recommendations

I’ve now seen WALL-E twice, and I cannot recommend it enough.  It is by far my favorite movie that Pixar has ever done.  (Yes, that is high praise and I mean it.)  It’s smart, funny, visually striking, touching, and generally brilliant — and the characters are so well fleshed out, even if they’re mostly robots.  And I love the cockroach.
I discovered that Pixar released several vignettes to promote the movie and they are wonderful, too.  “Cups” is my favorite.
Cups
Vaccuum
Bouncy Balls
Magnet
Fire Hydrant
Hula Hoop
Headphones

I just idly checked our Netflix queue and saw something that literally had me jump off the couch and run around the apartment.  (Chopper thinks I’m nuts, as usual.)  A while back, I added two DVDs to the yeah-I-know-they’re-not-available-but-I-have-hope category (whatever they call it) and they are now both scheduled for release on July 24.

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring (more properly Manon des Sources) are the two films made from Marcel Pagnol’s novel L’eau des collines, which I have read in both French and English.  It’s a magnificent book and the movies (surprisingly for book adaptations) are equally good.  The story is a tragedy — a greedy old man and his stupid nephew are desperate to buy a nearby farm, and when a hunchback inherits it, they close up the spring that is essential to bring water to the farm.  The two films are the story of the aftermath of that decision and the revenge of the hunchback’s daughter, Manon.

I’m actually giddy at the idea of getting to see them again.

I just finished the audiobook version of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, and it’s marvelous.  I read and loved High Fidelity a while back (yes, the one that the movie was based on) and was tickled to finally see an unabridged version of one of his books on Audible.  (Audio abridgements are evil, in case you’ve never heard one of my tirades on the subject.)

The book deals with four very dissimilar individuals who climb a tall building on New Year’s Eve with the intent of jumping off it.  They don’t.  It’s told from their four perspectives (and the audiobook is read by four different narrators, which helps lend realism to it).

I’ve read a couple of reviews on the subject and all agree that while it’s a book ostensibly about suicide, it’s more about life and living than it might appear on first blush.  Hornby’s characters are real — likable at times, thoroughly annoying at others, always vividly drawn — and engaging.

Makes me want to pick up another of his books, which (drat the man) means going to print for the moment for the earlier-mentioned reason of abridgments.  (The humanity!)

I’m currently absorbed in an audiobook as good as any I’ve listened to in years — The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.  Reviews have made allusions to Jane Austen or any of the classic Gothic works, all of which are spot on.  Of course, audiobooks aren’t for everyone, so here’s a link to the page on Amazon for you readers.

I’m in the process of watching David Attenborough’s PBS documentary series The Life of Birds right now, and if you like documentaries, I can’t recommend this enough.  The cinematography is phenomenal and the subject matter is very well presented.  I was hooked in the first episode by the film of a bee eater (a lovely, colorful little bird) catching a honeybee.  The little bird takes the bee in its long beak, carefully wipes the stinger off on a branch, and then crunches down on a specific spot to burst the bee and send a spray of clear venom into the air.  Wish I had an HDTV to watch this one.