New sport: Chess Boxing!

19-year old Russian math student Nikolai Sazhin has won the title of world chess boxing champion. Chess boxing is a new "sport" that was inspired by a French cartoon back in the Nineties. Competitors like Italy's Gianluca Sirc (shown in the photo) meet in the center of a boxing ring and play chess for 4 minutes. Then the board is cleared away and the contestants duke it out for 3 minutes in a regulation boxing match. A chess boxing match consists of 6 rounds of chess and 5 rounds of boxing. The winner is decided by checkmate, knockout, or points.

Maybe this can be an Olympic sport someday! :-)

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Full review of "Journey's End" season finale of DOCTOR WHO

This episode seems to have honked off some people. Probably the ones who lost lots of money wagering on the outcome of the cliffhanger from "The Stolen Earth".

Yeah, it helps to unhinge your mind from common sense and real-world physics while watching "Journey's End", the finale for Season 4 (or is that 28?) of Doctor Who. But you know what? I don't care... 'cuz this was about the most perfect season finale of a television show that I've ever seen, and if this had been the very last episode of Doctor Who ever, it would be enough to let me die a satisfied man.

Okay, if you read this blog you know the drill: "thanks to our Brittish brethren across the pond" for putting it on the Internet after it premiered on the BBC last night, yaddah yaddah, cue the standard screencap and select quotes...

"Now then... where were we?"

"You can hug me if you want. No really, you can hug me."

"Exterminieren!"

"What have I ever done? I'm a temp from Chiswick."

"Right now that wooden door... is just wood."

"You were brilliant. And you were brilliant. And you were brilliant."

"You are connected to the TARDIS. Now feel it die!"

"You're naked!"

"That's disgusting!"

"We were always heading for this."

"So cold and dark... fire is coming... the endless flames..."

"Oh that's it! The anger, the fire, the rage of at Time Lord who butchered millions. There he is. Why so shy? Show your companion. Show her your true self. Dalek Caan has promised me that, too."

"Behold the apotheosis of my genius."

"No, Davros! DAVROS YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! NO!!!"

"It's not over yet sweetheart!"

"Just my luck. I climb through two miles of ventilation shaft chasing life signs on this thing, and who do I find? Mickey Mouse!"

"I don't want my name on this, given what we are about to do."

"Oh my God. He found you."

"Captain Jack Harkness calling all Dalek boys and girls! Are you receiving me?"

"Impossible. That face. After all these years... you were there on Skaro at the very beginning of my creation."

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor: you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your children of time transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this. How many more? Just think. How many have died in your name? The Doctor: the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself."

"Donna you can't even change a plug!"

"Because you two were both Time Lords!"

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now!"

"I am The Doctor!"

"Never forget Doctor: YOU DID THIS! I name you, forever, you are the DESTROYER OF WORLDS!!!"

"Affirmative, mistress!"

"You've got the biggest family on Earth."

"Anything! Brand new life! Just you watch."

"That's me, when we first met. And you made me better."

"When I last stood on this beach on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me? Go on, say it."

"I was going to be with you forever. The rest of my life. Traveling in the TARDIS."

"Oh, Donna Noble, I am so sorry. But we had the best of times. The best. Goodbye."

"They will never forget her..."

"But every night, Doctor, when it gets dark, and the stars come out, I'll look up, on her behalf, I'll look up at the sky and think of you."

The final scene of last week's Doctor Who left millions of fans on tenterhooks: The Doctor was regenerating after being shot by a Dalek... so what was he going to look like this time? Which actor would now play The Doctor? Without spoiling anything more, I'll just say that particular plot point gets taken care of within the first minute. Personally, I loved it!

"Journey's End" ran 65 minutes long and it was packed with not just some of the best action sequences of the story to date... but also what might be among the best dialogue in Doctor Who history. This was Russell T. Davies's final regular episode as showrunner (although he'll be producing this year's Christmas special and next season's three Doctor Who television movies also) and let's face it: the guy has drawn some flack for episodes such as "Love & Monsters" and the like. But you know what? Between "The Stolen Earth" last week, and how he did "Journey's End", I'm going to completely overlook those few low moments of his tenure. Because I would be lying through my teeth if I did not say that I screamed with horror, then screamed with joy, and had tears of both laughter and sadness and then ultimately triumph from watching "Journey's End".

