Wall-E, Intrepid Trash Collector

Once again, it would seem that Pixar has created what may be the best movie of the year, in any genre. At the very least, it should rank as the best animated flick of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, rectify that situation immediately, and take your grandmother and grandson with you.

WARNING: There are some spoilers below. Don’t continue reading if you haven’t seen it yet. Although this movie lends itself to multiple viewings, you should see it first without any expectations. I guarantee that you will end up laughing and crying at the same time, and your $10 will have been well spent.

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First off, this really is a science fiction movie. It does exactly what sf should do: imagine the continuation of some current trends and looks at the results. It starts with the concept that humans have made a real trash-heap out of the Earth, so bad that neither humans nor anything else can live there anymore. What’s left of humanity has exited, stage-left, in giant luxury space-ships, to await the time that the clean-up robots they’ve left behind will have finished cleaning up the place. Wall-E is one such robot, the last one left that’s still operational, and his daily work is picking up all the trash laying around, compacting it into cubes, and stacking up the cubes - which by the time this movie opens form skyscrapers. The picture that is painted is a depressing one, not just because we can see just how badly humans have treated their home world, but because we can see just how much is still left to do, with only one little robot there to accomplish the task. Not a standard start for what is in essence a romantic comedy.

The comedy of this movie is not forced, nor is it a parody playing on other sf films or TV series, as Galaxy Quest does. Instead it creates its own environment, and the comedy derives from the bitter-sweet circumstances of a very lonely Wall-E. The only other living thing he has as a companion is a cockroach (which does play on some long-ago statements that such insects would be the last survivors of a world catastrophe). His off-time is spent viewing old romantic movies and collecting and studying various interesting bits of trash, such as a Rubick’s cube. Wall-E is beat up, rusty, getting by by scavenging spare parts from other, now dysfunctional, Wall-Es - a Charlie Chaplin figure down on his luck. As John Scalzi analyzes, this is very unusual for a sf movie. So the attraction he feels for Eva, a sleek, modern robot sent back to Earth by what’s left of humanity to determine if conditions have improved enough to return, is immediate and very understandable.

The plot continues to unfold in true science fiction fashion, as we see what has become of humanity after seven hundred years of floating around in their luxury space-ship, with every need instantly gratified by ubiquitous servant robots. And this is done without long voice-overs (in fact, there is very little real dialog in the entire movie), but rather with some very effective visuals that explain instantly how things got to be the way they are today. Even better, the science is real. There is one sequence where Wall-E jets around in space by using the propulsive action of disinfectant spray bottle - a sequence that, while not having the majesty of the shuttle docking to a space station of 2001: A Space Odyssey, shows the consequences Newton’s third law in an amusing, beautiful, and effective manner.

It’s very rare to find Hollywood script writers who understand what science fiction is all about, and even rarer for them to able to combine such ideas with comedy and romance without making a mess of things. This one does it. If this doesn’t take at least the Hugo for best movie, and several Oscars, something is very wrong.

2008 Hugo Nominations

The nominations are now officially out (somewhat earlier than planned due to someone posting them on the net before they were supposed to). Of greatest interest to me, as usual, are the nominations for best novel. Once again, there are no women represented in this category, although there are several in the other categories. There will probably be some more flack about this, which I believe is really irrelevant (see my post on the 2007 nominations  The Place of Women in SF ). Of far more importance is just what the quality level is of those that are nominated. I’m happy to say that of those I’ve read so far (Scalzi’s Last Colony, Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and Stross’s Halting State), the quality level is quite high. So far, Chabon’s work has my vote, as a truly original alternative history work with some good characterization and a cultural outlook not often seen in sf, closely followed by Scalzi’s work. Stross’s work is not quite to my taste, though still original and well written, with perhaps a little too much emphasis on heavy-duty computing possibilities. So far, anyway, of what I’ve read, all deserve to be on this nomination list (unlike some years where I’ve really wondered just how the heck that particular work made the list). I’ll report later when I’ve had a chance to read the other two nominees.

Also of interest is the fact that Mr. Scalzi, for the second year in row, has been nominated as Best Fan Writer. I expect more flack about this, seeing that some people don’t think professional writers should be eligible for this category, but given the tremendous amount of writing he does over on his blog about all kinds of subjects relating to the sf field and his constant promotion of newer writers and new good works within the field, to my mind at least he certainly is filling the function good ‘fan’ writers are supposed to.

Also of interest is the nomination in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category of Battlestar Galactica’s “Razor” episode. As this is one of the better episodes in a series that has had consistently high quality, it certainly has my vote. In the Long Form category, Niel Gaiman’s Stardust is the best as far as I’m concerned. I was disappointed in the Golden Compass, and the obligatory Harry Potter entry was just plain poor.

Overall, though, it looks like it was a good year for quality sf.

More Hollywood, Please

Hollywood needs to make a lot more movies. To which you say “I’m already drowning in them, I can’t keep up!” And if you just look at the total number of movies that are made, you’d probably be right.

