Wall-E #4
Written by Bryce Carlson
Art by Morgan Luthi
Cover A & B: Morgan Luthi
BOOM! Studios
Price: $2.99
Release date: March 24, 2010

One would assume that if you are reading this review, you most likely enjoy Wall-E, Pixar, and/or BOOM Kids. If this is true than you will definitely enjoy this comic. If you haven’t seen Wall-E than this comic might throw you for a loop because it follows the style of the movie in that in most of the scenes with the WALL-E units, there’s hardly any dialogue and the little dialogue they show all has to be sounded out. As I will discuss in more detail later in the review, this book is amazing for the art alone, as with the movie.

For the first time since this comic started the story is beginning to become more clear and intense. I believe we are hitting an apex in the story and may be finding out a lot of answers to the questions raised in the movie itself. I have really enjoyed all the stories up to this point but this issue has brought it to a whole new level and I have to say it has been ramped up and we finally see some humans for the first time. We also get the pleasure of seeing another new kind of robot that is part of the cleaning project on Earth that seems like an overseer of the WALL-E units. I really think that writer Bryce Carlson has really thought out this story and is invested in the adventure of Wall-E and respecting the story.

WALL-E #3
Written by J. Torres
Art by Morgan Luthi
Colors by Digikore Studios
Letters by Deron Bennett
BOOM! Studios
Release date: February 24, 2010

Some people think bugs and rodents are pests, others think they’re pets. I happen to fall into the latter category, having owned several pet insects and a rather large lab rat named Cornelius. Wall-E #3 tells the story of how everyone’s favourite trash compactor met his pet cockroach and only companion in a terrible trash-filled world.

Much like the Pixar animated movie, Wall-E #3 tells its story with almost no dialogue. This works well on some degree, but the comic suffers due to the lack of movement available to the character. One of the ways WALL-E was able to demonstrate so much emotion in the film without even having a face was through his frantic arm movements. It’s harder in a drawn still shot to demonstrate that same range of emotion.

Despite that, the J. Torres script still carries much of the charm that the original film did. The complicated Rube Goldberg-like traps that WALL-E concocts in an attempt to catch his six-legged friend are hilarious, and you can sense the loneliness of WALL-E through the pages as he attempts to make his first real friend.

It feels like it has been a week since any news that didn’t involve Disney has come out. The Mouse House recently held their D23 Expo and a flood of announcements were made, including some new information on the highly anticipated sequels Toy Story 3 and Cars 2.

Toy Story 3 basically just made a bunch of casting announcements. /Film picked up on some Tweets from director Lee Unkrich and Disney that revealed that John Morris, the boy who voiced Andy in Toy Story and Toy Story 2, has been cast once again in the role, which now sees Andy as an 18-year-old young man. Also added to the cast is a great collection of names, some of which are Pixar veterans. Lending their voices once again will be Bonnie Hunt (A Bug’s Life/Cars/Monsters Inc., Jerry Maguire) and Jeff Garlin (Wall-E, Curb Your Enthusiasm); while new to the Pixar dance is Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost) and Timothy Dalton (Hot Fuzz), who will apparently be playing someone named Mr. Pricklepants.

Elijah Wood, the star of the Tim Burton-produced feature film 9, presented to G4’s AOTS an exclusive short he put together with producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) from the upcoming CG-animated film. Watch it here below.

There are a few user-generated 9 mash-up videos up on YouTube, two of which I think are clever and worth mentioning (and are embedded here below). One is called “9’s Obsession” and features clips from the movie set to the song “Jack’s Obsession” from another Burton-produced animated favorite The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In another video, called “Wall-E9 Trailer,” someone did a mash-up of 9 dialogue with scenes from fellow animated post-apocalyptic Earth film, Wall-E.

9 follows the story of 9, as he awakens to find a post-apocalyptic world where humans are gone and machines have taken over. He finds another group of beings like himself who are in hiding from the machines and tries to convince them to fight, not hide, and to try to uncover what’s motivating the machines to bring about the extinction of humanity.

After much-anticipation, the nominees for 81st Academy Awards were announced today. For the most part, the list doesn’t really shine; some categories are as expected, some include surprises, and some just don’t make any sense at all.

First of all, the bright spot. After many, many months of wonder, debates, and arguments — Heath Ledger was indeed given his much-deserved Oscar nomination. Whether he’ll actually win or not is yet to be seen — he does have some very strong competition — but now that he has received the nomination, it would really be a perfect and poetic ending to an extremely sad story.

On the more negative side: the Best Picture category. Keep in mind that I haven’t seen any of these movies, so my opinions are strictly based on what I’ve heard about the various films that were thought to be in contention for a Best Picture nomination. Considering what I’ve heard, one can’t help but think that this year’s five is a little… boring. From what I’ve gathered, there were definitely other movies that could have replaced multiple nominees, so why did they not?

Continue reading for more, as well as the complete list of nominees.