Two things…
1) At a pet expo this weekend, we came across a booth run by PetCo with things such as frisbees, chew toys, etc. They had boxes and boxes of them, so we approached the booth and asked, “are these free?” thinking they may be free promo items. The guy said, “Well, you can have them for a $5 donation, or you can have a chance at winning one for a $1 donation which gets you entry to our game.” I looked around and saw no sign indicating otherwise, so I had to assume they wanted people to “donate” to the PetCo corporation. (They could have just said: “Frisbees, $5.”) Reason #12432 why I dislike that store.
2) I am going to the casino on July 14th. Probably MGM Grand, but Windsor is an option if it becomes necessary. You are invited, but I need to know if you’re coming (funny how that works).
Three Cheers for Wall-E
I think the reason I looked forward to this movie so much is because it had aspects of everything I like in a story: 1) consumerism that brought about the end of the world, 2) a lonely robot who has discovered he has emotions, and 3) somebody finding their true purpose after a disappointing life (in this case, 700 years).
And, outer space.
Wall-E was everything I hoped for. While not a perfect movie, any of its flaws are still 10x better than even the best scene from The Happening. It truly is a movie for all ages, and proof that movies don’t need to be gory or profane to be “real,” and it turns out that real-life actors may not be needed, after all.
I won’t do a plot analysis or anything, because if you’re reading this you probably already have read a few, so I’ll just say 4/4 stars and talk about two other things related to the movie.
Fat People In the Future
Apparently a few of today’s fat people are so upset at how they are depicted in the film that they are doing things such as boycotting it and writing angry letters to newspapers. You just have to shake your head and laugh at that. Memo to fat people: the movie has little to do with you.
Sure, the humans depicted in the film are fat, but it’s more than that. If you notice the diagrams presented in the movie, they’ve actually evolved into amorphous blobs with little bone structure, due to an abundance of convenient technology that makes moving around unnecessary. It was inevitable for them. The good news is that if you’re fat and offended by the film, it is not inevitable for you. Get off your ass and move around. Don’t eat that second pizza. (Or at least learn about nutrition enough to realize that skipping breakfast and restricting your calories can make you fat, too.)
Bottom line: being offended at something that “is making fun of” a condition you brought upon yourself is kind of silly.
The Sum of His Parts
[Spoiler warning: if you have not seen the movie, the rest of this article will completely spoil the ending.]
At the end, Wall-E has sacrificed so much for the good of humanity that he is a broken, beaten up hunk of metal who is barely conscious. (Side note: how cute that, even in such a condition, he still extends his hand as best as possible and introduces himself to strangers, “WaaaAAall-EEee.”)
He knows that he will die unless he gets back to Earth where he has collected replacement parts from other Wall-Es, so that he can replace the broken parts and reassemble himself. They get there just as time runs out, and a frantic Eve races to swap out all that bad components, including a motherboard with what must have been flash memory (nerd alert) because there was no hard drive.
This all leads to the heart-breaking scene of Wall-E rebooting with no memory. Instead, he simply has his prime directive and continues collecting trash with no emotion. Then his love, Eve, approaches him and says her goodbyes, leaning in for a robot-kiss, at which point Wall-E’s memory is restored.
But restored from where? As we saw when she presses his play button, there is nothing but static. His memory banks are empty. She replaced so much of him that he is essentially a new robot. But somehow he remembers anyway.
This could have happened for three reasons: 1) a “magic” happily-ever-after ending for a kids movie, written with no other thought than that. 2) Their first kiss from earlier in the movie somehow imprinted “Wall-E” onto Eve’s hardware, and by “kissing” him she unknowingly transferred him back, or 3) robots have officially become more than just a sum of their parts, and it didn’t matter if he had a new leg, arm, eye, processor—whatever—because the being that is “Wall-E” exists outside of those parts and in the instant his memory was restored, he was touched by the hand of God. Wall-E is the first of God’s new children, the saviors of the planet who bring humanity back to Earth (watch the story told throughout the end credits) to start a Garden (of pizza plants!) with an apple tree that sprouted from an old boot.
So I found it very fitting that his companion’s name was Eve.
I am so glad that Wall-e is getting nothing but positive reviews and I can’t wait to see it.
