Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
The most impressive thing about WALL·E is a background detail: Roger Deakins, director of photography for No Country for Old Men and Jarhead amongst many others, was hired as a visual consultant.
There was a time we were impressed by simple Gouraud shading; now we're paying for expertise in the subtleties of virtual light.
It shows. The first quarter of the film takes place on a dystopian future-Earth, piled with garbage and ravaged by dust and electrical storms. It's magnificent: our eponymous robot hero goes about his cleanup duties, compacting trash into cubes and building with them massive ziggurats.
It all falls apart once WALL·E flees the Earth with a flying iPod -- the usual excesses of hope, bah humbug -- but still beautiful, in places, and far more thoughtful than expected of Disney. The best science fiction movie to come out of Hollywood in some time.