I’m really impressed that when the makers of WALL•E selected a Louis Armstrong song for the film’s soundtrack, they looked past the obligatory and overused (but thematically appropriate) “What a Wonderful World” and went with “La Vie en Rose.” It’s a little thing, but it’s the difference between the easy decision and the decision that requires thought and effort. I appreciate that extra little bit of attention to detail.

WALL•E is…

*However, since part of the commentary revolves around the fact that the human race had to leave Earth after filling up the planet with all their consumer stuff, I kind of question the practice at the theater where I saw the film of giving a WALL•E watch to the kids who attended the screening.

First things first: If you have not seen the film yet, and if you style yourself any sort of geek at all, stay through the credits. You will thank me. Of course, if you truly style yourself any sort of geek at all, odds are this little public service announcement is wholly unnecessary, as you wouldn’t dream of not staying through the credits.

Those post-credit thirty seconds? Best part of the movie, hands down, and a great setup for both a sequel and a spinoff. The leadup to the Big Reveal at the end was well telegraphed throughout the film. And while I personally prefer the classic version of the thing revealed I appreciate the sheer coolness of the parallel version chosen for this film.

I’ve drifted in and out of Iron Man over my thirty-plus years as a comics fan. More out that in, but the character has always been one I’ve generally liked. The film version of Iron Man does justice to the essential core of the character — wealthy industrialist weapons manufacturer forced by circumstance to confront his mortality, and his morality. Robert Downey, Jr. is note perfect in the lead role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Beyond Stark, the supporting cast is solid, with Jeff Bridges the strongest of the bunch. That’s hardly surprising as giving a great actor a nice juicy villain role usually works out well in comic book movies.

As with any comic book movie, the man behind the mask is only half the equation; the mask — or in this case the armor — that defines the heroic persona is just as important. The Iron Man suit presented in this movie is easily one of the most note perfect translations of comic book gadgetry to the big screen. It helps that the core concept of the Iron Man armor over the decades has been almost constant revision and redesign (and the film plays with this convention very nicely, with Tony Stark suiting up in three different armors over the course of the origin story. It would have been easy enough to design something kinda robotic looking, paint it crimson and gold, and call it Iron Man, but Stan Winston and his crew did that one better; they created a believable translation from comic page to film. The models are terrific. You will believe a man in a cybernetic exosuit can fly.

In a summer movie season targeted at great geek expectations, including a new Hulk, a new Batman, and a new Indiana freakin’ Jones fer the luvva Pete, Iron Man started things off on a high note.

Random observations while watching a film classic:

Shirtless Greeks at war
Less campy than expected
The king shouts — a lot

It’s like this: The Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike doesn’t affect me directly. We don’t have cable, and have never bothered with an antenna, which means we don’t pull in broadcast channels either. I don’t care from award shows. I have several seasons and series worth of television to catch up on through the miracle of Netflix. My entertainment needs are covered for a good long while yet.

[In the interest of full disclosure, having caught up with the third season last month, I will beg, borrow, steal, or tape while housesitting the next season of LOST when it begins at the end of this month. But otherwise? I'm good.]

While I’m not affected by the strike as a consumer, I support the WGA 100% in this labor action. As many people more articulate and more invested in the issue have said already, the central issue behind the strike is perfectly simple: if someone makes a dollar from a created work, and a writer contributed to that act of creation, a portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. If someone finds a way to distribute that creation in another way, and that distrubution generates another dollar, guess what? A portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. That holds for every dollar, and every distribution channel. There is room for negotiation about the size of the writer’s share, but not about the existence of that share.

With their day jobs on hold, a couple of television writers started a blog for their peers. Why We Write is a forum for working writers, aspiring writers, and others to explain their chosen profession (obsession) to the world. The entries are interesting, and like all writing, some are better than others. The common thread through the entires is that writers write because they can’t not write.

Check it out.

At the risk of getting all Comic Book Guy on the matter:

I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.

I was deeply disappointed in The Simpsons Movie. It wasn’t bad so much as flat. For every laugh out loud moment there were two moments that felt recycled and downright tired.

Homer’s selfishness and thoughtlessness almost dooms his marriage? Been there.

Bart rejects Homer in favor of a stronger father figure or more positive role model? Done that.

The Simpsons acquire a new/unusual pet? Do the names Santa’s Little Helper, Stampy, Laddie, or Mojo mean anything to you?

The Simpson have to escape Springfield one step ahead of a person/group? All this plotline did was make me wonder where the hell Sideshow Bob was. They have the opportnity to tell the quote ultimate unquote Simpsons story, and they leave out Bob? For shame!*

Homer is dragged into a spiritual/vision quest in order to find the clarity/redemption he need to do the right thing? It was funnier when Johnny Cash was his spirit guide.

A Simpsons movie should have been epic. Granted, if you look to the box office returns, it didn’t need to be epic to get the job done, but without a good reason, why make the transition from television to film? Don’t get me wrong; seeing Homer and Marge and all of the rest of Springfield rendered in a richer color palate with a sharper resolution was nice and all, but the results just scream “wasted potential” to me.

For that matter, President freakin’ Schwarzenegger? Why? Did the producers think audiences wouldn’t be able to infer the connection between the Governator’s Springfield doppelganger Ranier Wolfcastle and the real thing? Was this supposed to be some kind of half-assed attempt to plant the seed for the constitutional amendment required to pave the way for a Schwarzenegger presidency? Curse you and your manipulative perfidy, Rupert Murdoch!