This was a love letter episode not only to Davies's own work, but to all the faithful fans of Doctor Who across the years, including those who watched the original run. The scene where Davros recognizes Sarah Jane from the very first time that they met, and you gotta bear in mind that this was from "Genesis of the Daleks" all the way back in 1975, and watching Elisabeth Sladen portray genuine horror and then radiant defiance at this twisted freak just as she did over thirty years ago... I loved that! And then later on in the episode, the scene that will forever come to mind whenever I think of Doctor Who: the TARDIS, that brave little blue police box, pulling the entire planet Earth all the way across the universe back to its proper home while The Doctor and his friends operate the controls. If there was a single moment from the almost half-century of Doctor Who that symbolizes the spirit and hope of this show, then that is it.

But it's not the effects or the little "geek" nods that made "Journey's End" one of the most astounding episodes of television in recent memory. It was the characters and how Davies used them, perhaps more poignantly than has ever been done in Doctor Who history, to show us what it means to be The Doctor. And of all the moments in "Journey's End", none more illustrates this than when Davros confronts The Doctor and forces him to realize the horrible truth: that The Doctor, for all his desire to save every life, inevitably uses those closest to him in his pursuit of good... and that they are all too often hurt and even die because of him.

It's one of the most powerful moments of Doctor Who ever, and it helps to make Julian Bleach's portrayal of Davros possibly the finest of the show's entire run. A lot of fans have argued over the years that it's Davros, and not The Master, who is The Doctor's true supreme nemesis. After Bleach's turn in the role, I think there's no doubt about that now. Davros now stands alone as the one villain who is the complete and full counter to everything The Doctor stands for... and in his own way, he's done it by showing that he and The Doctor are not very unlike at all.

Dear Lord, I've got to watch myself or I'm going to totally spill the beans about this episode to anyone who hasn't watched it yet!

The conclusion of "Journey's End" was the best ending possible, and I don't think there was anything wrong with it (though plenty enough people are saying that Davies wasted an opportunity... personally, I can't see it). This was the final chapter of one volume of The Doctor's adventures, and true to The Doctor's nature it ended as happily as could have been hoped for, albeit not without loss. And like I said earlier, had this been the final Doctor Who episode ever, this would have been a very fitting and towering conclusion...

...but also in keeping with the spirit of Doctor Who, there is always a new adventure waiting to happen.

David Tennant was terrific, as always. Catherine Tate was stupendous and for her work this season, she is always going to have a special place on my list of favorite companions. Billie Piper and John Barrowman and Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri and Freema Agyeman, and especially the ever-lovely Elisabeth Sladen: in their own way they made this such an unforgettably beautiful episode. Julian Bleach channeled Emperor Palpatine and Hannibal Lecter into his turn as Davros... and I hope we get to see him many more times in the future. Bernard Cribbins again showed why he has been one of the best things to ever happen to Doctor Who since the show returned. The whole cast was terrific... but I especially have to say that I was delighted that John Leeson got to provide his voice for a certain classic Doctor Who character ;-)

Murray Gold deserves a ton of awards for the music he has composed for this season of Doctor Who but especially for the past several episodes beginning with "Silence in the Library". The themes that he came up with for "Journey's End" are nothing short of magnificent. The CD of this season's soundtrack cannot arrive fast enough: just for the theme where the TARDIS is pulling the Earth through space, I will buy this as soon as it comes out.

All in all, "Journey's End" was not only the best way to end not just an over-the-top wonderful season of Doctor Who, but a fitting tribute to the man who brought the show back from its long hiatus. My hat's off to ya, Mr. Davies!

On my rating of Doctor Who episodes, "Journey's End" gets the full Five Sonic Screwdrivers!

Coming to the BBC on December 25th, 2008: The Doctor faces the return of the Cybermen. So if you've been following these review of new Doctor Who episodes all season long, I'll see ya again probably the day after Christmas!

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I saw MONGOL again and Phillip got to see it, too!

Last December at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9, the annual film festival in Austin, Texas, the big breakout hit of the entire show was easily Mongol. Sergei Bodrov directed, co-wrote and co-produced, and collaborated with a crew from over forty countries to produce this vast epic about the early life of Temujin... who history would remember as Genghis Khan.

Even before I had left Texas, my good friend Phillip Arthur had expressed some envy that I got to see Mongol waaaaay before its wide release. Well, ever since then I've been keeping an eye out for that, 'cuz I vowed that I'd see Mongol again and that next time it would be with Phillip. Last week it finally came out in Greensboro (at the Grande at Friendly Center). I shot Phillip an e-mail about it and we quickly made plans to see it the next evening. That's what we did on Thursday night and now that he's posted his review of it I'll add some more thoughts about Mongol.