“Immediately, we realize this isn’t your typical kiddie cartoon. No pop culture jokes? No instantly-recognizable celebrity voices? A decimated, humanless landscape full of towers of garbage and decrepit buildings? A lonely robot trying to learn about love and humanity through centuries of its trash? This looks more like a beautiful, haunting sci-fi movie than a children’s movie, because that’s exactly what it is.”
So the world is supposed to end in 2012, at least according to Mayan prophecy and scientists who say we’re long overdue for certain disasters such as stray asteroids, supervolcanoes, and earthquakes. I found the following list of things that might happen on 2012wiki.com. Which one would you rather it be?
2. Asteroid / Meteorite / Comet Impact
3. Flu Pandemic
4. Nuclear War
5. Grey Goo (nanotechnolgy)
6. Man-made Black Hole (see my previous entry… spooky)
7. Crustal Pole Shift
8. Rapid-onset Ice Age
9. Megatsunami/Global Flood
10. Economic Collapse
11. Peak Oil
12. Extraterrestrials Attack
13. Non-nuclear WW3
14. Gamma Ray Burst
15. Magnetic Pole Reversal
16. Biblical Rapture / Judgement Day / Second Coming
17. New World Order is revealed
18. Singularity
19. Return of Planet X / Niburu
20. Solar Flares
21. Nearby Supernova
22. Supernova becomes visible
23. Coronal Mass Ejection
24. Spiritual Evolution
25. Worldwide Depression/ Loss of Will to Live Inspires Nihilism and Anarchy
Earth ‘not at risk’ from collider
I love that there is a very real threat that this experimental physics machine could very well open up a black hole that swallows our planet.
Idea time!
If the human body produces energy, and we have a “too-much-energy” kind of lifestyle (are fat), couldn’t we jack our peripherals and doo-dads into this energy? Can scientists find a way to give us an electrical outlet, say, on our hip, so we can charge our iPods and cell phones wherever we go? This would 1) be convientient, and 2) use energy and therefore require more calorie usage, either helping people loose weight or allowing me to eat large amounts of ice cream whenever my laptop is about to die.
Plausability?
Pepsi, meaning “peppy,” beause it gives you “pep.” I get it. Am I the only one who has gone through 25 years of life never wondering what Pepsi actually means?
I think I found the main reason why I went through a brief “I don’t like Battlestar Galactica anymore” phase (which is now over, BTW). I blame it on her:
I defended her for a long time, but have come to realize that no… I actually really don’t like her. I don’t like the character, I don’t like the way she talks, walks, laughs, eats, bitches, whines, complains, cries. I don’t like her “bad ass” attitude and I don’t like the actress because she comes off as really stuck up.
For some reason I didn’t awknowledge this problem as I watched the series, but in this season she is front and center and very, very hard to avoid. She was a subconscious turn off for me, hence the reason I abandoned ship. Once I realized that, I was able to get through the remaining episodes, which were grand.
(SPOILERZ OMG!)
So, questions about Earth: what year is it? Why the nuclear fallout? Where did they land? Are there any people?
But first: HOLY CRAP. That’s brilliant. I didn’t know they were getting to Earth so soon (I thought it would be the final episode of the show). But there they are, and it’s not the safe haven they thought it was, it is a desolate nuclear wasteland. And they have 10 more episodes to tell us what happened.
My answers to the above questions: 2027. Nuclear war against the machines. New York. Yes.
Why 2027? Well, that’s the year Skynet takes over, silly… the year it launches our own nukes at us when we try to pull it’s plug because it has become self-aware and is defending itself against it’s biggest threat… humanity.
Seriously, though, I have to believe it was a war against some kind of machines… but probably not the Terminators. The theme that has been present throughout Battlestar Galactica is, “all this has happened before, and will happen again,” seems to support the idea that the Thirteenth Colony (Earthlings) may have went through their own robot uprising recently.
