Wall-E

In this computer animated Pixar movie from 2008, we meet WALL-E (short for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class"), the last of a line of robots tasked with cleaning up the garbage that has covered the Earth, while humanity has gone on a pleasure cruise to the outer Solar System. But while the cruise, arranged by the all-powerful Buy N Large Corporation, should only have lasted for five years, it has been more than 700 years since mankind last set foot on Earth. Nevertheless WALL-E is still working at compiling the garbage, but over the years he has developed some quirks that were not originally in his programming. He collects trinkets he finds interesting for himself and keeps a pet cockroach.

One day he discovers something he has never seen before - a living plant. Not realising its significance he brings it home to his collection of oddities, which include a videotape with Hello Dolly which he watch religiously every night. But that same night he witness a spaceship land, more or less on top of him, and from it emerges a beautiful futuristic robot. WALL-E follows the newcomer who seems to be searching for something and after a few attempts to kill him, it presents itself as EVE.

Without realizing it, WALL-E has been terrible lonely and in EVE he sees a potential companion to share his existence with, but EVE is only concerned with her mission, which turns out to be finding signs of life on Earth. When she finally sees the plant WALL-E has found, she takes it and shuts down. Unsure what has happened to her WALL-E tries everything to revive her, but is unsuccessful and so he slowly returns to his routines. But one day the spaceship returns to pick up EVE and WALL-E manages to go along (by clinging to the outside of the ship) and he soon finds himself carried to the huge spaceship the Axiom, where the last remnants of humanity live a pampered life, watched over by a fleet of robots.

WALL-E must now navigate a, to him, totally alien world in an attempt to find EVE to convince her to be his friend, but he soon gets caught up in a conspiracy to prevent humanity's return to Earth.

This is an amazing film in almost all aspects. First of all it is animated beautifully and in a very realistic style compared to Pixar's other movies. Secondly it manages to create an engaging and touching story with extremely little dialogue. I was really impressed with how much of WALL-E and EVE's thoughts and emotions were conveyed by the animation of their movements, without them saying more than a few words throughout the entire movie. Add to that a heart-warming ending and a lot of humour and you have a movie that can be enjoyed equally by both children and adults - I know I did.

The video of this release comes with a 1080p picture in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 and is encoded in MPEG-4 AVC. Let me just start by saying, that this is among the absolute best video transfers I have ever seen, there is not a single fault to be found. Every frame is picture perfect and the photo-realistic animation is extremely detailed and has an amazing texture and depth to it, making it seem almost 3D. There is absolutely no trace of digital noise reduction, edge enhancement, or any other negative post-processing procedures and the picture is also free of any banding or artefacts, even in the darkest areas. Blacks are deep and well detailed and colours are expansive and lifelike, from the natural earthy tones of the scenes on earth, to the vivid artificial colours aboard the Axiom.

As expected from a Pixar movie this Blu-ray delivers perfect video quality and should be in your collection of titles used as reference material. It is hard to imagine anyone not able to see the virtues of HD after having watched this.

WALL-E comes with an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track which sounds great and is a perfect companion to the quality of the video. The track is completely immersive with all speakers being utilized perfectly. The limited amount of dialogue in the movie is handled well by the front speakers and every word is easily discernable, while the almost constant, but never overpowering, musical score fills all channels while still keeping the focus at the front. There are also plenty of special effects noises at all frequencies in the movie. The heavy sound of explosions shakes the subwoofer in a satisfying way, while high-pitched robot squeals come through clearly without any distortion. Perhaps because all sound in the movie is artificial (as in not recorded during shooting) there is easily discernable directionality in the effect sounds and they all move effortlessly between speakers.

I could not find fault with this audio track and like the video, it is perfect as reference material and should be used anytime you have to convince anybody of the virtues of lossless Blu-ray audio tracks.

This Blu-ray release is packed with a perfect line-up of extras which are all presented in HD.

