This film continues to stir up conversations. Here are a few of the best articles I’ve found recently.
- Jason Calacanis finds two possible inspirations for WALL-E. Yeah, the Short Circuit references has been done… but the other one is a doozy.
- Think Progress has a good laugh at some of the knee-jerk reactionary responses to WALL-E.
- The Vulture Culture blogs takes on Jeffrey Wells and defends WALL-E‘s eventual nomination for Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy.
- The Hartford Courtant reports that Jerry Herman, composer of Hello Dolly, likes that his songs made it into the picture and play such an important role.
By the way, I hearby predict the eventual opening of WALL-E World, a new theme park dedicated to the lonely robot in all of us. Of course it must be closed when the Griswold’s arrive.
Great links! Was especially glad to hear the Hello Dolly composer likes the movie. I need to get a Hello Dolly CD, as the Wall*E soundtrack unfortunately only has fragments of those great tunes.
As regards “Hello Dolly” CDs — while WALL•E used the musical sequences from the 1969 movie; a superior version of the musical is available via the Original Cast recording CD from the 1994 Broadway revival (which I was privileged to see during its national tour . . . at her Seattle hometown nonetheless!) Carol Channing is far more a quintessential and entertaining Dolly Levi than a then-young Barbara Streisand was in the 1969 movie. So as the WALL•E Soundtrack CD already contains the musical numbers the WALL•E film used from the 1969 Hello Dolly movie (excepting the latter chorus portion of “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”), I’d recommend going for a richer overall CD “Hello Dolly” experience with the 1994 Original Cast Revival recording!
So true about #2. Watching WALL-E last night, I couldn’t help think of the line, “Water…? You mean like from the toilet?” LOL. Still, nothing’s original anymore. It really bugs me when people start talking about how one film/book rips off another. Pixar just did it better. If it’s not a copyright violation, I don’t care.
WALL-E is my fave Pixar film to date. I knew Pixar had yet another smash on their hands when I got to see the “rough cut” preview in Portland last November. Yes, I’m bragging (grins). Only the first 20 mins was fully rendered. The rest was a combination of partially-rendered scenes and hand-drawn, animated storyboards. But even from that, I could tell this story was more unique than most Hollywood fare, which boils down to “good vs. evil” in almost every blockbuster.