Wall E Thoughts

I got to see Wall E over the weekend. Spectacular. Especially the first half hour--the folks at Pixar really created a spectacular visual setting and essentially taught a clinic on the use of visuals and sound to tell a story without dialogue.

Still, it seems fashionable to say that WALL*E should be nominated for Best Picture beyond Best Animated picture. I think that is just plain silly. I thoroughly enjoyed the film as much as any animated film that I have seen in a decade, but Best Picture? Come on! Not for a film that is brilliant only 1/3 of the time. The scenes with the 'human' characters and most of the scenes with the secondary robots were silly and not nearly as powerful as the scenes on earth and the EVE/WALL*E interactions like their space dance. Though I do admit, WALL*E is the best movie that I have seen in 2008, this has been a relatively poor year thus far. That's no reason to think that there aren't 5 better films coming around the corner--films from names like Pitt, Clooney, Pacino, De Niro, Mortensen, Zellwegger, Fincher, Blanchett, Swinton, Hoffman, DiCaprio, and Winslet will be in theaters this fall. Do you think that Wall*E will stand up to those offerings when it comes to Best Picture nominations? Mark it down as a shoo-in winner for best animated feature, but it will not and should not get a BP nomination unless many many stars align and all of these top talents fall flat.