Posted by Martin
The Movie:
The Disc itself:
The video on this disc is as expected spectacular. One of the benefits of Blu-Ray is the simple transition from a digitally created or aquired film to the digital disc. I would consider this disc a reference disc to show off the video capabilies of Blu-Ray.
The audio on the disc is DTS-HD 5.1. I am a little surprised it is not a 7.1 mix, but that is a minor question. The sound here is also reference quality. It has to be, the first part of the movie is told without real dialogue. With Ben Burtt doing the sound design this is a soundtrack of extraordinary skill, the clarity and subtly of it also makes it a reference disc. The sounds of the distopian future, the papers blowing in the wind, Wall-E driving around, and wind blowing through a ghost town are all things that are communicated in clear tones. They are not muddled here.
The Extras:
There a plethera of excellent extras on the disc. Let's go through the ones I think are worth your time.
The director's commentary with Andrew Stanton comes with something Disney calls Cine Explore. In this case it just seems to be added visuals to the audio commentary. Now the visuals are interesting in most cases as they show sketch boards, and early concept drawings, they also add photographs of the people he is discussing.
Staton discusses how he developed his ideas for the movie. He discusses The Tripletts of Bellville and it's use of a French song, which inspired the opening of Wall-E. The blending of the opening happy and old song with the sad and disturbing opening images. Apprantly he tries to keep his political views to himself as a director, at least that is what he says in the commentary. Apparently he has been asked about his views on consummerism and ecological living, looking at the movie alone one could definately see opinions being written in the movie. But according to the commentary that was not the ultimate purpose of the movie, but it is hard not to see the message in the movie.
There is a second and more entertaining and in many ways more enlightening commentary is the Geek Track, a pop-up commentary, with Pixar's "Geek Squad". This commentary is completely inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000. You will have to see it to understand. This commentary can wander and get off task, but as commentaries go it is one of the more enjoyable.
There are several other extras, but the main extra and by far the best one is "The Pixar Story" by Leslie Iwerks. This shows behind the scenes work and history of how Pixar came to be. From it's birth under George Lucas to the growth under Steve Jobs the history of Pixar is quite insteresting to learn. I found the most enjoyable clip is watching Toy Story director John Lasseter recieve the news that Toy Story has been green lit. It is shown thre home movies. So it gives the feel of actually being there. This documetary alone is worth a rental of this disc. As a side note this documentary shows about 5 seconds from The Empire Strikes Back, which is great to see what Star Wars will look like on Blu-Ray.
Other Extras:
Presto, is the short movie that showed with Wall-E when it originally came to theaters. A nice addition to the disc.
Burn-E is a second animated short new for the Blu-Ray release. It is a cool little flic as it tells the story of a background character from Wall-E, and it makes for great connections with the main movie. There is also a bonus onto the short which shows original boards to the movie.
"Lots of Bots" Storybook is a little bit of a time waster. It gives backgrounds on all the different robots in the movie. Interesting information here but nothing extraordinary here.
Animation Sound Design, is a featurette about Ben Burtt and the extraordinary work he does on this film. It is awesome to see him work with real world objects to create other worldly sounds. It is nice to see that not all sounds are completely computer generated.
Overall Disney does its homework and delievers a great overall disc for both Pixar lovers and general movie watchers.
recently won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Not much of a surprise, the reviews of the movie were all good. My own review appears here. Wall-E had a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad.
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