But consider this: I typically watch about two movies a week on TV (I watch very little else except House). Over a year’s time, that adds up to a hundred flicks. Does Hollywood make that many in a year? Sure. But not the kind I like. I want good, well acted movies, that have a plot line that’s at least a little different from the last 50 they made in that particular genre, have decent production values, intelligent dialogue, characters I can relate to, no obvious factual boners, and in a genre that I like (i.e, I almost never watch what passes for ‘horror’ movies today, ditto most of the mindless comedies). Given the number of genres (Western, science fiction, romance, comedy, mystery, horror, drama, historical, animated, etc.) the number made in any one genre is not that great. Applying Sturgeon’s law (90% of everything is crap) to those that do fall within genres I will watch, and the number of new movies made in a year that I’ll will watch with satisfaction is perhaps 10. Clearly this leaves a large gap, which up to now I’ve had to fill with watching the better movies of the past, sometimes multiple times. This situation can’t continue forever - eventually (like now!) I’ll run out of decent older movies to watch. Worse, all the TV stations that specialize in movies seem to think that I want to watch the same movie 27 times in one month before they will deign to put a new movie into the lineup, which often leaves me with absolutely nothing to watch on a particular night (Nope, seen that one already; nope, that’s one’s terrible; nope, that one’s in a genre I don’t watch as it doesn’t interest me; etc, etc, etc.) As I hate commercials interrupting a movie, this limits my choices even more to those channels that show movies without them.

Now I’m probably fairly typical in terms of my total movie consumption, though other people will probably prefer movies I won’t touch - which is fine, everyone has their own tastes. Hollywood should be aware that there is a demand which they are not satisfying, and which should translate into more profits for them. But there’s a problem. Say they actually produced 10 times as many movies in a year than they do today (assuming they could find enough actors, writers, producers, cameramen, stuntmen, grips and what have you), how are they going to make money off of them? Right now, most movies are expected to at least come close to making back the costs at the first-run movie theater, with (hopefully) some chance at real profits from overseas and DVD sales. This requires enough theater screens to actually show all these movies, and an audience willing to shell out 10+ dollars for every movie they see in the theater. I don’t think these exist. Some other means of distribution needs to be found that pays real dollars to the studios. Pay-per-View and Video-on-Demand has started to fill some of this, but right now this is pretty much limited to movies that have just finished their theater run. Why not open up their entire catalogue to the stay-at-home movie watcher? Or for that matter, put the catalogue on the internet, and let people download what they want without clogging up the limited bandwidth available to satellites and cable networks (or course, this would then clog up the internet pipes - let’s build that high speed pathway out to the final home connection!). If they can get enough people to go the Pay-per-View route, they can probably make more money than in first-run movie theaters and still keep the price down to something the average viewer can afford (like $3-4 per new movie, maybe $2-3 per for older ones).

Of course, one of the other options Hollywood could choose is to quite making nine bad movies out of ten, which would give them more than enough material to satisfy the movie demand. But that will never happen.

The Ratty State of the Film Industry

Once again, I find myself impressed by what Pixar is doing. Their latest, Ratatouille, is a) great fun for everyone in the family b) has excellent graphics c) has some emotional depth and maturity to the story line, which the kids might miss some aspects of, but the adults watching can certainly relate to. Yes, there are places where they went for the slapstick sight gags, but there are just as many satiric bites with some real meat. Perhaps most entrancing, to me anyway, was the portrait of the gourmet food critic, Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), as it was so absolutely spot on in depicting both the worst and best aspects of that profession, along with some very snide commentary on the ‘herd’ instinct and the inordinate influence some authority figures have.

More and more, I find the most original and entertaining movies to be the animated ones. It seems like Hollywood has forgotten how to be original in its live-action movies; all I seem to see are yet more cops chasing psychotics, ‘comedies’ using 100 year old gag lines suitable only for three year-old mentalities, romances totally predictable from the opening minute of the film, and the continuing series of movies with ‘III’ or even ‘IV’ in their titles (always a bad idea, as the latest Pirates of Caribbean shows). Their few attempts at SF are usually so bad that no self-respecting fan of the genre can force themselves to watch them, and for those works based on written works by SF grand-masters, often the fans should be out there forming a picket line to prevent anyone from seeing the travesty Hollywood has made of the work. About the only thing they’ve done right recently is make some at least watchable versions of various comic-book heroes.

I suppose I can’t have everything. More Pixar, please!

Watching the Best

I watched the AFI’s presentation of the 100 all-time best films the other night. This was the latest update to their list (for the complete list, see here), chosen from 400 nominated films, and specifically done to update the list to include those films that had been made since the last time they did this ten years ago. Probably to no one’s surprise, Citizen Kane held on to the top spot. This film has been recognized again and again as perhaps the premier embodiment of what film-making is all about - but for me, anyway, I really don’t think it’s all that great. There are other films I think are better, that have more to say to today’s audiences than a film that’s a not-so-subtle portrayal of William Randolf Hearst, who after all made his mark almost a century ago.

Overall, however, the list does recognize most of what I consider the best of Hollywood. Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, City Lights, Casablanca, The Grapes of Wrath (a rare case of translating a great book into a great movie), and this time around even Lord of the Rings, almost certainly the best fantasy movie ever made, managed to make the list. There are others I think are rated too highly, most notably The Godfather (it’s good, but #2?). And there are some that didn’t make the list that I think should have: Cool Hand Luke, Fiddler on the Roof, Becket, The Ten Commandments, and The Hustler. But what is there is a pretty good selection.