Michael Sauter, you are my sworn enemy. Talking trash about Hudson Hawk made you so. That your interpretation is perhaps not wholly indefensible does not change the fact that we obviously have radically different, even conflicting, worldviews. Were we ever to meet, I imagine we could eventually find common ground in a shared appreciation of bad movies — for who could write so much on a subject he didn’t love? — although our respective definitions of “bad” would surely make for some lively disagreements. Indeed, your extensive summary of bad B movies makes you a sworn enemy with whom I might forge an uneasy peace. Plus, your book turned me on to the film Skidoo, which sounds so gloriously, all-star castardly bad, that I must track it down and experience it for myself. I figure this will either redeem you in my eyes, or fan the flames of my Hudson Hawk fueled enmity. Time will tell.

Entertained and inspired by Pixar’s Ratatouille*, The Kid asked me to teach her to cook. After talking it over for a bit, we agreed we would begin by trying to cook one meal a week together.

For our first foray into the world of gastronomic education, we pored through a children’s cookbook by a certain ubiquitous culinary celebrity. In our defense, I’ll note that we acquired this book at a time prior to this celebrity’s ubiquity crossing over the line into full-scale overexposure. After rejecting a few promising candidates, we settled on cold sesame noodles as our inaugural dish.

Admittedly, this was an exercise in measuring and stirring more than actual cooking, but it’s always good to begin by learning, and ultimately mastering, the fundamentals. Making the dish was educational for both of us. The Kid learned how to measure and mix and pour. She learned that sesame oil smells really good on its own, and that you can identify the distinctive taste of the oil in the finished dish. I learned that if you’re using a cookbook from someone famous for quick and convenient cooking, you have to account for the trappings of convenience.

For example, we’re a natural peanut butter household; although the recipe didn’t specify this, I must assume it was formulated using processed peanut butter. The noodles were terrific, and nicely peanutty, but they were lacking the hint of sweetness I expected from the dish. As a result, the saltiness of the tamari was a bit more assertive than I expected without any sugar to balance it out. Next time, we will either use the processed, hydrogenated oil-laden and besugar’d stuff made by the nice folks at Skiff or Jippy, or else we will add a little bit of sugar or honey to the dressing. Or a dash of duck or plum sauce maybe. Hey, I bet that would work aces.

The recipe we used called for about a cup of shredded cabbage to give the noodles some added crunch. Again, the author being a fan of speed, convenience, and short cuts, the recipe recommended using prepackaged cole slaw mix to get the job done. It worked fine, but it also left us with the better part of a package of shredded cabbage and carrot.

As it turned out, I had a fend for myself evening last night. As I was pulling a piece of leftover chicken out of the fridge, I noticed the slaw mix. In a burst of inspiration/improvisation, I created the following East-meets-Southwest fusion dish:

Bart Modern’s Barbecue-Shu Chicken

2T vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
1/2t Kosher salt
1t chili powder
1/2-1t crushed red pepper flakes
1/4c cider vinegar
2 cups shredded cole slaw mix
1/2c homemade barbecue sauce (or your favorite store-bought sauce)
1 barbecued chicken leg quarter, skinned and meat shredded off the bone. (Note: grilled pork or beef or tofu would work just as well, I suspect)

Heat the oil in a large skillet. When heated, add the onion, salt, chili powder and crushed red pepper flake. Cook over medium heat 3-5 minutes, until the onion softens and starts to brown. Add the vinegar (stand back from the pan to avoid inhaling the nasal passage scouring steam that rises when the vinegar hits the hot pan). Throw in the cabbage, stir to combine, and allow to wilt down, another 3-5 minutes, add the barbecue sauce and the chicken, and simmer until the chicken is heated through.

Serve with warm flour tortillas (I think. Didn’t actually have any on hand when I created the dish, but I think they would work fine. Of course, everyone knows that you never get enough pancakes for all the mu-shu when you order it at a restaurant, so eating it as is would be perfectly acceptable. It certainly worked for me).

*Highly recommended for animaniacs, cinephiles, and foodies alike. Should you happen to be all three, then ooh la la! We’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of the line “I killed a man…with THIS thumb!” ever since we saw the film.

Here we have the other magician movie of 2006. Where The Prestige tells the story of a game of “cat and also cat” between competing magicians, the core of this film is the the interplay between Edward Norton’s Eisenheim the Illusionist and Paul Giamatti’s Chief Inspector Uhl.

Giamatti is fantastic in this role. He plays Uhl as a cross between a thinner, less corrupt Sidney Greenstreet and a non eye-poppingly intense Brian Blessed. The result is an incredibly powerful character who is both a dedicated public servant (with all the compromises to higher authority that entails) and an individual of great personal integrity. When those conflicting aspects of his character get called into conflict, Uhl’s dissipation of this tension drives the climax of the film.

Edward Norton, as Eisenheim, is solid. His motivations are simple:

love, for Jessia Biel’s Sophie, a noblewoman he has known [and loved] since childhood, but who is betrothed to Rufus Sewell’s Crown Prince Leopold;

ego, which drives him to try and win Sophie from the Crown Prince, and to use his skills as a performer to first embarrass, then challenge, and ultimately attempt to destroy, the Prince;

and loss, which drives him to make contact with the dead.

Just as Uhl navigates the shoals of his own complex character, so Eisenheim charts a course through his own motivations.

And, of course, as with any film about magicians, nothing is precisely as it seems. The problem with The Illusionist is that the things that are not what they seem that are integral to the plot are telegraphed in such a way that it becomes possible to see the trick as it is happening. So, instead of appreciating the story, the film becomes an exercise in looking behind this curtain. This is a shame, as the sloppiness of the craft detracts from the impact of the performances, and this in turn blunts Giamatti’s final scene, as Uhl puts all the pieces together.