Go, pay the money, see Wall-E.

Just do that for yourself. It’s as good as “they” say it is. It’s as good as I say it is. I laughed and my friend was laughing so hard she snorted. I didn’t notice if she was crying, but I was damn close - and THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN. TO ME!

It is, as the title of this post states, a charming dystopian vision. I’m not going to tell you anything you wouldn’t learn from a preview or a non-spoiler review - but it’s quite stunning and has been called “subversive.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I suppose if your political leanings are along the conservative pillar, you might.

Picture it: the future. The planet Earth is one big garbage dump - literally. Our rampant consumerism has taken us to a point where we can’t handle our own garbage anymore, so we just up and leave the Earth and decide to come back once the robots have cleaned up. Here’s where we meet Wall-E - Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class. He’s one of the robots left behind to clean up the mess; actually, he’s the last robot left to clean up the mess. The others have run down and he’s working the place alone, save for his pet cockroach-type insect. He’s fascinated by our detritus; watching this little robot investigate our trash with child-like glee (yes, even for a computer-animated robot - he’s quite expressive) cemented a smile on every face in the theatre.

Anyway - he’s going about his business, doing his job, when a spaceship lands near where he’s working. It leaves behind a shiny new robot (who was designed/conceptualized by a designer for Apple - there are many Apple connections and references throughout) named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). Wall-E is enamored of her instantly - but she’s all business and on a mission. From there on, it sort of becomes your traditional “robot meets robot, robot falls in love with robot, robot loses robot, robot must save robot” story.

What kills me is how expressive the animation team was able to make these robots through (not despite) their limited vocabularies/speech (the entire movie is very light on dialogue and EVE’s entire vocabulary, for example, consists of only four words) and through their eyes since they have no other facial features - mouths, ears, noses… it’s all about the eyes. And I’m a sucker for that anyway, so I was basically conquered when I saw the trailer months ago.

Sometimes, working within constraints and limitations (whether actual, artificial or self-imposed) leads to incredibly good results.

Anyway - yes. The love story is sweet. The hero story is noble. The social commentary is wicked. When the people of the future resemble the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man more than actual human beings and the world of the future resembles what Mike Judge presented in Idiocracy, something is being said.

Next up: might see “Mongol” tomorrow… and will definitely be ponying up the extra cash to see “The Dark Knight” in IMAX two weekends from now.

I started watching “Away from Her” and I just have to pause it and pick this up tomorrow or some other night when I’m not feeling all emotional and weird already.

It’s quite lovely, though — just incredibly sad and emotionally penetrating.

Julie Christie is such a beautiful woman… she was lovely back in 1966 in “Fahrenheit 451″, and she’s equally lovely now. But I guess it’s a lot easier to remain good-looking after 40 years when you’re stunning to begin with. May we all be so lucky…

On Friday night, some friends and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We had free movie passes from the last time we went to see a movie together (Iron Man - the projector broke… twice… everyone in the theatre received two free movie passes) and this seemed like a perfect way to use one of them - on a solid eye-candy summer flick.

It did not disappoint in that regard.

It was the usual Indiana Jones treatment but:

WWII : Nazis :: Cold War : Russians

Hat : Indy :: Hair : Mutt

There are other analogies I could strike, but then I’d be revealing the plot. The plot that was a little ridiculous even for an Indiana Jones movie. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did find myself muttering, “WTF???” on several occasions and laughing out loud during moments of suspense because they were just so over-the-top. Suspension of disbelief, yes… but Shia LaBeouf (Mutt - Indy’s greaser son) suddenly going all Tarzan, inspired by some cute little monkey and swinging (his CGI self) across acres of rainforest in about two minutes? Or pulling some storyline and special effects from “The X Files” movie? And just how many dead languages does one need to pull into a movie to make up for 15 years of Indiana Jones-lessness? Answer: a lot. Pictograms, too.

