Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. First stop: Emeryville, California, USA.
WALL-E (2008)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Screenplay by Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, story by Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter
Produced by Jim Morris
98 minutes
The most visionary film by Pixar Animation Studios to date — reaching for Fantasia, surpassing Tron and marrying science fiction to romance magnificently — is WALL-E. The idea was hatched in 1994 during a session in which animators tossed out ideas for a follow-up to Toy Story. One concept was the last robot on Earth, a machine that was stuck doing the same solitary job for all eternity. Andrew Stanton, who would co-direct and co-write A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo, thought this was the saddest character he’d ever heard of. Animator Pete Docter agreed and the pair would return to the idea in 2002. Using the screenplay for Alien as a reference, Stanton & Docter wrote a script driven by description as opposed to dialogue. At a minimum budget of $180 million, WALL-E became the most expensive project from Emeryville yet. Every cent was bankrolled by Pixar’s parent company Disney.
After development testing got underway in 2005, Stanton and the story crew watched Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton films during lunch, getting into Harold Lloyd’s work for ideas as well. The absence of singing animals in an animated film would be cause for celebration; the absence of dialogue for the first 40 minutes of this picture is a revelation. If the film has a star, it’s sound designer Ben Burtt, who pioneered the field in Star Wars and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and for WALL-E, engineered every click, blip and pop as if was language. Loaded with as much substance as audio/visual splendor, the film offers sophisticated entertainment for anyone in the mood for diversion while illustrating that mankind cannot keep producing garbage (or Wal-Marts) faster than the ecology can sustain them. Sigourney Weaver is nearly imperceptible as the voice of the Axiom’s computer.
In the distant future, mankind has abandoned rising toxicity levels on planet Earth for destinations beyond the stars. Carrying out his program unaware of these changes is WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt), a robot manufactured to scoop up and compact trash. WALL-E brightens his lonely routine by saving the best pieces of refuse — cigarette lighters, utensils, a VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! — to store them in the shipping crate where he powers down at night. One day, an infared dot appears on the ground. WALL-E chases the dot oblivious to a spacecraft that roars down on him. The craft dispatches a sleek anti-gravity probe that begins scanning the ruins. WALL-E becomes instantly smitten. Risking annihilation by her state of the art defenses, WALL-E introduces himself to the probe, whose name is EVE (voiced by Elissa Knight). Taking cover from a windstorm, he invites her to his home.
EVE reveals her directive when WALL-E shows her a seedling he discovered and keeps in an old shoe. EVE confiscates the plant and powers down, but WALL-E tethers her in Christmas lights and takes her on his rounds so they can remain close. When the spacecraft returns for the dormant EVE, WALL-E hitches a ride as it blasts through the cosmos. The spacecraft docks with the Axiom, an interstellar ocean liner where mankind has resided for the last 700 years. Due to disuse atrophy in zero gravity, humans have devolved into blobs that live out their days in a perpetual beach resort, drinking their food in cups and tended to by robots. The seedling WALL-E and EVE return sets in motion a protocol by the ship’s lethargic Captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin) to return to Earth, but the computer who really runs the Axiom takes measures to stop this from happening.
Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 192,598 users: 89% for WALL-E
Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 94 for WALL-E
In the month of October, I uncovered my eyes to take a look at nine recent horror films from eight different countries. I stayed away from France and Japan — two nations with robust genre film operations — because what I’d seen there appeared far too flagrant for my tastes. Another trend I noticed was no big shocker: the U.S. film industry has all the financing in the world, but for a few dollars less, filmmakers elsewhere maintain the creative freedom to produce work that is far more exciting.
As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.
The Substitute (2007)
Directed by Ole Bornedal
Written by Ole Bornedal & Henrik Prip
Produced by Michael Obel
93 minutes
It doesn’t quite hold up under a complete engine diagnostic, but as far as a movie that takes you on a spin around the block, The Substitute is a blast. Filmmaker Ole Borendal shot to international acclaim with his 1994 Danish language thriller Nightwatch, sank to anonymity with a poorly received U.S. remake in 1997 and returned home. One of his ideas was a science fiction comedy geared for kids that would be produced in Denmark. Borendal passed his outline for The Substitute to actor/playwright Henrik Prip, an old friend. Revising Prip’s draft, Borendal took the property to producer Michael Obel, whose Copenhagen based Thura Films had collaborated with Borendal on three prior films. Financed for roughly €3.2 million, the genre bender became a hit in Denmark. Sam Raimi and his Ghost House Pictures are in the process of developing a U.S. remake.
The Substitute could be summed up as Fright Night meets The Simpsons if you wanted to stop at two genre related movies or TV shows riffed on for the film’s mad dash to the finish line. When Borendal slows down to let us savor the intelligence and wit of his schoolroom scenes, his movie soars. The half dozen or so 6th graders in the cast come off like real kids occupying a real classroom, while Paprika Steen is beautifully cast as their nemesis in a role the Danish actress/director devours like candy. The wildly divergent elements — sci-fi, comedy, horror, coming-of-age, melodrama — suggest that appealing to every moviegoer was more of a concern than coherence; the musical cues by composer Marco Beltrami are like Coca Cola shot through a crazy straw. Stylishly shot on a low budget, The Substitute somehow makes those kinks work in its favor.
On a distant planet whose inhabitants know only war, a probe is dispatched to Earth to gather an understanding of love. A silver ball crashes into a chicken farm on the outskirts of Copenhagen and after a luminescent firefly immobilizes the farmer, the critter takes over the body of his snoozing wife. In the city, 12-year-old Carl Osböll (Jonas Wandschneider) copes with the loss of a mother killed in a traffic accident by holding one-sided conversations with her in heaven. Carl’s widowed father Jesper (Ulrich Thomsen) is a sociologist whose latest book deals with the quality that makes human beings unique in the universe: love. At school, Carl receives a new classmate named Rikke (Emma Juel Justesen), who moves in next door with a single mother (Sonja Richter) whom Jesper realizes is a cop only after he disparages the police force.
Alerted by their principal that their teacher has salmonella poisoning, a substitute arrives to a strange chorus of every student’s cell phone ringing at once. Giving the name Ulla Harms (Paprika Steen), Class 6B’s new teacher exhibits whip-like callousness, a mind as vast as a computer and the uncanny ability to read the minds of her pupils. When news of her behavior gets out, concerned parents flock to the school. Their fears are allayed by the appearance of the Education Minister, who vouches for Miss Harms and allows her to win over the adults. Having observed the substitute conjure the government official from a silver ball in her bag, Carl steals several slides from Miss Harms, one of which is a photo that over time is populated by more of Carl’s classmates, all staring up at the sky. Rallying his fellow students, Carl sets out to discover Miss Harm’s plan and stop her.
