear and loneliness.

José (Eduardo Verástegui) is an ex-soccer player working as head chef for his brother Manny (Manny Perez), who owns a Cuban restaurant. Nina (Tammy Blanchard) waits tables at the restaurant, but after she arrives late two days in a row, high-strung Manny fires her as the restaurant's staff looks on. Frustrated by his brother's lack of compassion, José opts to leave the kitchen during rush hour to pursue the humiliated Nina. When José inquires about her lateness, she admits that she is pregnant. Thus begins the journey into two hearts searching for emotional intimacy and understanding.

Presented in a series of flashbacks and one heart-gripping flash-forward, Monteverde's visual storytelling is well paced. José's soccer career was ended by an unforeseen tragedy, and he is compelled to share it piecemeal with Nina. The urgency of the flashbacks contrasts with slower, reflective scenes where José and Nina meander through the city before arriving at the seaside home of José's family. As Nina is introduced to José's father, mother and witty younger brother, it is evident that Nina is witness to emotional security and warmth that is lacking in her life. José is a paragon of what it means to selflessly invest time in the interests of others. By doing so, he quells Nina's fear of the future and heals the gaping wound of his past.

The film isn't just story. It's visual poetics. It is the culmination of language, cinematography and meaning at its highest intensity. Monteverde's direction is forthright (close-ups are a favorite), his execution, unpretentious. He swaps melodrama for intimacy, special effects for the backdrop of modern America. Bella's simplicity isn't easy to categorize or accept. This film that re-defines "love story" was even called "idealistic" by one critic. But maybe he has a point—Monteverde's message is that an imperfect world is made perfect by perfect love. Perfect love is ideal, but not impossible.

The film has been criticized for its setting ("it's not clear it's New York City") and lead character José's resemblance to Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ (or that bearded guy from last summer's Knocked Up). It has also been called "timid," primarily because it doesn't think for you. Instead, it shows the many viewpoints that surround a common situation and asks the viewer to consider all of them. Life is not a single context and film is not a one-dimensional medium. Bella unashamedly addresses the current state of family, Mexican-American relations and human rights. What's really sent some critics reeling (pun intended) is the film's so-called "anti-abortion agenda," but Bella isn't anti-abortion—it's pro-life. That is, pro everything that makes life worth living.