WALL E

Bravo, Pixar. Bravo.

I have long been a fan of Pixar movies. They know how to tell a good story, and with style.

With that in mind, I must say that WALL E is Pixar's best movie yet.

The creators have managed to look back on the history of cinema and look forward to the future of consumerism and affluence in popular culture - in a kid's movie.

The movie starts with a bleak look at the future of earth. The camera flies over a city overrun with garbage, piles of compacted trash reaching higher than the surrounding skyscrapers, and every thing in sight is produced by the same conglomerate - "Buy N Large". This wretched landscape stands in very stark contrast to the cheerful music playing behind it. Our hero, a trash compacting robot with a pet cockroach, triggers adds as he walks by, and we discover through fading holographic videos that humanity left earth because we had so completely poisoned it.

So it goes that WALL E works day in and day out to clean up, saving little pieces of trash - a spork here, a light bulb there. But here's where Pixar shows their true brilliance. This movie is not just an environmentalist critique of our culture. WALL E is Charlie Chaplin. NPR had this to say in their review:

There's actually a nice parallel between this largely silent film and Chaplin's first sound film, Modern Times. In that one, the silent clown used the soundtrack mostly for music and effects, not for speech, just as Pixar does here. Chaplin only let you hear a human voice a couple of times, and only on some sort of mechanical contraption — say a closed-circuit TV screen — to emphasize its artificiality. It was his way of saying to the sound world, "OK, everybody's doing this talking thing now, but look how much more expressive our silent world is."

Humans are left out, except as videos, until nearly halfway through the movie. When humans do appear, they are lazy and overweight. It seems that life in space is everything it promised to be - with hover chairs, nobody moves; with video screens built into these chairs, nobody has face-to-face conversations anymore; having never seen the earth, nobody knows what "dirt" is. The film-makers took The Jetsons and decided to show what life would really be like in a world where nothing was more than a button away.

On top of the scathing critique of consumerist culture, WALL E is full of allusions to other movies. Of course, Charlie Chaplin is the inspiration for WALL E, but he looks an awful lot like Number 5 from Short Circuit. Auto, the ship's autopilot, is H.A.L. 9000 (Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) - right down to the glowing red dot. And continuing the ode to 2001, Johann Strauss's "On der schoenen blauen Donau" and Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" both recieve their moments of glory in the film. Life on board the ship is somewhere between The Jetsons and Star Trek. Even the animated short (a Pixar tradition) gives a wink and a nod; the entirety of Presto is reminiscient of Bugs Bunny and a Merrie Melodies short, though Presto's magic hat resembles more closely that of the sorcerer from Fantasia.

As the credits role, we are treated to the evolution of art - from cave paintings to post-impressionist, van Gogh-esque scenes, the credits continue to show Pixar's brilliance and finish the story; the credits are a well-animated post script in a culture that walks out as soon as the credits roll.

One of the more interesting aspects is the importance of touch in this movie. WALL E spends most of the movie trying to hold EVE's hand. The humans afloat in space have become so dependent on technology that they no longer even converse face-to-face. As such, two humans (one voiced by Pixar's favorite actor, Cliff the Mailman) begin a relationship at first touch, and later rediscover the ship's pool and the joy of splashing water.

WALL E also serves as what one of my professors would call a "chaos monster". For the humans of the film, everything seems to be going fine. Not that things are fine, but nobody realizes how completely screwy things have become. Enter WALL E, who upsets the status quo - first, with the other robots, and then with the humans. As he roams the ship, everywhere he goes becomes a site of change. Like the children in Narnia, WALL E's presence disturbs those around him, awakening them from the trance-like assistance that has become life.

Pixar has a long tradition of telling stores with the lessons that need to be told - rites of passage, acceptance of yourself and others, courage, and the importance of remembering your past (seriously, who didn't get that from watching Toy Story 2?). With WALL E, Pixar has set a new standard for not only artistry, but themes in children's movies. Hopefully, other production companies will follow this shining example.

Rock on.

Monday Graph Jam #2 - Ruby Tuesday

Today's post doesn't have anything to do with the Rolling Stones. Or the restaurant. I was trying to make a pun about being a day late. Kind of like a bad action movie title. I know, I'm a dork.

Anyway, on to the graphs.
And for fans of Stuff Christians Like, don't be this guy.

Rock on.

*Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own Grap Jam. I didn't make the graphs. Or the movies mentioned in the graphs. Nor do I write the SCL blog. I'm not "that dude", Tyler Durden, or Steve McRoskey. I'm not Keyser Soze either, but that's a different story.

"Master and Commander" and Evoloution

It's summer. It's time to sit around and watch movies.

Today's showing was Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

For those who haven't seen this movie, it is, in no uncertain terms, amazing. Good music, good acting, and 19th century naval warfare. What's not to like?

In the movie, the ship's doctor, Stephen Maturin (played by Paul Bettany), is also a naturalist. At one point in the movie, he, in a nod to Charles Darwin, explores the Galapagos Islands and observes the evolutionary traits of the fauna. He explains these traits to one of the young officers on the ship, who asks, "Did God make them change?"