It was a leeettle heavy-handed at times, e.g. “Knowledge was their great treasure!”

Overall, though, enjoyable. I’d see it again. Especially since I didn’t have to pay for it this time. Also, it’s a solid two hours, which does seem pretty long in this day and age, but it’s well-paced (maybe even a little too fast) and this viewer did not find herself checking the time.

I never wrote about Iron Man, which I liked very much. Robert Downey, Jr., is terrific and deserves a lot more credit for his acting chops than I think he’s gotten overall. I know he’s had some critical acclaim, but it hasn’t turned into a nomination or anything bigger - and Iron Man certainly won’t be that movie for him, either. But it should throw him in the way of other roles that will. And I get that that might not be his goal, but come on… it’s the trajectory. If he wasn’t hoping for some commercial and professional success, he could’ve stuck with roles like Fur (excellent, excellent film, by the way), where he played a man with hypertrichosis.

He and Christian Bale are following a similar path at the moment - both doing their big action hero roles for summer 2008, while toiling away on toothy “Actors’” roles elsewhere. Well done, gentlemen.

I’m looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight when that comes out. There was a longer trailer prior to Indiana Jones; it gave me goosebumps, and that was even before Heath Ledger was on the screen. I don’t have the whole, “Oh, poor dead Heath” thing… but between the music, the overall darkness of tone, Christian Bale’s voice, Ledger’s voice and the 10 or 15 seconds of the trailer where Ledger actually appears, I got some chills. Ledger as the Joker conveys something really unsettling and unstable; it’s going to make him scary as hell in that role.

Maggie Gyllenhaal looks about as useful as Katie Holmes was* in Batman: Beyond, so that’s too bad because she’s a good egg.

There were some other good previews before Indiana Jones - including one for Hancock, the upcoming Will Smith super-hero action/comedy. I’m torn. The concept is a little hokey, but I begrudgingly admit that Will Smith is charming and funny and wins me over in spite of myself, even if I don’t like the movie he’s in.

And the preview for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army sucked me right the f— in, even though my friends were totally disinterested. That’s OK. I’ll geek out to it solo. Guillermo del Toro does amazing things with fantasy worlds - he and his partners in crime have visions of monstrous beauty. Literally and figuratively. I’ve now seen some of the Spanish-language horror films he did before Pan’s Labyrinth and they’re equally frightening and lovely. He also wrote the first Hellboy (screenplay adaptation, anyway), Pan’s Labyrinth and Devil’s Backbone. He gets it, man. I’ll check it out.

And I’m done. I still haven’t even touched on books and music for this weekend’s media fix. Tomorrow.

* word around these parts was that her role could’ve been played by a squirrel

I needed a movie to watch while folding laundry. While I have Mouchette and L’Avventura from Netflix, they both demand attention since a) they’ve got subtitles I’ll have to read and b) I haven’t seen either one of them before.

Instead, I decided to break into my DVD collection and watch City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus) since I haven’t seen that in a good long time. I’m 12 minutes into it and remembering all the reasons I love this friggin’ weird-ass movie.

A) A talking brain in an aquarium - it tells bedtime stories!

B) Adorable French children running around wearing striped sweaters and clothing designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier:

C) Ron Perlman playing a strong man, speaking pidgin French and referring to himself in the third person.

D) Dominique Pinon doing his usual weird-looking guy thing, but as multiple versions of himself - and singing!

E) The lack of light. What can I say? I love the doom and gloom.

F) The scariest Santa Claus EVAR.

All of these things, plus the story is good (weird), the use of color and sound is awesome, and the non-traditional casting decisions and unusual characters make it even more interesting to watch. It’s been a while. I’ll have something more concrete to say when I finish watching. I’m only 12 minutes into it right now, after all.