How recently? Well, how old is Tigh? If we are to believe the Hybrid’s prophecy (and why would you NOT?), the “final five” are from the Thirteenth colony (Earth). And if Tigh is… what?… 50, 60 years old… I think that’s enough time for the fall-out and tarnished skies to settle after a nuclear war. Earth has clearly been desolate for a long time, and the blue skies mean that the atmosphere doesn’t have a lot of debris, which I think it would many, many years after an all-out, population-ending nuclear war. But I know very little about nuclear reactions and how the effect the sky so I could be way off.
Either way, I’m amazed by how poetic this show is. From Adama’s breakdown, to Roslin resting her head on a wounded Baltar’s chest, to the Hybrid being plugged in and having an instant orgasmic “JUMP!” moment, to Roslin and Adama finally admitting their love… this show is better (but only slightly) than Lost when it comes to putting it’s characters ahead of the mythology.
Except Starbuck. Go away, harbinger of death.
I hope we see some survivors of the nuclear wasteland that is Earth, hiding out in underground caverns and such. I hope they speak the same language as our Battlestar crew, which would mean the “ethereal source of inspiration” that gave way to the “All Along the Watchtower” song is a tangible source, one that maybe even the Cylons have been able to tap into. (God?)
Something the Hybrid said in the movie, Razor:
“Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening. Struggling with the knowledge of their true selves. The pain of revelation bringing new clarity.
And in the midst of confusion, he will find her, enemies brought together by impossible longing, enemies now joined as one.
The way forward, at once unthinkable, yet inevitable.”
If he wasn’t talking about humans and Cylons, working together to find Earth, then I have no idea what my name even is. But he was right, because at the time it was unthinkable, but now… yeah, it’s kind of inevitable. Even if the humans found Earth on their own, it would have ended up like New Caprica… the Cylons would have one day found them and the shit would again hit the fan.
It really sucks we have to wait until 2009 to get the resolution to this. Even then, I will wait until all of the episodes air and then watch them back to back, because I still believe that it is a weak show when taken in 1 hour segments every seven days. The story just needs to be told faster than that, IMO.
Michael Giacchino and Bear McCreary, score keepers
This article is about Michael Giacchino and Bear McCreary, which is pretty amazing because I’ve been saying for a while that they are the best composers on television (for Lost, and Battlestar Galactica, respectively). I’m convinced that, in both cases, the shows wouldn’t be what they are without the music. People tend to gloss over the music in TV and movies but the next time you watch them, pretend what it would be like without the music (or other music, like the campy Smallville stuff) and you’ll see what I mean. Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles would have failed without Bear McCreary’s music, IMO.
Holy crap! I check the headlines this morning and see that George Carlin has died of heart failure. It’s always kind of shocking when you see names you recognize and then “has died.”
“In his length career as a comedian, writer, and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think,” Stephen Schwarzman, Kennedy Center chairman, said in a statement. “His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching.”
Just watched the “final five” episodes I didn’t have any ambition to watch. Way to redeem yourself in the last three, BSG. Holy geeze that was incredible.
We’re driving down the street, minding our own business, with Sophia (our dog) sitting on my lap and leaning out the window like she always does, enjoying the gale force winds in her face.
Then, someone in the left lane decides to merge over RIGHT NOW. So Katy naturally hits the breaks. We both had our seat belts on.
Sophia did not.
Luckily, I had a leash. Except it was yanked out of my hand.
So, in a split second, I registered the fact that my dog was now flying out of the window. I heard her nails scratching against the door as her face collided with the rear-view mirror. In my haste to grab onto her, I actually lifted her over the rear view mirror, and her instinct kicked in and her back legs started kicking… just as they landed on the window frame, propelling her onward as the car finally came to a stop.
I scrambled for the leash with one hand and her collar with the other. I was able to grab her collar and pull her back in. I rolled up the window and held her close, trying to figure out what just happened.
After the shock wore off, the hilarity set in as I considered how ridiculous it would have looked to the guy in the next lane slightly in front of us, to see a dog flying by him out of the corner of his eye… not necessarily because of the force of the stop, but because she kicked her way out and jumped forward.
Hilarious.
I’ve been following the blog of this girl who does hilarious Lost recaps using tons of screen grabs from each episode. It’s hard for me to actually LOL at something I’m reading, but when I do, it’s really, really good. I actually LOL’d a few times for the one she just did for the season finale.
*SUCKS OUT SOUL*
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