Where's Wall-E?

Wall-E was clearly a script conceived during the writers strike in Hollywood because for the bulk of the movie, the dialogue was made up of various intonations of the title (and its character).

"Wall-E."

"Wall-E?"

"Wall-E!"

"Wall-E?!"

Don't get me wrong. The animation was spectacular. The plotline with the unsubtle anti-consumerism undertones was well presented. I even liked the sparing use of pop-culture references (e.g. Mac Start-up sound)

But seriously, we know the robot’s name. We don’t need it repeated 14.7 kagillion times! If you haven’t already seen it, you can already guess by the multiple mentions that it involves a lot of hide and seeking of Wall-E and his girlfriend, EVE (who also gets a squillion mentions)

Speaking of movies, we’ve been watching a lot of the little screen lately. It’s day 3 of the heatwave. The temperature has been above 40 (43 today!) for the past 3 days and the whole state has been having blackouts due to everyone running their air conditioners at max. I only just managed to walk the dogs this morning before it started heating up again.

So while we’re sheltering from the heat, Shirley’s been stuck into her favourite OCD (D in this case stands for Detective) Monk and I’ve had my hands full with Mad Men, Lost and 24. I’ve actually been quite impressed with Mad Men. I didn’t expect that after the first few episodes, I would be so drawn into a drama involving:

#1 advertising (I left the industry on purpose)
#2 the 60s (I’m at the tail end of Gen-X, so no memory lane moments for me)
#3 no conspiracy or action (ala Jacks Shephard and Bauer)
#4 enough smoking to qualify for a surgeon general’s warning to be tattooed on each of the characters foreheads (which are apparently fake by the way)

In Mad Men the classiness of the setting and dialogue is very uncheesy, the script and dialogue is well thought out, and thoroughly engaging. It’s good to know a show doesn’t have to blow things up or double-cross every man and his dog in every other episode.

Now for Wall-E 2, let’s hire the Mad Men writers shall we ?