The first thing you'll notice about Mongol is the photography. Shot in Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, the vast steppes of twelfth-century Asia are some of the most beautiful images in modern cinema. This is the turbulent landscape that we find the young Khan - spelled "Temudjin" in the subtitles - who from the moment his father dies is beaten and forged by fate and tradition into the one who would unite the Mongols into the largest empire of world history. Indeed, the geography of Mongol is as much a character as those who dwell on it, and Bodrov is sumptuous with his treatment of the land and its climate.

Genghis Khan's name is one that to this day has provoked fear and dread. But his portrayal by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano is perhaps one of the most noble of any recent biography. The Temudjin of Mongol is not the bloodthirsty tyrant who eventually brought despair to the frontier of Russia, but is instead an honorable and decent man. He is a loving husband and father to his children, who by birth and circumstance has had a destiny thrust upon him. Phillip and I talked after the movie about how Bodrov's treatment of Temudjin is almost like a combination of William Wallace from Braveheart and Conan the Barbarian. And then toward the end of the movie, when Temudjin sets out to impose law and discipline on a people run amok, he become very much like a Moses figure.

The battles are intense, well-choreographed and unrelentingly brutal so far as graphic depictions go. Tuomas Kantelinen's score is amazingly beautiful and haunting: I don't know if this soundtrack is available, but I'm bound and determined to find a copy somewhere. All of this and more supplements the fine acting from the cast, which at times moves the viewer to laughter and tears and everything in between. I don't know why, but I have to say that I enjoyed Mongol even more the second time than I did the first... and I loved it already the first time. It's easily among the top five new movies that I've watched this past year.

Mongol comes out on DVD this September. But if you can possibly do so, you really should watch this movie the way it deserves to be seen: on a big wide screen in a darkened theater, with hopefully lots of other people to discover the majesty of Mongol with.

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Mark Rich: WALL-E for President

Mark Rich of The New York Times has a good write-up of the new Disney/Pixar movie WALL-E, and how it might serve as a mirror of the times we live in...

The “Wall-E” crowds were primed by the track record of its creator, Pixar Animation Studios, and the ecstatic reviews. But if anything, this movie may exceed its audience’s expectations. It did mine.

As it happened, “Wall-E” opened the same summer weekend as the hot-button movie of the 2004 campaign year, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Ah, the good old days. Oil was $38 a barrel, our fatalities in Iraq had not hit 900, and only 57 percent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. (Now more than 80 percent do.) “Wall-E,” a fictional film playing to a far larger audience, may touch a more universal chord in this far gloomier time.

Indeed, sitting among rapt children mostly under 12, I felt as if I’d stepped through a looking glass. This movie seemed more realistically in touch with what troubles America this year than either the substance or the players of the political food fight beyond the multiplex’s walls.

While the real-life grown-ups on TV were again rebooting Vietnam, the kids at “Wall-E” were in deep contemplation of a world in peril — and of the future that is theirs to make what they will of it. Compare any 10 minutes of the movie with 10 minutes of any cable-news channel, and you’ll soon be asking: Exactly who are the adults in our country and who are the cartoon characters?

More good thoughts from Rich at the link above. Between what he's writing here and a lot of other positive reaction to WALL-E, it reminds me a lot about when Forrest Gump came out in 1994.

Good stories, both of 'em. And a lot of others too. Maybe someday we'll start to take some of their messages to heart.

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Just watched "Journey's End", the DOCTOR WHO Season 4 finale

Now THAT was epic!

If not the best Doctor Who episode ever, "Journey's End" will certainly be among the top ten. Maybe even the top five.

I screamed, laughed and cried so many times during this.

Full review coming soon. This needs plenty of time to digest and absorb.

EDIT 07:19 p.m. EST 07/06/2008: Here's the full review!

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Japanese prank videos

Those fun-loving Japanese are at it again. Check out these hilarious prank videos!

Thanks to my good buddy "bmovies" for finding 'em :-)

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Great Britain in grip of fever over tonight's DOCTOR WHO

Proportionally it's a much a bigger event than a season finale of Lost, or the series finale of The Sopranos. In the annals of television history it's set to rank up there with the revelation of who shot J.R., or the very last episode of M*A*S*H...

At least ten million people in Great Britain tonight are expected to watch "Journey's End", the season finale of Doctor Who. Last week's episode "The Stolen Earth" ended with the biggest cliffhanger in the show's nearly half-century of history: The Doctor (currently played by David Tennant) was shot clean through the chest by a Dalek. And then, with Donna and Rose and Captain Jack watching, he began to regenerate.

If Tennant is leaving the show and another actor is about to take his place as The Doctor - a very big deal and something that has happened 9 times already since the show began in 1963 - then it will go down as one of the greatest coups of recent times, and nothing short of a marvel that the BBC was able to keep it under such tight wraps.

All week, it's been the biggest topic of discussion among our Brittish brethren. Major betting houses have been taking wagers and laying odds on what happens tonight: does The Doctor regenerate into a new form? If so, who will be the new actor... or even actress... to take the role? Robert Carlyle and James Nesbitt have been huge favorites but Bill Nighy (Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is said to be in the running also, along with Hugh Grant.

Of course, that's all subject to David Tennant's Doctor fully regenerating into a new body, and this all not being one of current showrunner Russell T. Davies's famous tricks. But if it is, it's a darned good one.

Fellow Doctor Who fan Mark Goodacre spots a treasure trove of media madness about tonight's episode, and offers his perspective as a British fan living abroad (here in North Carolina, even). Worth checking out.

And I suspect that around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon, the Internet is going to melt down from all the American fans trying to download "Journey's End" :-P

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LOST reruns on Sci-Fi Channel in September

If you've always wanted to check out Lost but felt daunted by how far along the story is (production on Season 5 begins next month) and you don't want to chuck good money on DVD sets just yet, you're in luck. Starting on Monday, September 15th the Sci-Fi Channel will be rerunning Lost. It'll be four solid hours of Lost every Monday night, from the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 in the pilot episode on through the insane events of "There's No Place Like Home", the Season 4 finale. Plenty enough time to catch-up new viewers on things like the Others, the DHARMA Initiative, the Tailies, and all the other stuff they should know before Season 5 premieres in January 2009.

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How the BBC resurrected Davros for DOCTOR WHO

Before this past week, the last time that Davros had been seen was the 1988 Doctor Who story "Remembrance of the Daleks". Two decades later and the BBC decided that fiction's most murderous villain ever deserved an upgrade for the revived series.

The Telegraph in London has an in-depth feature on how Davros was brought back to life. In addition to several conceptual drawings of both Davros and the new red Supreme Dalek, it also talks to the BBC's artists and engineering team members, who decided early on that Davros's new look should draw from how the character first appeared in 1975, when Michael Wisher was in the role. From the design of the chair to the sculpting of the prosthetics (which can only be worn once) that Julian Bleach wears for the two-part finale, the BBC staff held nothing back from intentionally making Davros "bigger and scarier" than ever. A very interesting read for anyone who's interested in film and television production.

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Jesse Helms has passed away

It's being reported at this hour that Jesse Helms, who served in the United States Senate longer than any other North Carolinian, has passed away at the age of 86.

Let's go ahead and get it out of the way: yes, Helms did some things in his day that to current sensibilities were very callous, even downright crude. The "white hands" television ad that he ran against Harvey Gantt in 1990 was one of the first things that really made me take notice at how dirty the political process had become (that alone was enough to make me vow, even back then, that I'd never run a negative ad aimed against a person if I were to enter politics). And then there was his early career at WRAL in Raleigh, which some people will quickly ascribe some nastier connotations to.

But I still voted for Helms in the 1996 election. And if he were able to run again, I'd vote for him once more. Because disagree with him on some things though I did (and still do), I could not doubt his sincerity in doing what he believed was in the best interest of the people he was sworn to serve... and that's a quality that is hard to find anymore.

Whatever else could be said about the man, it cannot be denied that Jesse Helms was a product of his time, and to that he did hold faithful and true. Whatever your political stripe, he's owed a measure of respect for that. And I think that when the books are finally written on his life, he's going to emerge as one of the most influential - if not also among the most enigmatic - figures of American politics in the past half-century. I will even go so far to say that in the greater scheme of things Helms did far more good than any harm attributed to him... and the full appreciation for that is still to come.

Rest in peace, Senator Helms.

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Best way I know of to celebrate this Independence Day

Go to Best Buy or FYE or wherever, and get the DVD box set of HBO's recent John Adams miniseries (came out last month, we got ours a couple of weeks ago). And watch the whole thing while waiting to go out and eat hot dogs and see fireworks this evening.

If you read this blog during the time HBO was running it, you know fully well that I thought this was one of the most masterful and poignant miniseries to have graced the medium in a very long time.

Watch John Adams, and then think about the America that Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and all those other guys worked and fought to give us... compared to the America that we have today.

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

And after the movie that I watched with a friend last night there's more that I probably could say about it... but I'd already seen Mongol (back in December at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 in Austin, Texas) and I promised Phillip that I wouldn't write anymore about it 'til he did. Suffice it to say, it's ironic that such a beautiful foreign-made film could evoke so much thought about our own state of affairs.

Let's put it this way: when you see Temudjin (better known as Genghis Khan) in this movie, you'll quietly wish that we had someone like him running for President!

For what it's worth, Happy Fourth of July, my fellow Americans.

And I hope we get to celebrate many more of them.

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The first trailer for the remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

We do not need this movie. It's like remaking Gone With The Wind, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(Or maybe my mouth still has a bad taste in it from the mess that was I Am Legend.)

Keanu Reeves as Klaatu is intriguing though. And at least they seem to have kept the classic look for Gort...

Blast here for the first trailer (in Quicktime format) for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

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Judge orders YouTube to surrender ALL user history to Viacom

A judge has ordered YouTube to hand over ALL the history of its users - including videos watched and IP addresses - to Viacom, as part of Viacom's "infringement" lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google.

I first found the story on Slashdot, which is reflecting a lot of outrage at the judge's ruling.

Since it's already been established that Viacom has STOLEN video from ME, perhaps I should sue and have a judge also give me YouTube's user history so that I can see how many times Viacom watched my own videos...?

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Found at last: The FULL print of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS!

In 1927, Austrian-German filmmaker Fritz Lang released Metropolis, considered by many to be the zenith of the silent movie era. Unfortunately the various versions of Metropolis that we have had for most of the 81 years since have been around 118 minutes long: drastically shortened from the film's original running time of 210 minutes (did those guys think big back then, or what?). For all this time finding a complete, uncut copy of Metropolis has been one of the most prized goals of die-hard movie buffs, and most had given up hope that Lang's original vision might never be seen again.

Tonight, Ain't It Cool News is broadcasting the word far and wide that a complete print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has been located in Buenos Ares, Argentina!

I've only seen Metropolis once, years ago in college. I'll admit: some of the dialogue is... odd... and maybe even a bit pretentious. But you know what? I don't care. People will be saying the same about the Star Wars movies someday (a series whose look was greatly inspired by Metropolis). Whatever faults it may have with the story and writing, those do nothing to diminish the staggering achievement that Metropolis was in its day. Movies like that and King Kong, filmmakers back then did some amazing stuff with so little. "Ya gotta appreciate a movie in the context of the time that it was made in", has been my argument for a long time now. And in that regard, Metropolis is still one of the biggest achievements in motion picture history.

And now we're getting a whole wazoo-more of it!

Now all we need is to find a full print (or any print at all) of London After Midnight, and for Jerry Lewis to finally complete The Day the Clown Cried, and for Disney to finally release Song of the South on DVD, and for all 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who to be found... and then I'll be happy :-)

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The final scenes of "The Stolen Earth" on DOCTOR WHO

Right now it's the Internet's most hotly-debated moment of television: the ending of "The Stolen Earth" on Doctor Who. And if you want to know what the buzz is about, here it is. Everything from The Doctor and Rose running toward each other, to that final scene which nobody saw coming...

And here is the BBC's official trailer for "Journey's End", the season finale which premieres this weekend...

If you ever wanted to know why I've always been a Doctor Who fan, then now is as good a time as any to find out. "The Stolen Earth" airs in a few weeks on Sci-Fi Channel here in America, if you haven't seen it yet.

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Review of WALL-E

This past December during Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 in Austin, Texas (read my full report here) two people from Pixar Animation came and showed us some footage from WALL-E. And I remember telling someone at the time that if any movie deserves to be the first to make a billion dollars at the box office, WALL-E would be it. Even then, it looked that amazing.

I wasn't able to catch it opening day ('cuz I was busy all weekend with our local Theatre Guild's production of Children of Eden) but yesterday Lisa and I went to the new Four Seasons Station 18 in Greensboro, and I finally got to watch WALL-E.

So what did I think of it?

Best. Pixar. Movie. Ever.

And if it's not the best movie that Disney has ever done, it certainly ranks up there somewhere along with The Lion King and Aladdin (those are my personal favorites anyway). It's so good that I want to see WALL-E... at least six more times while it's still playing at the cinema!

