What Do You Want?

Pixar are back at the box office: after fishes and cars it is time for robots now. The hero of their latest movie WALL-E is a box shaped robot which looks like a cute miniature version of Number 5.

The movie is refreshingly different from other animated films. It features neither funny talking animals nor living objects with human faces. There is even hardly any dialogue in the first 30 minutes. Instead it delivers a serious message wrapped in a lot of humour. And it manages to do that without benig lecturing.

WALL-E is good entertainment which provides food for thought.

Since 2005 a number of movies using a new 3D technology called Real D have been released. Silke and I used the opportunity and watched the Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D in the Vue in London’s West End yesterday. As we had never seen a Real D movie before we were both very curious.

We received expendable glasses at the entrance. They were available in one size only and didn’t fit me very well. After the advertising we were asked to put them on because most of the trailers were using Real D, too. The effect was amazing. It took me a few seconds to stop trying to evade things which seemed to come out of the screen.

The main movie started with a bunch of computer generated images with very convincing 3D effects. Things did however change a bit when the live-action started. The scenery frequently looked like it consisted of multiple layers of cardboards with photos on them. When the actors were shown in a computer generated landscape they looked a bit like 2D figures in a 3D world. Scenes like the roller coaster ride were exciting nevertheless.

Overall the 3D effects are very good in computer generated scenes but could be better in live-action. It would also be nice if the glasses were available in different sizes. The movie itself was an average adventure film, entertaining but nothing special.