WALL-E - Academy Awards Update!

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Animated Feature Film of the Year, Original Screenplay, Sound, Sound Editing, Score, and Song.



Directed by: Andrew Stanton



Read my full review of Wall-E here! Or rather, don't.


After re-watching Wall-e, I've completely changed my opinions on the film. I first saw the film in July with my son, at a noon showtime, in the ghetto Talley-Ho Theater in downtown Sleezeburg. It's got a tiny screen and seats no more than 50 people and I think I fell asleep a few times. Just goes to show you how the environment can change the experience of watching a film. This time it was in a dark room on my laptop, which has become my favored movie watching style. And I loved it.



The Good:
The animation quality of Pixar films is unmatched. Nothing looks this good. But Pixar's real secret weapon are the writers. They tell original stories free from cliches and pop culture references that bog down other popular animated films. There is real emotion here, hard to do with robots with limited vocabularies.


The Bad:
The "humans are destroying the earth with garbage" message is brought to the extreme here, but on second viewing I took more of a "it's just a plot device" view as opposed to the "this cartoon is getting preachy" view. Which let's you concentrate more on the action and visuals, which makes for a much more enjoyable movie watching experience.

The Ugly:
Big fat squishy humans. Uhhhgggg. I couldn't even find a screenshot of them on any of the promotional websites or Yahoo Movies. Another smart Pixar move.



MOVIE CHEETAH'S GRADE: A



Oscar Forecast:
Mark Wall-e down for at least 2 wins, Animated Feature and Sound Editing. The Sound editing is genius work. Ben Burtt and Matthew Wood are the real stars of this film as they invent every whir, buzz, and beep, and they convey emotion and conversation with them. Burtt also gave us the trademark WaaaAAAAlleeeeeee sound and was also the voice of Wall-E. Check out the mini-doc on the Sound Editing on the special features of the disc. Pure Genius.
The screenplay is better than Milk but maybe not In Bruges. Wall-E runs up against Slumdog Millionaire in Sound, Score and Song, all strong points of that film. They may pull Song since Slumdog's duel nominations aren't in English. But honestly the closing credits song on Slumdog is the best closing credits ever.


Director Andrew Stanton won A Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2003 for Finding Nemo and he has two original screenplay nominations for Nemo and Toy Story (1995).


The original screenplay nomination is shared between Stanton, Pete Doctor, who has 3 previous nominations for the screenplay of Toy Story (1995), co-directing Monsters, Inc. (2001) and the animated short Mike's New Car (2002). This is the first nomination for Jim Reardon.


The Sound Team is led by the legendary Ben Burtt. Check out this Oscar resume: special achievement awards for Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Sound Effects Editing awards for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). He also has Best Sound nominations for Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Sound Effects Editing nominations for Return of the Jedi, Willow (1988), and The Phantom Menace (1999), and a Short Subject Documentary nomination for Special Effects: Anything Can Happen (1996). His team is made up of Michael Semanick, Oscar winner for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and King Kong (2005) and nominated for The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and Ratatouille (2007) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). This is the first nomination for Tom Myers.


The Sound Effects Editing was done by Ben Burtt (see above) and Matthew Wood, nominated last year for There Will be Blood (2007).


Composer Thomas Newman did the score and he's been nominated a whopping 8 previous times without ever taking home an Oscar. His nominated work includes The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Little Women (1994), Unstrung Heroes (1995), American Beauty (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), Finding Nemo (2003), A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), and The Good German (2006).


Newman also shares credit for Best Song, "Down to Earth," performed by first time nominee Peter Gabriel.