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nano_mooseOh god I am physically ill. It seems to be a head cold, with accompanying sore throat. I hate sore throats, because they always start off as this horrible itch at the back of my throat, maddeningly impossible to eradicate, and I now have other symptoms like runny nose and watery eyes - in short, nnrrrrrgh, whine, I want ice cream and a hug so I can infect others with my misery.
Seeing doctor on Monday. Believe it or not, that is unrelated to feelings of nnrrrrrgh.
Anyways, to cheer myself up I am going to talk about Wall-E. At least part of my rage at its late distribution in Australia is because I missed all the reaction posts, so if anyone knows where I can find any interesting discussion, be awesome and point me toward it. Or if you've seen it yourself, feel free to discuss in comments. My traitorous siblings are unwilling to discuss IRL. (...or, I guess, stand still and be discussed at by me. I'm not obsessed! What makes you think I'm obsessed?)
Wall-E is a beautiful movie.
I mean that literally. Even desolate Earth is impressive, strangely lovely; golden air, trash like autumn leaves, spectacular sunsets. The only things that make it ugly are the knowledge of what it truly is and Wall-E, because it's a setting that such a charming character definitely doesn't deserve to be trapped in, all alone, for seven hundred years. He endures it well. Any human would be driven mad in short order, but Wall-E is a robot. He doesn't know how to give up. He has his treasures. But he's still alone.
You know, I'm not much a fan of romance - or at least not the traditional kind. I don't even much like it when non-traditional romances still have traditional gender roles - one the 'boy' and one the 'girl', one strong and one weak, respectively. But I love Wall-E and EVE and their romance, especially since EVE, physically powerful with a hair-trigger temper, determined but easily frustrated, is in fact the feminine character, whilst gentle and curious Wall-E (though his determination is easily as great, and he is very patient) is the male. I love that EVE carries Wall-E, that she saves him, that she awakens him with a kiss. I love that they were both vital to the return to Earth. I love that when Wall-E 'dies', the way we can tell he's alive again is because he loves. It's a bit sad that I believe these little 'bots and their love more than I've believed any five given superhero love interests in the past eight years. Come on, Hollywood, why can't you get it this right with humans?
So, I've been thinking about Wall-E's character design and how awesome it is. It's a lot more anthropomorphic than it seems at first glance - he is roughly human shaped, with his head and torso and arms and hands and even 'feet'. It's just a little squashed, compacted, which makes him look like a child. His eyes and hands and treads are fairly large in proportion with the rest of his body - that's a very 'young'-looking method of design (one of my favourite moments of acting is when he rushes into the escape pod, sits down on the seat, and holds the very tips of his treads like an excited kid would hold his toes). His expressions remind me a little of the Iron Giant. Brad Bird didn't want to have the malleable faceplates of the Transformers, so they gave him all sorts of features to approximate expressions without actually deforming the metal. Like the Giant, Wall-E has shutters for his eyes like eyelids; by raising or lowering the upper or lower 'lids', the animators can make him wonderfully expressive without, technically, giving him a face. Wall-E doesn't have a mouth, so he smiles and frowns with his eyes. Jebus, I can only imagine the amount of work that went into that.
And they actually show you how hard it was to make him that cute, that lively, when they take it all away and make him back into a robot. Show-offs.
It was great that the humans genuinely weren't stupid or malevolent at all, they were just misguided, and it didn't take much to wake them up. Even AUTO was only following his directive, and it wasn't even a very well-programmed one (though, I couldn't stop myself from internally screaming "YOU MOTHERFUCKER" when he zapped Wall-E). And it was so wonderful how every character Wall-E met perked up and woke up and learned something, like the Captain asking for the definition of earth or the typing bot waving crazily. That was so heartening.
Evidence continues to lead me to the conclusion that Thomas Newman is a flipping genius. In line with that conclusion, here are some of his tracks from Wall-E. (I sense here similarities with the Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack. I don't know if that’s because it's his style or because of the use of strings, but it's neat.)
2815 A.D.
This is probably best played directly after Put On Your Sunday Clothes - it conveys the contrast between the stupefyingly cheery song (with curious, bubbly little Wall-E) and the landscape, utterly desolate (and Wall-E, completely alone). It does get a little hopeful toward the end, maybe because Wall-E himself can't be unhopeful.
Wall-E
Oh, I love this. It makes me smile almost as much as the character himself does. It seems my affection for total dorks holds up even when the dork in question is a malfunctioning robot who doesn't even technically have a face, possibly because of his capacity for wonder.
Bubble Wrap
Pop! It's great how even robots from eight hundred years in the future see the appeal of bubble wrap.
72 Degrees and Sunny
Nothing will ever make me not love whimsical strings, especially whimsical strings by Thomas Newman. Deedly deedly deedly -
Define Dancing
Definitely my favourite scene in the movie - it was just so sweet, and so beautiful, and it hit all of my buttons in regards to gender role-reversal without getting obvious or silly. God, how could anyone hate this movie? It has dancing robots!
Desperate EVE
It sures sounds like it, doesn't it?
Static
I can't even imagine how ridiculously traumatizing the scene this track accompanied must have been for the little kids watching, considering it had me crying with horror when I knew perfectly well they'd fix it somehow. There are people saying it would have been better if they'd left it like that. I can only conclude that these are not actually people, but demons walking among us to feed upon human despair.
Down To Earth
Gospel choir! Orchestra! Peter Gabriel! Animated credits!
Test only, delete in twenty four hours, yeah? Right. If anyone wants to request additional tracks, feel free!