Cold, dry winter air wreaks havoc on my skin. I feel all alligator-like and am constantly searching for a lotion that works well as an after-shower moisturizer that:

a) won’t be totally greasy and gross

b) won’t feel watery and immaterial, and…

c) doesn’t cost a fortune because moisturizing arms, legs and back requires much lotion

Well… Trader Joe’s to the rescue! The moisturizing cream at left - Trader Joe’s A Midsummer Night’s Cream Moisturizing Cream, Extra Dry Formula - meets all these criteria. It comes in a regular version and this extra dry formula. It’s unscented, but it still has a very faint herbal scent which is not at all unpleasant. It’s quite rich and thick, but not greasy or slimy. It absorbs into the skin quite quickly (at least for me) and lasts quite a long time.

I was wearing a thick and itchy cowl-neck wool sweater earlier in the week and it normally irritates the hell out of my neck (while keeping the rest of me warm and toasty) but the irritating effects were greatly lessened by being moisturized beforehand with this stuff. I sometimes use Aveeno, but it isn’t as rich as I would like and I find myself having to reapply a few times before I really feel the effects.

Later today, I’ll be going to a Trader Joe’s location I’ve never been to before and I’m willing to bet they will have larger selection of TJ’s craziness than my smaller local TJ’s. Excitement!

As a point of curiosity, this lotion shares its name with a porno flick (A Midsummer Night’s Cream) but that’s a connection very few people are going to make. And I am one of those weird people because I read too much.

There was an article in Reason magazine several years ago about controversial porn studies courses in universities. The piece mentioned that film, which is an actual retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (safe proof from IMDb!):

One needn’t be a prude or a hidebound academic traditionalist to roll one’s eyes at the earnest assertions of porn studies champions. Amherst English professor Richard Burt, among others, has said that pornography should be treated no differently from any other genre of film or literature.

In a way, this is a reductio ad absurdum of the postmodernist creed that no “text” is truly superior to any other. In a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times, Burt boldly declares that no study of film adaptations of Shakespeare can be complete without a look at hard-core porno flicks like A Midsummer Night’s Cream.

If porn studies and events like “Revolting Behavior” take intellectual content out of the academy, they also take human content out of human sexuality (and perhaps sexual content as well). “Transgressive” acts and identities are celebrated for their defiance of social norms.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with it. If such a course was offered back in my college days, I probably would’ve signed up for it. What people fail to realize is that pop culture analysis has become a part of most college course workloads and the work that results from these studies is legitimate and just as labor-intensive as writing a paper on Proust or Nietzsche. One thing my college education taught me was to look at EVERYTHING as a “text” -whether that text is a movie, a television commercial, TV show, book, play, poem, painting, sculpture, photo, song, opera, etc. It can all be taken apart, analyzed, deconstructed and viewed in that way. You can do a close reading of a porn flick just as seriously as you can do a close reading of a paragraph of Hegel.

I took a (straight-up serious) philosophy course my freshman year at NYU that looked at philosophical ideals and tropes in dramatic works–a few Greek tragedies, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but also the movie Blade Runner and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We discussed those works in terms of what they say about being human - what makes us human. Deckard from Blade Runner (who at that time had not yet been revealed to be a Replicant by director Ridley Scott) and Data from Star Trek were the subjects of a paper in which we had to answer the question, “According to [Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzche], is [Data, Deckard] human?” based on their statements about humanity, morality and ethics.

Interesting stuff.

Goody goody gumdrops!
A new trailer for the Henry Selick/Neil Gaiman production of “Coraline”! In 3-D!

Checking my RSS feeds… eating pizza at my desk… and saw THIS:

At Toy Fair, this company had a full mini Nightmare Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas. My favorite movie blog, /film, took the initiative and posted photos of it. And I love it.

Yes, I might be getting too old for this, but I love it all the same.

Last Sunday night, I finally took myself to see “There Will Be Blood.” No plot synopsis here, just some observations/impressions - and perhaps details you might not want to know. Ah, well. At this point, I’ll just go with it.

