Johnny 5 is... WALL-E

Pixar continues to impress me. It's apparent that Disney has yet to crush the love of creativity and a genuine interest in the source material from it's adopted child. Pixar's latest endeavor is WALL-E, the story of a lonely robot who looks an awful lot like Number 5 aka Johnny 5 from the Short Circuit movies. He falls in love with EVE, a heavily armed and highly resourceful probe who comes to Earth in search of life. Why a probe sent to search for and return evidence of life is so heavily armed, I don't know, but I recommend not asking. You might make her angry.

Pixar's shorts have always had the capacity to entertain with no dialog (and the short attached to this film about a magician and his rabbit is no different), but this movie takes it even further. Like Boo from Monster's Inc, our protagonists have an extremely limited vocabulary. So all character development must come in the form of character interaction with the environment. There is dialog - exposition comes from various ads that still play to an abandoned planet and the humans WALL-E eventually encounters do speak. But the truly heartwarming and hilarious moments require no words. In fact, I almost wish they could have figured out a way to make the entire movie more silent film and less, well, Disney moralizing. There are so many ways to look at this movie, that I feel like I need several reviews. So here goes:

Romantic comedy: Clumsy, lonely boy who loves show-tunes falls for sleak, sexy career girl armed with a plasma cannon. You will say "aw" almost as many times as you laugh. 3% tears by volume. Sweet without being utterly saccharin. A.

Action/adventure: Despite the robot armed with a plasma cannon, there isn't a whole lot of action. There's certainly no chase scene that lives up to the doors in Monster's Inc, and the "villain" just isn't threatening enough to build all that much suspense. B-

Comedy: Per usual, Pixar keeps you pretty entertained throughout the film with plenty of visual gags to make up for lack of talking. I have to wonder if the robot MO was inspired by Monk, the three stooges, or both. There is an absolutely hilarious scene when WALL-E first arrives on the Axiom... well, spoilers. Whatever. A.

Animation: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. The dance outside the Axiom alone deserves an Oscar. A++

Overall: Let's see, how many people do I know and how many of them will I see between now and when Dark Knight comes out? If I watch it once with each of them... A.

Browncoats in Space

The crew of the International Space Station has been supplied with copies of Firefly and Serenity. So the next time the computers crash, they can just ask themselves, what would Kaylee do?

Quote of the Day - June 12, 2007

Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

- Doc Brown, Back to the Future

Quote of the Day - June 11, 2007

Teriffic. I'm about to get killed a million miles from nowhere with a gung-ho iguana who tells me to relax.

- Alex, The Last Starfighter

Stuck in SciFi

I watch way too much television. As such, I have noticed a pattern that I think all actors who are considering taking a part on a science fiction movie or television show should be aware of before they sign that contract. I keep seeing the same people over and over – and I rarely see them anywhere else. (By the by, for the purposes of this essay, and since they’re often hard to separate anyway, sci-fi is science fiction as well as fantasy – everything from Hercules to Star Trek and back again).

This goes beyond the usual stereotyping seen in the entertainment industry. Let’s call it genre-typing. It used to be a phenomenon in westerns. In fact, several people have made the transition from stuck in westerns to stuck in sci-fi (ie, William Shatner, Lorne Greene, um, did I mention Canadians fall victim to this more often than most?)

Now, part of this is apparently a function of the fact that many science fiction television shows (particularly syndicated ones), as well as some movies, are filmed in Canada and many sci-fi movies (and some tv shows) are filmed in New Zealand. And Canada and New Zealand apparently have a limited number of actors living there. Case in point for Canada – Katie Stuart whom I first saw in “Crow: Stairway to Heaven”, then started noticing her in several other shows that I watched either regularly or occasionally including Stargate SG-1, Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy (I watched it two or three times, shut up), and mostly recently, I saw her on Dead Like Me, though IMDB doesn’t mention it. It almost seemed as if, when a story called for a young girl, either she or Collen Rennison (or both) were called in if the series was filmed in Canada. In fact, they are evidently considered so interchangeable, they played the same character, Cassandra, on different episodes of Stargate SG-1. Of course, now that the two of them are old enough to be in college (or at least applying for it), they’ll have to find a new “young girl”.

Oh, but you don’t have to be Canadian to be stuck in scifi. Sigourney Weaver is a prime example of genre-typing without being stereotyped. Her character is Ghostbusters is hardly Ripley from Alien or Gwen Demarco from Galaxy Quest (a sci-fi parody, but still). I think she’s managed to play a variety of characters within science fiction. Not to mention the fact that she pioneered the role of the strong heroine. Buffy’s got nothin’ on her.

Ahem. Anyhoo. I seem to have picked out two actresses stuck in sci-fi. Maybe that’s because there are just so many actors out there to choose from. Star Trek alone has produced so many I’ve lost track. Watch any given episode of Xena or Hercules and you can spot at least two or three people you’ve seen other places (in some ways, that’s thanks to Sam Raimi, who puts Bruce Campbell and his brother Ted in just about everything he does).

Now, maybe some of these people are showing up other places, I just don’t watch the other types of shows the appear in. This site has a list of actors who just seem to pop up everywhere (por ejemplo, Clancy Brown does a lot of sci-fi and voice work in addition to his “cop or robber” roles. Fear his voice. Especially as Mr. Krabs.)

So that’s where they went...

Sometimes, those who have become trapped inside the world of sci-fi (or, worse yet, a specific role) seem to find secondary careers in voice work. Leonard Neomoy started the trend of hosting or narrating documentary-style television shows with "In Search Of...". Many sci-fi stars lend their voice to cartoons and video games. Heck, Gargoyles was practically a Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion. Mark Hamill (talk about trapped in sci-fi) has done a tremendous amount of voice work since playing Luke Skywalker. He’s particularly good as the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series. Sometimes, over the top is appropriate.

My advice to actors who find themselves stuck in sci-fi - don't fight it. It may very well give you something that most actors never know - job security.