Thursday, July 24, 2008

WALL:E - best film I've seen in a good while...

Ah Pixar. When they make a film for adults, they can't be beat. I loved the Incredibles - it just had so much going on, on many a level, with great acting and some top superhero jokes appealing to my beloved geekery. Unfortunately they also make films for kids, and sometimes forget about me and my needs, so I've never really got on board with films like Cars.

WALL:E - as you can imagine, made me hopeful. It's a film about a robot, which puts it in line with some others of my all time favourites, Silent Runnning*, Short Circuit, Iron Giant, and the rest, with the human cast reduced (literally) to bags of mostly water.

It's also, sort of, post-apocalyptic, hitting my second geekery button full-on, delivering a stunning vision of earth; rusted and overrun with discarded technology. There's a scene focusing on the rotting hulls of several huge ships - which can't help but bring to mind ship breaking in the developing world.

And, in the ultimate test - I now want my own WALL:E. Where did I leave my Gamecube...
* No it is not about Bruce Dern. Or trees. It's all about the drones.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Carpet Smell

We've just had new carpet put down on the stairs in our house. Random thing to write about you might think, but for me, it's a bit Proustian.

Ahhh, 'Carpet Smell'. A bit like the fact that new cars and books have their own special smell, so does carpet. And it triggers happy memories of childhood trips to B&Q, and rolling through the giant carpet pyramid things.

Especially the ones really close together that squeezed you a bit like a mangle.

CC Image from Marc E Marc.