But beyond just what movies made the list, the presentation the other night was excellent, with Morgan Freeman doing the narration, clips from all 100 movies, and almost always with some commentary by at least one of the actors/directors of said movie that helped define just what it was about that particular movie that was deserving of such recognition. The opening montage, consisting of very short clips from a large number of these movies, showed me just how great an impression these movies had made on me, as I could identify almost all of them from those brief 3-4 second excerpts.

Hollywood produces a tremendous amount of dreck, year in and year out. But every once in a while, there is something produced that deserves the label art, something that becomes part of our cultural heritage, and leaves an indelible mark on its audience.

How to Feel Good

It would appear that we not only have happy penguins, we have a happy customer - me. I saw Happy Feet last Friday, and I was impressed with its good story line, excellent music choices, a very nice visual portrayal of not just Emperor penguins but also a couple of other species, and just how well some of the actors characters became the on-screen persona (Robin Williams’ Ramon role is near perfect). I did think the environmental message was played a little heavy, and the portrayed ’solution’ came about much too easily and was too simple, but it really didn’t interfere with the sheer entertainment factor this movie has. As is typical for these types of animated movies these days, some of the jokes are really meant for the adults watching, and will fly over the heads of the youngsters - which is just fine with me. People younger than about 30 may also not catch some of the musical references, which for me anyway added a lot to this movie.

So go see it, and feel good for the rest of the day.

Penguins Conquer!

What’s with all the penguins lately? First we had a penguin logo for a certain flavor of computer operating system. Then came March of the Penguins (recommended! Darn few documentaries get this level of viewership, and this presents a view with as many harsh moments as those “Ahhh…” ones). Now we have Happy Feet (which I do plan on seeing this Friday) and Surf’s Up. Even Amazon tried to get into the game, adding a little penguin figure to their pages - although it disappeared today while they are trying to fix some software bugs.

I guess, like everything else, once someone starts something, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. At least this fad is a warm and fuzzy one.

It also points up something else that’s been happening in the movies lately: the large number of animated features that have been released in the last few years, only a few of which have been Disney flicks. From Flushed Away (also recommended) and Over the Hedge to the excellent Chicken Run  and Ice Age, each one has seemed to push the limits of just what is possible in the world of animation. And that’s probably a good portion of why animation is suddenly hot again, after a long dry spell. Computation power + better software has led to the ability to deliver this type of film with much better graphics while still controlling the cost to something that is reasonable. As long as they can couple this with good, original stories, I think this trend will continue. The danger is if Hollywood, seeing the success of some of these movies, decides to make effective clones, without looking for good, original stories. Because nothing will kill this faster, regardless of how good the graphics are.

When SF is as Real as Tomorrow’s Headlines

While I’m in the mood to plug things, I suppose I should mention Battlestar Galactica. Now the original show with Lorne Greene back in the sixties wasn’t terrible, but neither was it great, and its fan base was too small to keep it on the air when the inevitable budget axe fell, unlike a certain other SF series of the same period. In its reincarnation, though, what we have is a show that goes to places the original wouldn’t have dared go: the morality of genocide (last night’s episode), inter-species sexual relations, the rationality (or not) of religion, the validity of torture during war time (sound familiar?), discourse on the best and worst of political campaigns - this list keeps getting longer. All rounded out with characters who, while often strange, are also immediately recognizable as real people, with anywhere from stoics and martyrs to cowards and schizophrenics occupying the stage.

This series is dark and often somewhat depressing, but it has an edginess and relevance that Star Trek never quite got (and that Star Wars never even thought about). While its special effects are good, they are not the centerpoint of this drama, a welcome change from all too many Hollywood attempts at what it thinks is science fiction, but rather the story always remains uppermost.

I just hope the writers and actors can continue to maintain the very high level of brilliance that has graced this series so far.

2006 Hugo Awards

Ok, the list of winners was posted last night. Unfortunately, my choice of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War didn’t win, but he did manage to snag the John W. Campbell award for best new writer in his first year of eligibilty. For the novel category, the final results look like this:

Winner: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

2nd: Accelerando by Charles Stross

3rd: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

4th: Learning the World by Ken MacLeod

5th: A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

I’ve also read numbers 4 & 5, but I found I was quite disappointed in both of them, as my expectation level for both these authors is quite high. However, I’ve not read the winner or the runner up yet, and they’ll definitely go on my to-be-read pile.

Over in the Dramatic category, the movie Serenity managed to win out. I caught a piece of this one just last night, and found that it didn’t hold my interest. My choice out of the others nominated was Narnia, but it only managed to come in fourth. Batman Begins took 2nd, which I thought was well done, but does it really belong in the science fiction category? Wallace and Gromit - the Curse of Were Rabbit took third. Amusing but slight. And finally Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire took fifth. IMO, the weakest of the Harry Potter movies so far.

The complete list of winners and nominees for fiction can be found over on my website, HyperPat’s Science Fiction.