First thought: It was far quieter than I expected. Then again, this is from the man who brought us “Magnolia”, which was also a fairly quiet film in a similar way. But it was very quiet. I feel this must have some connection with a certain character’s deafness later (where sound disappears entirely from certain scenes); or perhaps it’s simply a device they’re using to accentuate how vast and empty the world was (and to this man in particular) and the various things he did or was willing to do to fill that emptiness (which never abated since that type of greed can’t be “met” or fulfilled).

Second: Yes, Daniel Day Lewis was good again. For very superficial reasons, this role (Daniel Plainview) reminded me of his performance as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting in “Gangs of New York.” Both characters possess incredible charisma which they use to manipulate people into doing things they might not do otherwise. That said, there were still moments I wanted to like him and see some good within him, despite his being a manipulative, greedy oil man. The limp he affects elicits part of that response, I think (oooh - flawed! Human!) I got over it by the end of the movie, though.

Third: I understand that for the time period and subject of the film (late 1800s/early 1900s - the wilds of California and the American west, with oil prospecting as the centerpiece), the relative lack of female characters is fitting. It was just a bit strange for the biggest female parts to be little girls who either a) run and fetch things for the men or b) look cute when someone needs a prop to appear sensitive and family-oriented.

Fourth: The depiction of religion and the role of religion in the various characters’ lives was fascinating. You have “dueling charismas” when it comes to relationship between the young minister and the greedy oil man. They’re like two sides of the same coin, and I think that’s pretty heavily suggested throughout. It’s not exactly a doppelganger set-up, but I think seeing them as more alike than different is key. Things like the sarcastic use of “brother”, the fact that the minister is/was a twin, their similarities in terms of showmanship and the ability to manipulate people to their way of thinking… and the way they play each other, competitively and maliciously—these all play into it.

Fourth (ancillary): The names. A minister named ELI SUNDAY? A greedy liar named DANIEL PLAINVIEW? And throw in the fact that he tosses around, “I believe in plain-speaking” to everyone he meets… and, here’s a curiosity. The name Eli means “ascension” or “my God” in Hebrew; the name Daniel is also derived from Hebrew and means “God is my judge.” Interesting.

Fifth: I need to see it again to make any larger-scale big-picture comments. Because it was so quiet, you’d think I would’ve focused quite clearly on what was said and what was shown; but it’s a long movie. And I wasn’t feeling all that hot on Sunday, anyway.

Sixth: Now I’ve seen the new movie catch-phrase du jour in action. There’s a site. Probably several.

But I will call your attention to this one, Idrinkyourmilkshake.com, since it’s billing itself as a discussion board about the movie or a place to play the line over and over and over. Movie folks on the blogosphere are saying that line is either the new “show me the money!”, “say hello to my little friend” or “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. (slurping noise).”

Hrm. Well, I’ll consider the last two, but there’s no way you can compare a line from “Jerry Maguire” to the lines from those other films.

I love this cereal. Trader Joe’s Super Nutty Toffee Clusters. Yup. There are pecans and brazil nuts and almond slices and these crunchy toffee clusters. And flakes. But the other stuff is the more exciting bit.

I’ve been sitting here, watching episodes of “Lost” on the ABC website (I started watching season 1 on Friday night since I’d never watched an episode and I think it’s good to be hip with the pop culture. Let me say that the thing that bothers me most about the show is that I can’t suspend my disbelief that a group of this many overly attractive and photogenic people would be on one flight and all end up surviving. They really should’ve cast a larger percentage of average-looking people. I mean, really - how many guys with impossibly blue eyes could there be, as well as an overabundance of extremely fit people. There are two people who represent anyone with a BMI greater than 12%) and munching on handfuls of this cereal, dry.

It’s just tasty. If you’ve got a Trader Joe’s near you (and don’t have any nut allergies) this cereal must make it onto your shopping list.

