Mamma Mia! it's WALL-E

Having been looking forward to seeing WALL-E ever since I saw the first trailers, we finally made it to the cinema yesterday to watch it. It was brilliant, even better than I thought it would be.

As we often find it difficult to see all the films we want to at the cinema, we thought we would make the most of yesterday and so saw Mamma Mia! as well. Now I've never been fond of the idea of a musical based on a single band's music. For example, I'm a big Queen fan but have no particular interest in going to see the musical We Will Rock You which uses their music to tell a story. I'm also not a huge ABBA fan (I have been known to dance to their music when drunk, but who hasn't?) so have never really been interested in going to see the stage show version of Mamma Mia! It isn't that I don't like musicals (I've been to see quite a few over the years, including Starlight Express) I just could never really imagine how songs that were written as individual pieces could be crafted together to create a good musical -- I always thought it would seem that the songs were forced to fit the story.

Even when I heard there was going to be a film version of Mamma Mia! I wasn't that interested until I saw the trailer. It looked funny, and the performances of the songs sounded pretty good. So I decided that maybe it would be worth seeing. In fact it was really, really good. Ignoring for a minute the fact that Pierce Brosnan can't really sing, the whole thing worked really well. I won't spoil it for you by giving away any of the plot, but I will say that if you go to see it at the cinema don't leave until the white on black scrolling credits appear otherwise you will miss some hilarious dancing and singing.

So for those who haven't seen it yet here is the trailer:

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WALL-E, My Rating: The film lived up to my expectations from the trailers and I'll certainly by buying the DVD later in the year.

Mamma Mia!, My Rating: A truly brilliant film, much better than I would have thought given the premise of turning ABBA songs into a musical.

WALL-E

I've mentioned before that I'm looking forward to the release of Pixar's next movie WALL-E, but for the first time I've just seen a trailer for the film that actually hints at a plot line. Now I want to see this movie even more!

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Luxo Jr. meets WALL-E

Have you ever watched a Pixar film (for example Toy Story, A Bug's Life, The Incredibles, ...) and wondered why the Pixar logo includes a little animated desk lamp? Well the original version of the desk lamp appeared in Pixar's first ever animation Luxo Jr -- the story of a little desk lamp, his father and a beach ball. Luxo Jr. was produced in 1986 to showcase what Pixar were capable of doing, and was so well received that it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Film.

I was first introduced to Luxo Jr. during a 3D Graphics course at University (probably in the autumn of 1999) and was blown away by it. Not only was it very well animated for 1986 it had stood the test of time and was still a fantastic piece of animation. When you watch it (a short clip is available from Pixar's website) you can see how much feeling and emotion is present in the movements of the little lamp.

Each new Pixar film continues to impress me with their new computer animation techniques. The trailers for their newest film, WALL-E, are special though as the opening Pixar credits have been changed to include the little robot from the film.

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Having watched the trailer I still really don't know much about the film, but I can't wait to see it. Oh and by the way is it just me or does WALL-E look a lot like a rusty prototype version of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit?