Life on Mars?

Screw links, if you're a nerd and you love movies today is a huge HUGE day.

Edgar Rice Buroughs is a name some of you may know, he created Tarzan after all (and if you're one of my many L.A. readers you know he lived in what is now Tarzana and the area is subsequently named after his creation). But Tarzan isn't his only famous creation. The other is John Carter of Mars who starred in a series of pulp novels (eleven to be exact) about a time and space lost Civil War soldier who became a barbarian hero on the fantastic landscape of Mars. The character and series has had a huge impact on sci-fi, influencing everything from Star Wars to Avatar. This property is one filled with dynamic and original visuals (many characters are at least ten feet tall and have multiple arms and are more multi-colored then a Benneton ad) that have, up until now, been incredibly difficult to capture on screen. Directors and producers have been trying to put these stories on screen for years (Bob Clampett, Ray Harryhausen, Robert Rodriguez and John Favreau are but a few of the names). We're talking about nearly a century of trying to bring these incredible stories to the screen. Now though, today specifically, is the day principal photography begins on the first of what we can only hope will be many Carter films.

Why should you care about a series you've probably never even heard of before? Especially two years before its release? Here's five reasons.

1. An incredibly accomplished director: Andrew Stanton
Can't place the name? You've seen it at the end of two of the best films of the past decade. I'm talking about Finding Nemo and Wall-E. As a high ranking creative at Pixar Stanton knows how to dazzle,thrill, move and most importantly entertain a mass audience. But unlike many of his blockbuster bretren this is a director who refuses to talk down to his audience. Stanton's first forray into live-action guarantees that story and character will be a top priority over effects, explosions and bloodshed (though there should be plenty of those two). Also, no worries about this being a toned down because Stanton's worked on family films. The film is rated a more adult friendly PG-13.

2. It's got an amazing cast.
Representatives from virtually every corner of this golden age of TV show up on this cast list. Dominic West from the Wire, Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad, James Purefoy from Rome and as Carter himself Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch. That's not to say the film has skewed conventional film actors either; Willem Dafoe, Thomas Hayden Church, Ciaran Hands, Mark Strong, Samantha Morton and Lynn Collins (ok I'm a little sketchy on that last one). That's some serious talent behind the arms, tusks and tails that will be on display.

3. It's got a slick crew.
Production design from the man that brought us the rebooted Batman Nathan Crowley, Avatar costume designer Mayes Rubeo, viseual effects from Peter Chiang who did the same for Stardust and the Bourne Ultimatum and Star Trek's DP Daniel Mindel. If you don't know those names, you definitely know their work.

4. The script should be top notch.
In addition to Stanton, who's helped craft a lot of Pixar's content, noted novelist and occasional screenwriter Michael Chabon. Chabon has the remarkable of not only being a master of genre tropes but also is capable of creating multi-dimensional characters. These two working together is a very exciting prospect.

5. It's got a look that you haven't quite seen before.
Crazy no?


You excited yet? You have two years. I can't wait.

It Only Takes a Moment/For Your Eyes to Meet and Then

Andrew Stanton's Wall-E is, like the bulk of its Pixar brethren (Cars aside) an exquisite, gorgeous, thoughtful piece of art that helps elevate its genre and continues to demonstrate that its studio is one of the most progressive in the entire entertainment industry. Yet there is a part of the film that gnaws on me and halts me from declaring Wall-E an absolute perfect film or the best that Pixar has yet to offer audiences, but oh it gets so close.
I will say this for the film, director Stanton and his team of writers, animators and sound designers have created perhaps their most emotionally resonant film yet. That they manage this with two central characters that speak a mere four words between them is nothing short of miraculous. When I first heard of Wall-E my mind immediately jumped to the perplexing and inaccessible world of Cars, wherein the anthropomorphized machines kept me at a distance. Then once I was introduced to the titular Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth Class) via the trailer I tossed all my fears out the window for good. Utilizing a tremendous economy of visual and body language that has its roots in the silent films of Chaplin, Keaton and Tati, Stanton has created a pair of robots (the boxy Wall-E and the sleek EVE) who manage to convey the entire breadth of human experience, moreso than the actual humans that appear in the film. I'm most struck by Wall-E's eyes and hands. In the preview the filmmakers cannily provided us with Wall-E gazing up into the night sky, the infinite wonder of the cosmos reflected in his Jonny-5 like binocular eyes. This immediately communicated that this being had, for lack of a better term, a soul.

The premise is a decidedly unconventional one for a family film. On the garbage strewn remains of Earth (gorgeously lit, colored and shot under the supervising advisement of legendary DP Roger Deakins) a lone robot works tirelessly at his task; crumpling up all that garbage and processing it into cubes. Wall-E works virtually alone. Humanity has abandoned the planet after the take-over of a Wal-Mart analogue called Buy'n'Large (CEO'ed by a live-action Fred Willard) has covered the planet and now humanity has evolved into over-sized babies completely dependent on automatons, staying the course on a space-ship that's five year mission has gone on for seven hundred years. His only company is a not at all cute looking roach type thing. Day after day Wall-E works beside holoscreens that fill the viewer in on the fate of humanity (living in automated luxury among the stars aboard the pleasure yacht the Axiom) and the remains of all the other broken down Wall-Es. Wall-E doesnt understand the futility of his task but he does know he's lonely, heartbreakingly so. Every day he comes home to his "apartment" deposits any particularly interesting junk (like all good nerds he's something of a collector) and pops in an old VHS copy of Hello Dolly. He watches a live action Michale Crawford sing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment." He's completely captivated by the figures dancing and singing and attempts to bust some moves himself. He also sees humans holding each others hands and then looks at his own, he sighs mournfully. Your heart breaks and I won't lie to you readers it was here that I started bawling, not just crying a few little squirty tears but just big buckets of emotion for this poor thing. If you can pair a strong emotional idea with a musical theater song you've got the Sickness in the bag.
Wall-E isn't bound for loneliness much longer when quite out of nowhere he meets the sleek and most certainly Apple approved EVE. EVE has been deposited on Earth in search of vegetabble matter. She sophisticated, she's as high tech as it gets and in Wall-E's eyes she is gorgeous. I can't speak to the realism of a robot falling in love but if there is such thing I can't imagine it looking different than this. She also packs some serious firepower so Wall-E has to approach with care. Wall-E eventually gets her back to his place and clearly having observed how I do my romancing shows EVE his favorite movie and even tries to hold her hand. It doesn't go well. Wall-E does think he's scored big time when he shows EVE the tiny sapling he found in one of his garbage runs. EVE however puts the sapling in her chassis and shuts down, sending a retrieval signal to the Axiom. Wall-E tries desperately to revive her but it's no good. The montage of Wall-E taking care of EVE, trying to entertain her, just even being with her is both hilarious and oddly melancholy. The inert EVE makes her way back to the Axiom and Wall-E boldly follows.
It is here the film goes from being a masterpiece to merely great. The humans aboard the axiom are lazy corporate blobs. They've all but lost any ability to be self-sufficient and most of their fundamental concepts of human interaction. It is the arrival of Wall-E, in desperate pursuit of EVE that starts a sort of social revolution. There are forces on teh ship that don't want EVE to deliver that plant and much chasing (some good, some bad) ensue. What unquestionably works about it is that the filmmakers at this point have you so invested in EVE and Wall-E that you flinch at the slightest thought of anything happening to them. It's what happens along the way that only sort of works. The idea of a robot teaching humanity is a good one, but in making the humans inhuman the filmmakers may have made them a bit too childish. Powerful emotional moments get punctuated and deflated with moments of slapstick. A plea for ecological awareness, a wariness against superstores and a request for a return to more genuine human interaction are all noble and worthwhile ambitious for family entertainment but they dilute the love story by being expressed with a degree of didacticism that had heretofore been unseen in the film. Don't get me wrong, the slapstick works exceedingly well with the robots, it's just that I found it difficult to sympathize with humanity. It was also jarring to go from seeing live-action humans to their more portly animated counter-parts. There is also the lingering dissonance about the sheer volume of Wall-E merchandise being produced and then sold in our own Buy'N'Larges available now.

At the end of the day though the core of Wall-E remains pure, emotionally compelling material. Pixar maintains its sterling reputation and as always makes me wonder how they will be able to build on their latest success.

Oh I've completely forgotten the colossal contribution of the voice of R2-D2 himself, Ben Burtt, who created the sound design for Wall-E. Gooooooood move.