In other food news, my friends and I made a kick-ass chili last night - and brownies. We made plans to hang out and watch Hell House, a documentary about a haunted house, called a “hell house”, put on by a fundamentalist Christian church down in Texas, and Shoot ‘Em Up, a laughably bad (and I think somewhat self-aware in that way) action flick with Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti.

For the chili, we used bison meat because it’s leaner and higher in protein than beef, and was also the only meat at the supermarket that was designated as being free of hormones and antibiotics. I browned that, and then we threw in some onion and garlic. Then, some crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and herbs and spices: cilantro, cayenne pepper, chili powder, a dash of basil, black pepper and salt. Finally, dark red and light red kidney beans, black beans, some splashes of beef broth as it reduced down… and a few squares of 70% dark chocolate at the very very end (once everything was all cooked up and soaked in lovely flavors.) We bought a loaf of whole wheat ciabbatta bread and warmed that up in the oven so it was good and toasty - and had that crusty goodness (with some butter) along with the chili.

Num-num-nums. And then we made brownies. Since the chili was from scratch, we felt perfectly justified making the brownies from a mix - but with add-ins. They were dark chocolate fudge brownies and we threw in chopped up Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Num-num-nums.

And I am making myself hungry right now, despite having eaten not long ago. I’ll just have to cook up something tasty tomorrow.

Tomorrow is my final carryover vacation day from 2007. I’m lucky that I was able to take all of those days this month. It means, essentially, that I’ll have something like 20 vacation days this year (I haven’t really checked, but it will be close.)

After a solid night of rock-climbing just a couple of hours ago, my hands are a bit sore, especially my fingertips. I tried some climbs that were new to me and more difficult than previous ones I’ve done; despite my dogged determination to finish them, I didn’t manage to complete them. I’m OK with it in general and I’m not discouraged… but it bugs me because I have some pretty high expectations of myself - unrealistic, as I know and as others have pointed out to me on several occasions. We are our own worst enemies and critics, so that’s no surprise. But my friend did say that I did well from a technical standpoint… I was doing “real” climbing moves and not just throwing myself up on the wall and seeing what worked.

Thus, I’ve decided that a (completely secular) day of rest is in order. So here’s how I’ve chosen to spend this day off: I will get up at my regular morning hour (or 30 minutes later), get ready and head over to my preferred local bookstore. I will sit there, in a soft comfy chair, for about two hours - just reading. Maybe a book of my own, maybe a new one that I’ll buy or even a new one that I WON’T buy. I did that for the first time a few months ago (wasted time in a bookstore without buying anything and read an entire book without any intention of purchasing it) and it felt strangely dangerous and rebellious after having spent so many nights for so many years reshelving books at the bookstore. Books that customers just read and deserted with no intention of bringing them home. I will put the books back on the shelves. I’m a friend to the books.

After this loitering (well, I might buy a tea, so I’ll be a customer after all), I will drive some miles and meet my friend Theresa for lunch. I hear we’ll be going to Fuddrucker’s - a popular burger place I’ve used to break many a vegetarian (sorry, vegetarian friends.) They have veggie burgers, too, but when I crave a burger, I’m craving some medium-rare red meat. I do love my vegetables, too. Come to think of it, I ate an exclusively vegetarian diet this past weekend.

I understand that Fuddrucker’s is not a familiar establishment in many states (and countries, for that matter) - but it’s established enough to be a butt of jokes in the (excellent and underrated) movie Idiocracy. To quote Wikipedia, “the film has achieved something of a cult following with its anti-corporate message and savage satire of the way in which the mass media caters to the basest of human instincts.” It’s brilliant in that way.

Once I am fed, it’s time for another rare experience: going to the movies solo. There are several I want to see and I might catch more than one, depending on my mood. There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men are top contenders. I’d also like to check out The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and if I’m feeling like scaring the crap out of myself, perhaps The Orphanage. Though I hear that No Country for Old Men might have the same crap-evacuating effect.

Sounds pretty good, no?