WALL*E is amazingly good

In no particular order the greatest animated movies I’ve ever seen are:

• The Triplets of Belleville
• Spirited Away
• Ratatouille
• Pinocchio
• Finding Nemo
• Millennium Actress
• Iron Giant
  
• My Neighbor Totoro
• A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers & A Grand Day Out a.k.a. the collected shorter works of Wallace & Gromit. (Hey, it’s my list and I say they are a movie).
• Princess Mononoke
• Porco Rosso

All of these are among the greatest movies ever made PERIOD.

Add to that list, WALL*E. Even by Pixar’s admittedly high standards, WALL*E is exceptional. If it doesn’t have the characters as complex as some other movies it is because it is a fable. In that respect it has a lot in common with Edward Scissorhands.

WALL*E is tells a fine, simple (not obvious) story superbly. (I’m going to stay away from plot synopsis. Go see it. We’ll talk.) It is essentially a silent movie, a great and bold decision (and something it shares with Triplets). In addition to being a fine filet of consumer culture, W also includes an extended comment on the sterility of life in a controlled environment designed for nothing but amusement. That would be the bread and butter of Pixar’s life-partner Disney. Is this:

1. a cynical comment by a company that makes its money from these parks; or
2. a truly subversive effort to sway the people who make The Land of Mouse so profitable?

Not sure. But I do know it’s great.

I could go on but I’m tired and heading off for vacation. See you all in a week.

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Year of The Rat is restaurants’ marketing jackpot

The Ho-la Diner and the Jiashing restaurant opposite have run five or six rat eateries out of town over nearly six decades of business to become the top two ahead of the Year of the Rat, which begins on February 7. Both display hairless rat carcasses in their kitchen windows before chopping off the heads and throwing the pint-sized bodies and tails into pots with basil and sweet, black sauce.

Putting the rat back in ratatouille.

Someone call Remy, I sense an endorsement deal.

Fortune blunders in its year-end list of business blunders

Surprisingly, I am not the only one to chronicle the year’s dumbest business moments. The folks at an obscure little publication called Fortune have also put out a list and it’s one I must quibble with. By and large it’s pretty good… Eli Lily marketing Prozac for dogs, Merrill Lynch giving CEO Stanley O’Neal $161M for retiring after overseeing some of the worst losses in company history, the Cartoon Network fiasco … but nestled in at #9 is one that is just flat out wrong:

Ooh-la-la, gross! The French daily Le Monde calls Ratatouille, Pixar’s movie about a rat in a kitchen, “one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema.”

Ummm, guys and gals, DID YOU SEE THE MOVIE? Ratatouille (best movie I saw this year) was indeed one of the greatest movies ever made about the love of food and cooking. The only things that come close to it IMHO are Tampopo and maybe Eating Raoul. Sheesh. What’s a rat got to do to get a little respect around here?

(BTW, Thanks to AdFreak and SoundBite Back for mentioning CD along side the Fortune list.)