Saw my first summer movie yesterday—
WALL-E from Pixar. Now since it’s a family picture, I normally would have waited for it to come out in video, if I felt the need to see it at all. But my sis-in-law is visiting and she wanted to see it
so being the champ that I am, I went along.
It’s so cute, it sucked me right in. If you don’t know the story (and I won’t give anything away,) there’s this cute little R2-D2 kind of robot who is alone on earth performing the task he was given 700 years in the past by the last humans before they exited the planet. Seems around the year 2100, we humans turned Earth into a vast, polluted landfill and had to escape to a space station to survive. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class) sole task was to gather up garbage, compact it, and put it in piles. But it’s now 2805, WALL-E is the last of his kind left and probes are being sent back to earth from the space station to see if Earth can again support life. The probe turns out to be a cute little sophisticated device called EVA—that’s all the plot I’ll share. But it’s well worth seeing. And this is from one who eschews movies that do not contain sex and violence. I give it two fangs up.
Next up, though, Ironman and Wanted. What about you?
Speaking of movies. This one sounds good: Ghost. It’s a political thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Pierce Brosnam. Directed by bad boy Roman Polanski. Production starts in September. From Variety:
Cage will play a ghostwriter hired abruptly to finish the memoirs of an ex-British prime minister after the first scribe turned up dead. The ghostwriter's research leads him to uncover skeletons in the pol's closet that put the writer's life in danger. (Tilda) Swinton will play the wife of the former prime minister (Brosnan). Her marriage is crumbling, and she falls for the writer. Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde are producing. Polanski and Harris teamed to write the script.
Since we’re talking about screens, let’s switch to the tube—YouTube offers both an unaired teaser for
Angel and the unaired pilot for
Buffy. It’s fun to watch. Buffy is shown in about five minute segments so you have to link from one to the other. But here’s the first. Notice anything different about Willow? And Julie Benz? Let's see how observant you are! :-)
As for me, summer slows me down. I’m working on proposals for new projects, trying to get up energy to start the sixth Anna book and gearing up for the September release of Legacy. I swear I work harder as a writer than I ever did in any day job.
Wouldn’t trade it for the world. Anybody got any interesting summer plans they'd like to share? We're listening... well, at least I am. Mario is off somewhere doing something.
I saw George Carlin in person a lifetime ago in a small San Diego Pub. I still remember his
Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On Television.
That was in the 70's-- I think I've heard them all by now.
Happy Fourth--