But you know what? The day after, and I can't put my finger on any one reason why WALL-E is so good. This is a movie of very utter extremes: one one hand, this is the finest work that has ever been done for a computer animated film. WALL-E looks real. The cockroach looks real. Those huge pylons of trash that dot the landscape look real. The only thing that doesn't look realistic are the humans aboard the Axiom, and when you follow the story you can understand why that might be, anyway. But at the same time, for all the raw rendering power that got poured into WALL-E, this is a story so simple and accessible that for most of the movie there is not any dialogue at all. And I think that is going to be one of the reasons why WALL-E will appear on many others' lists as Pixar's best effort to date. It is Pixar at its purest... but it's also a movie that dares do something the animation house has never done before: implement footage of real humans (clips of Hello Dolly and Fred Willard's role as the President of Buy 'n Large are the most prominent).

The movie is about WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth class), the last robot still functioning on an Earth buried beneath wasteful consumption gone amok. A few hundred years in our future a Wal-Martish corporation called Buy 'n Large has come to provide for every material human desire and is now the world government. Unfortunately all that needless purchasing has made Earth unfit for human habitation. So all the people leave on starships for a few years while Buy 'n Large dispatches millions of robots to clean up the place.

Seven centuries later, WALL-E is the only one still operational and following his directive. He wakes up every morning, recharges via solar power, then spends the day cleaning up the garbage and collecting the odd treasure like lighters, videotapes and brassieres. Then he retreats back to his "home" for the night, with a cockroach to keep him company.

Sounds like the movie I Am Legend, doesn't it? Well, whatever went wrong with that film, WALL-E succeeds so far as impressing us with a character that not only has a soul, but also with the sense that he is lonely. All without a single spoken word of dialogue.

And then, one day, a ship lands near WALL-E's home. It dispatches EVE, a sleek, slim "female" robot. Immediately, WALL-E is smitten with affection for her. What happens from there eventually catapults WALL-E off the Earth and into space to discover what happened to humanity: now a race of morbidly obese, perpetually lazy blobs of flesh (is this the future of America? I cringe to think that it's possible) that are constantly barraged with advertisements to buy and spend and eat and play. It's like THX-1138 as conceived by Pixar. And I'm gonna kick myself if I don't mention my favorite line of the whole movie: the Captain of the Axiom comes to his senses and declares that "I don't want to survive! I want to live!" I can't remember when so much truth was said with so few words. The human race almost a thousand years in the future not only needs a purpose, it needs a savior... and this squat little droid that looks like a cross between E.T. and Johnny 5 might be it.

That's all I dare say about the plot of WALL-E, 'cuz I went in pretty unawares about the movie's story and everyone else deserves the same pleasure, too.

WALL-E might be the best movie that I've seen so far in 2008. For years I've heard a lot of people complain that the problem with computer animation is that it can't adequately express emotion like live action or even traditional animation. If Pixar hadn't erased those doubts already with recent films like Finding Nemo, then it certainly does with WALL-E. And if WALL-E represents Pixar's fine tradition of continually raising the bar from its previous work, then I cannot begin to imagine what wonder and delight the studio has in store for us over the next few years (Pixar has four or five big movies that they are working on at any moment and at the time of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 their slate was filled with projects going all the way to 2012). In fact, I would even say that if WALL-E is any indication, that Pixar might someday soon give us a film that is in every way as believable as any live-action science-fiction epic. Dare I say it? Pixar going back to its Lucasfilm roots to give us Star Wars Episode VII? As doubtful as I am about the upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars computer-animated feature, I would gladly buy a ticket for one by Pixar.

I can't say enough how good WALL-E is, folks. You really do owe it to yourself to check it out in theaters. And along with WALL-E you can also enjoy Pixar's new funny short Presto.

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All kinds of DC Comics video goodness hits iTunes!

In the words of Geoff Gentry who first passed along word of this: "Get your debit card ready."

iTunes has just added the DC Comics Collection to its vast video library. You can now purchase and download the first several episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and Superman: The Animated Series. It's also got Max Fleischer's animated Superman shorts from the 1940s, the first season of The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeve, the first season of Super Friends and the complete 2008 Aquaman series. Geoff adds that hopefully iTunes will soon add Justice League and I heartily concur.

But in the meantime, if you've never watched "Heart of Ice", the episode that first hurtled Batman: The Animated Series to critical acclaim, you can now enjoy it for two bucks via iTunes. And as soon as they make "Apokolips... Now!" Parts 1 and 2 from Superman: The Animated Series available, I'm gonna be acquiring those, too!

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