His answer sums up my view on evolution.

"Does God make them change? Yes, certainly. But do they also change themselves? Now that is a question, isn't it?"

Evolutionary theory does not negate God, nor does God negate evolution. The sooner both sides can learn this, the better off academia and the Church will be.

Rock on.
Edit: 24 November 2008

The Golden Compass

Let me start by saying that I defended this movie against cries that it is inherently evil. And though I am sorely disappointed in the movie on several accounts (read on), I will still defend it against calls for mass boycotts. My argument was and is that it would be nice for youth groups to stop showing movies like The Sixth Sense and following the Reel to Real discussion guide (no offense to the fine folks at R2R). Instead, a youth group could watch this movie and discuss the deeper philosophical issues. It would not only challenge one's faith (there is a disturbing lack of challenge in today's Christianity - we ignore verses that disturb us and pretend as if we don't have doubts) but also require students to think more about the underlying themes in movies.

And The Golden Compass certainly does challenge the mindset of "I'll just let the Church tell me what to think." But that's all it does. It takes aim at Christianity (particularly Catholicism) and accuses the Church of trying to control the thoughts of its followers through violence and oppression, preventing free thought from taking root. And yes, the Church has historically done this. One only need study the history of the Protestant Reformation to see this. And yes, people within Christianity today are still trying to oppress free thought. The evolution "debate"/panties-in-a-twist provides enough evidence of this (I, for one, am tired of being thought of as un-Christian for my cosmological views). But certainly this is not all of Christianity. My friends and I hold many differing beliefs and embrace these differences as learning opportunities. One of my best friends is a very true agnostic. I have great conversations with atheists. And I certainly am not trying to oppress anyone's right to free thought.

The author, Phillip Pullman, accuses CS Lewis of being "evil" in The Chronicles of Narnia. Because, as we all know, self-sacrifice (a'la Aslan) is evil. Instead, Pullman includes a fight between bears competing for a kingdom in what can only be described as the most Machiavelli-Nietzsche inspired scene in movie history. This is, after all, a world where only the strong willed and free thinkers can survive (it is, of course, Nietzsche's great irony that the Church which he hates so much is such a perfect example of this).

Everybody knows that CS Lewis, as a professor of Medieval literature, was a fan of allegory. Accordingly, the Narnia series is written in such a style. The self-sacrifice of Aslan has quite a few meanings, most notably the death and resurrection of Jesus, but can also be compared to the United Kingdom's role in World War II (the novel is set during the time, and it could be argued that Aslan/UK died to save the world from the forces of the White Witch/Germany). That's the wonderful thing about allegory - it has many, many different levels at which it can be explored. Pullman's series is a very thinly-veiled allegory. At the end of the movie, you find yourself saying, "We get it. The Church is bad." All of this is with an allegedly-softened anti-religious message. Not to mention the disturbing speech on how the Church needs to be violently destroyed.

I am not here to get into a discussion about whether or not God exists, or even whether or not we can prove God's existence. But let me say this: The past abuses of the Church, and religions in general, is not a valid argument against the existence of a divine being. Any rational believer will readily admit (and apologize) for the past abuses committed in the name of God. The Crusades, the Inquisition, al Qaeda, the Aryan Nation, witch hunts, and religious oppression (to name a very small fraction of the iniquities of the religious) are evidence that man is corrupt. Not that God cannot exist. Using this same logic, we could argue that democracy and caring for the poor are horrible things that should not be supported. All we need to do is to look at the French Revolution and Soviet Communism.

An oddity in this film is that the ultimate purpose of the Church's actions and attempts to keep people from thinking for themselves is to keep them from sinning (an odd take on Original Sin is presented). The ultimate message, then, is that there is no sin. Morality, then, is completely relativet. Even taking God out of a consideration on ethics, this is a bad idea. While neither Kant nor John Stuart Mill got it right (they really need each other), they came a lot closer to a sustainable code of ethics than Nietzsche ever did.

Philosophical differences aside, the movie was tawdry and predictable. Out side of the scenes featuring the college, the movie is a display of why computers will eventually replace decent filming locations (think Star Wars prequels on a smaller scale). Many of the twists were obvious (but then again, maybe I just watch too many movies). I was actually very disappointed in most of the performances. James Bon...erm, Daniel Craig did a decent job, but his role is comparatively small. I found myself annoyed by Nicole Kidman and her monkey (yes, Nicole Kidman and a monkey - by all accounts, this should be a good thing, but it wasn't). Ian McKellan's bear character was over-done - not by much, but enough to make the character annoying. And will somebody stop casting Christopher Lee as the wise, corrupt bad guy? Yes, he's good at it. But we already know that. Let's put him in a different role where his true talent can shine through.

I really hope that this is just a bad movie adaption. Maybe the books have more depth. I'm going to read them - I want to know how you can make killing God accessible to children, I really do. But if the movie's a faithful adaption, I'm setting myself up for disappointment.

Rock on.