Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Two new animated sci-fi films

So there are two big new animated movies on the horizons that I wanted to talk about today.

the first, and at this point most interesting, is the new one from Pixar and Andrew Stanton (the man behind Finding Nemo). A whole heap of interesting information hit the web today about this film, in the form of an excellent article written and hosted by Jim Hill Media that you can read here. This should be the Pixar film that comes out after Ratatouille. It is called Wall-E and is a sci fi story of love, and self discovery starring this little guy pictured here. This is Wall-E he is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class, and his job is to clean up the garbage heap that the planet has become by the year 2700. Humans have abandoned the planet, opting for the opulence of swank hoverchairs in their orbiting civilization ship. a slew of Wall-E robots have been deployed to clean the human mess on earth, but over generations of neglect and disrepair this single Wall-E unit is all that is left. He is the sole life on the planet, other than his best friend a cockroach, and in him abundant time alone he has become not only self aware, but a bit eccentric. Wall-e collects human artifacts which fascinate him, but the only real information he has on humans comes from a battered old VHS copy of Hello Dolly! Thats right Streisand is in the hizzy... So what do you think happens to Wall-e when a sleek newer model robot land on the planet... well thats where things get interesting. If you want to know a bit more of the plotline, go to the article and read away. It's pretty interesting stuff. I'm not out to spoil anything though, I just wanted to give you the set-up. A few... weird things to note. Not all of the film will be in CG. As far as I understand it Hello Dolly is really Hello Dolly, and as the article notes Fred Willard has signed on to play the head of the company that makes Wall-E. Are you ready for Pixar animated toons meeting face to face with Fred Willard? I'm not sure I am. Also this sounds like it's leading to a very strongly environmental message. Is that going to play well with everyone? And finally, apparently as the script is set now there is virtually no dialogue in the entire film. Can kids these days handle an effectively silent films? I don't know.... In my opinion Pixar has always come through with great films, so I definitely won't say anything negative at this stage, but this sounds like a very interesting, very significant departure from the standard kiddie fare. We'll have to keep an eye on this.

The other film, sounds interesting too, but there isn't anywhere near as much info on it yet. According to Comingsoon.net it's a little picture being made by Handmade Films, and the Spanish animation house llion called Planet One. In it we find the titular Planet One, an alien world populated by antenna sporting eight fingered humanoids. The planet for the most part resembles 1950s American suburbia. So into this mix a human astronaut falls. Invasion rumors spread, and hilarity (presumably) ensures. It sounds to me like it could be a funny little film. Kind of like Starman, or Iron Giant. Then again it'll probably be more along the lines of Hoodwinked or Doogal. We'll see what becomes of this one too.

I've got to run, but I wanted to post this. I'll come back later and format any spelling errors or links etc. Gotta run, GoKarting. woohoo!!!

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