Entries Tagged 'the future' ↓

Undoubtedly the web will be flooded with Wall-E reviews tonight, and those would be a good starting place for learning about the flick. If you haven’t seen it (do!), this has no spoilers.

One of the most notable things about Wall-E is that it’s a children’s story set in a post-apocalyptic world, with extremely heavy anti-corporate, anti-consumerism messaging (though artfully enough done that it doesn’t feel heavy handed), done by one of the largest corporate entities in the world (Disney). You spend the first 10 (brilliant) minutes of the movie watching a cute robot in an absolutely horrific landscape, with massive piles of trash and toxic storms, where the only living things are a cockroach and a single plant (that grows because it’s encased in a refrigerator? radiation?).

You often see children’s movies pander to the parents by squeaking in a political nod or some softball message, but at the very core of Wall-E is human fuckup on an utterly massive scale, and they do not spare you from it. There was a Matrix-like quality about what was left of humanity, except contrary to the Matrix, there was no purpose to their existence. They powered nothing, and they did not even dream they led meaningful lives.

This domain used to be the playground of cutting-edge political satirists and artists and so it is amazing (read: disconcerting) to see it come from something like Disney (some might argue that Pixar is a different ball of wax, but this surely is going out with Disney oversight).

The Walmart digs were overt and powerful, as was the commentary on our obese, fast-food culture. Either corporate America has so thoroughly adopted the language of their critics as a means of self-empowerment, or someone at Pixar is doing some very daring, very impressive work. I can only hope the latter.

Now, to follow-through on the superb messaging of the movie please, Disney, abstain from selling us this crap.  

I suppose I can take some hope in that they’re not yet selling plastic cubes of fake junk, junk in the shape that Wall-E crushes. That would really hurt my brain.

Floor map of Book Expo America 2008. See that green dot? That’s Small Beer Press on May 30th, #2120. Corner lot, yo.

It looks like the cross section of the death star or maybe the preferred cuts of a piggy bank.

Here it is, traversing deep space, the giant small press battlestar. Going where all booksellers are going simultaneously.

At any rate, these people have been tasked with doing something there, probably involving powdered ice cream or eating tea with chopsticks in microgravity.

Update: The Oregonian wrote about Coen

Among Saturday’s more poignant images was a tiny 4-year-old boy who held a sign that said, “This war’s older than me.”

Link to article: Five years of duty, dissent and war

Go Coen!

—

And thus the sign we made him, This War is Older than Me! He also thought ‘Poop on the war’ would be a good one.

I shipped my family off to the protest in downtown Portland today (still editing), and was awfully proud watching them go.

It’s very depressing to think that he has never known a time where we aren’t at war. Since we listen to a fair bit of radio, he has often inquired about such-and-such market bombing, and we’ve taken care with the language and have begun to censor the radio a little. At any rate, at just over four, he’s well aware of the war going on on the other side of the world and how we feel about it - and of course he’s also quite familiar with Adel Hamad/Project Hamad and thus Guantanamo. Not that each age doesn’t have its craziness, but these are strange times to grow up in.

At any rate, just for fun we did a search on Flickr tonight to see if he turned up anywhere, as Laura said quite a few people took his photo.

What do you know, he’s here:
http://flickr.com/photos/36254855@N00/2336481760/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomlechner/2336714908/

side note: I’m sort of mixed about posting photos of Coen - I probably won’t do this a lot. There are various opinions from other blogs I respect - Tim Bray’s ongoing makes a point of not naming children’s names or posting photos, and the Granades are very open about this sort of thing. I like the idea of being open about it, but I’m naturally secretive and again I think this is a strange time to be growing up. But since this seems like an exceptional case and many others took his photo, and, I admit, I’m proud to think of him carrying a protest sign, I’m going for it.

Via my friend Mel Favara. I’ll be reading in this series.
The one I attended was super fun.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THIRD INSTALLMENT OF THE 1,000 WORDS READING SERIES: THE FUTURE
MAIDEN IN THE MIST, 7PM MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2008. FREE
CONTACT: MEL FAVARA 971-506-3340, mel.Favara@gmail.com
More info at 1000wordspdx.blogspot.com

In this innovative reading series, five participants each present 1,000 words of prose written for the occasion. Writers agree to produce 250 words per week for four weeks leading up to the reading; they are given a theme at the beginning (THE FUTURE, this time), and must include certain phrases and words in each weekly effort as capriciously assigned by the host. A stunning variety of fresh works result from the writers’ wildly divergent interpretations of the prompts, and the rapid-fire presentation of short pieces make for an entertaining reading. Reading:

Benjamin Parzybok: Ben founded Gumball Poetry, a literary journal published into gumball machines, co-founded Project Hamad which helped free Adel Hamad, a Guantanamo inmate, runs the treasure hunt/caper into the underbelly of the city known as Peachblow (via the Black Magic Insurance Agency), and runs a startup around walking(walkertracker.com). He has a novel, Couch, forthcoming from Small Beer Press in the fall of 2008. He lives with his wife, the writer Laura Moulton, and their two kids in Portland, OR.

Daniel Thomas: Now in the full bloom of manhood, Daniel embodies the wisdom and perspective of the formally trained philosopher, the earthy humility of the former junky, the vulnerability of the natural born aesthete, the taste and style of a foppish dandy and the inexplicable ownership of very strange purebred dog. For bread and wine, he builds houses with Hammer and Hand.

Jill Stukenberg: Fiction and nonfiction star Jill Stukenberg recently relocated to Portland from New Mexico, where she earned an MFA from New Mexico State University. She writes and teaches at Clark College and Clackamas Community College.

Series curator Mel Favara will also read. She teaches English and hosts other literary hybrid events in Portland. Her work has appeared in the Willamette Week, No Slander, Columbia Poetry Review, and in her zine, teen sleuth.

Special guest Matthew Hattie Hein, formerly of the band New Bad Things and currently performing all by his lonesome and teaching English all over town, will play the guitar and sing.