Cine-Explore - Commentary track by director Andrew Stanton with optional PIP. Accompanied by filmmaker photos, concept art, storyboards, and a wide range of other visuals, the director talks about the making of the movie, from early ideas, through development of the robots, to changes made to the later parts of the movie. This is a very informative commentary which I found quite interesting. Stanton has a good and engaging voice and the PIP show a lot of nice images.
Play Movie with Geek Track: Trash Talk & Trivia - Commentary track with Bill Wise (character team supervisor), Lindsay Collins (co-producer), Derek Thompson (story artist) and Angus McClain (lead animator and story consultant). This is shown with the four commentators as silhouettes in the lower right part of the screen. This track is more for fun than most commentaries, with a lot of goofy comments and references to pop-culture, although there are some nice titbits of information in there. I enjoyed it, but it was not as good as the first one and I fast-forwarded through parts of it.
Presto (5 min.) - Animated short where a carrot triggers a war of wits between a magician and his long-suffering bunny. This short film is hilarious and is definitely among the better of Pixar's generally great animated shorts.
BURN-E (7 min.) - Another animated short, this time directly related to the main feature. We follow BURN-E, the repairbot, who is determined to do his job, but is foiled at every turn by WALL-E's adventures aboard the Axiom. Not quite as funny as "Presto", but still a very enjoyable look at the cost of the wanton destruction heroes often cause. "BURN-E" can also be watched with PIP showing the storyboards for the short film.
WALL-E's Treasures & Trinkets (5 min.) - A vaudeville of WALL-E's favourite misadventures. Funny string of short clips with WALL-E and other characters from the movie.
"Lots of Bots" Storybook (3 min.) - A short narrative about the various robots of the movie, where you can play along by solving puzzles. Mostly for the younger audience.
Axiom Arcade - Four 1980's arcade-like games with simple, but classic visuals. Cool idea although I do not think I will be playing them much.
Bot Files - Gallery/encyclopaedia of the many robot types in the movie.
Deleted Scenes (23 min.) - 4 scenes in varying stages of development, that did not make it into the movie. These can be played with introductions by director Andrew Stanton and they should. What made them interesting was Stanton's information on why they were initially made and why they were eventually cut from the final movie.
Behind the Scenes - 3 featurettes. "The Imperfect Lens" (14 min.) covers how the filmmakers created the look of WALL-E; "Animation Sound Design" (19 min.) covers the sound design of the movie; and "Captain's Log"(8 min.) covers the evolution of the visual design of the humans in the movie. These featurettes were all quite good and informative; I especially liked the second one with sound effects guru Ben Burtt.
BnL Shorts (9 min.) - Five BnL shorts, from an orientation movie on piloting the Axiom to a rollout of the BnL robotic product line and a history of the BnL corporation. These are the full versions of some of the BnL footage from the movie and are quite entertaining.
3D Set Fly-Throughs - Fly-throughs of eight Axiom sets and two Earth sets.
Gallery - Large still gallery of everything from character design to publicity. There are an amazing amount of material here, both conceptual art and fully rendered images.
Worldwide Trailers - Seven WALL-E trailers from around the world.
The Pixar Story (88 min.) - Documentary showing the history of Pixar, directed by Leslie Iwerks and narrated by Stacy Keach. This is really the gem of these extras. It tells the story of Pixar from the beginnings in '79, through all the ups and downs before the success of Toy Story and onwards up to Cars (the documentary was made in 2007). It is a fascinating story which alone is almost worth the price of this release.

Disc one also has a "Maximize Your Home Theater" feature included which can help you set up your screen and sound system, as well as a couple of trailers, which also auto-play when you put the disc in your player (fortunately they can be skipped).

There are also a couple of Easter eggs included on the movie disc of this release. The first is found by pressing the up button on your remote when "Play Movie" is highlighted. This should turn the red "E" in the film's logo blue and by then pressing enter, you can watch a featurette called "Geek-O-Rama" (5 min.) This short featurette reveals, much as I expected, that every Pixar employee is a big geek and proud of it. Easter egg number two is found by highlighting "Set Up" in the menu and then pressing left on your remote, making a dot appear under "Sneak Peeks". Press enter and you can watch a very short animation test.

I wish every Blu-ray released could have this many good extras, but that is probably asking too much. I am always looking forward to the animated shorts included on Pixar releases and they did not disappoint on this one. Furthermore the inclusion of "The Pixar Story" was a real treat and it should be watched by any fan of animation. There are plenty of releases out there with more extras, but it is the quality of these, that really deserves the highest mark.

There are not many releases that deserve a perfect score in all categories, but this is one of them. WALL-E is a great movie for all ages, which on this release is accompanied by perfect video and equally perfect audio. Add to this some very good extras, and plenty of them, and you have a Blu-ray release which should be included in everyone's collection.