EDIT: Oh, and I'm downgrading my hiatus to a semi-hiatus! I'll still be commenting a lot less than usual (is it possible to post a negative number of comments? Huh) but I have a lot of half-typed posts about things I'll be putting up at irregular intervals. Hope everything is cool with you guys. ♥
Seeing doctor on Monday. Believe it or not, that is unrelated to feelings of nnrrrrrgh.
Anyways, to cheer myself up I am going to talk about Wall-E. At least part of my rage at its late distribution in Australia is because I missed all the reaction posts, so if anyone knows where I can find any interesting discussion, be awesome and point me toward it. Or if you've seen it yourself, feel free to discuss in comments. My traitorous siblings are unwilling to discuss IRL. (...or, I guess, stand still and be discussed at by me. I'm not obsessed! What makes you think I'm obsessed?)
Wall-E is a beautiful movie.
I mean that literally. Even desolate Earth is impressive, strangely lovely; golden air, trash like autumn leaves, spectacular sunsets. The only things that make it ugly are the knowledge of what it truly is and Wall-E, because it's a setting that such a charming character definitely doesn't deserve to be trapped in, all alone, for seven hundred years. He endures it well. Any human would be driven mad in short order, but Wall-E is a robot. He doesn't know how to give up. He has his treasures. But he's still alone.
You know, I'm not much a fan of romance - or at least not the traditional kind. I don't even much like it when non-traditional romances still have traditional gender roles - one the 'boy' and one the 'girl', one strong and one weak, respectively. But I love Wall-E and EVE and their romance, especially since EVE, physically powerful with a hair-trigger temper, determined but easily frustrated, is in fact the feminine character, whilst gentle and curious Wall-E (though his determination is easily as great, and he is very patient) is the male. I love that EVE carries Wall-E, that she saves him, that she awakens him with a kiss. I love that they were both vital to the return to Earth. I love that when Wall-E 'dies', the way we can tell he's alive again is because he loves. It's a bit sad that I believe these little 'bots and their love more than I've believed any five given superhero love interests in the past eight years. Come on, Hollywood, why can't you get it this right with humans?
So, I've been thinking about Wall-E's character design and how awesome it is. It's a lot more anthropomorphic than it seems at first glance - he is roughly human shaped, with his head and torso and arms and hands and even 'feet'. It's just a little squashed, compacted, which makes him look like a child. His eyes and hands and treads are fairly large in proportion with the rest of his body - that's a very 'young'-looking method of design (one of my favourite moments of acting is when he rushes into the escape pod, sits down on the seat, and holds the very tips of his treads like an excited kid would hold his toes). His expressions remind me a little of the Iron Giant. Brad Bird didn't want to have the malleable faceplates of the Transformers, so they gave him all sorts of features to approximate expressions without actually deforming the metal. Like the Giant, Wall-E has shutters for his eyes like eyelids; by raising or lowering the upper or lower 'lids', the animators can make him wonderfully expressive without, technically, giving him a face. Wall-E doesn't have a mouth, so he smiles and frowns with his eyes. Jebus, I can only imagine the amount of work that went into that.
And they actually show you how hard it was to make him that cute, that lively, when they take it all away and make him back into a robot. Show-offs.
It was great that the humans genuinely weren't stupid or malevolent at all, they were just misguided, and it didn't take much to wake them up. Even AUTO was only following his directive, and it wasn't even a very well-programmed one (though, I couldn't stop myself from internally screaming "YOU MOTHERFUCKER" when he zapped Wall-E). And it was so wonderful how every character Wall-E met perked up and woke up and learned something, like the Captain asking for the definition of earth or the typing bot waving crazily. That was so heartening.
Evidence continues to lead me to the conclusion that Thomas Newman is a flipping genius. In line with that conclusion, here are some of his tracks from Wall-E. (I sense here similarities with the Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack. I don't know if that’s because it's his style or because of the use of strings, but it's neat.)
2815 A.D.
This is probably best played directly after Put On Your Sunday Clothes - it conveys the contrast between the stupefyingly cheery song (with curious, bubbly little Wall-E) and the landscape, utterly desolate (and Wall-E, completely alone). It does get a little hopeful toward the end, maybe because Wall-E himself can't be unhopeful.
Wall-E
Oh, I love this. It makes me smile almost as much as the character himself does. It seems my affection for total dorks holds up even when the dork in question is a malfunctioning robot who doesn't even technically have a face, possibly because of his capacity for wonder.
Bubble Wrap
Pop! It's great how even robots from eight hundred years in the future see the appeal of bubble wrap.
72 Degrees and Sunny
Nothing will ever make me not love whimsical strings, especially whimsical strings by Thomas Newman. Deedly deedly deedly -
Define Dancing
Definitely my favourite scene in the movie - it was just so sweet, and so beautiful, and it hit all of my buttons in regards to gender role-reversal without getting obvious or silly. God, how could anyone hate this movie? It has dancing robots!
Desperate EVE
It sures sounds like it, doesn't it?
Static
I can't even imagine how ridiculously traumatizing the scene this track accompanied must have been for the little kids watching, considering it had me crying with horror when I knew perfectly well they'd fix it somehow. There are people saying it would have been better if they'd left it like that. I can only conclude that these are not actually people, but demons walking among us to feed upon human despair.
Down To Earth
Gospel choir! Orchestra! Peter Gabriel! Animated credits!
Test only, delete in twenty four hours, yeah? Right. If anyone wants to request additional tracks, feel free!
EDIT: Oh, and I'm downgrading my hiatus to a semi-hiatus! I'll still be commenting a lot less than usual (is it possible to post a negative number of comments? Huh) but I have a lot of half-typed posts about things I'll be putting up at irregular intervals. Hope everything is cool with you guys. ♥
