Countdown to Up: 1 Day to Disney•Pixar’s 10th film

WALL•E is Pixar’s 9th masterpiece. With stunning visuals and a thought provoking storyline, WALL•E serves up intelligent entertainment, and the lighthearted charm of watching the antics of all the lovable robots.

Having seen all Pixar’s 10 films, I am glad to say that they have gone 10 for 10. They’re all excellent and great. As for a favorite, I don’t think I could choose one. I love them all. To read our five reviews of Up, please check back at midnight tonight.

-John C.

WALL•E Trivia*

• The teaser trailer contains part of Michael Kamen's score for the 1985 film, Brazil. Michael Kamen was going to score another Pixar film, The Incredibles, but died before he could

• Jim Reardon left his position as supervising director of The Simpsons to do animation on this film. On the DVD audio commentary for The Simpsons: Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo, Reardon finally confirmed the title of the film he was working on - prior to that he would only say that it was due in 2008. In the film, the name of the first captain of the Axiom is Reardon, who piloted the ship from 2105 to 2248

• The main character's name is actually an acronym, standing for "Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-class." EVE stands for "Extraterrestial Vegetation Evaluator" and M-O stands for "Microbe Obliterator"

• Most of the predominantly robot cast of characters is voiced by Ben Burtt through mechanical sounds of his creation. EVE is voiced by Elissa Knight

• The film contains numerous references to Apple computers: -when WALL-E is fully charged by the sun, he makes the same "boot up" sound that most of Apple's Macintosh computers have made since circa 1996. WALL-E watches his favorite movie every night on the screen of an iPod. The villainous Autopilot's voice is provided by Apple's text-to-speech system, MacinTalk. EVE's sleek design as an evolution of WALL-E's parallels the sleek iMac design having evolved from the boxy, beige Apple IIe. Steve Jobs, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer, was CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney in 2005, and as a shareholder and member of the Disney Board of Directors is still actively involved with the company

• Niagara Falls provided the wind sounds for WALL•E 's world

• The last piece of debris that clears away from WALL-E as he leaves Earth's atmosphere is the Russian satellite Sputnik I, which in 1957 was the first man-made object to be placed in earth orbit

• The end-credit montage traces artwork from the past, in historical order, starting with cave paintings, then progressing through Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Renaissance, then mimicking certain Impressionists (such as Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Auguste Renoir ). It finishes with depictions of the main robots in the style of early computer games

• Within the first 5 minutes there is monologue via the holographic billboards. The first dialogue between WALL·E and EVE begins 22 minutes into the movie. The first human dialogue begins 39 minutes into the movie

Up Trivia**

John Ratzenberger is the only actor who has appeared in all of Pixar’s films. Here is a list of all the characters he has played:

Toy Story (1995) - Hamm

A Bugs Life (1998) - P.T. Flea

Toy Story 2 (1999) - Hamm

Monsters Inc. (2001) - The Abominable Snowman

Finding Nemo (2003) - School of Fish

The Incredibles (2004) - The Underminer

Cars (2006) - Mack, Hamm Truck, Abominable Snowplow, P.T. Flea Car

Ratatouille (2007) - Mustafa

WALL•E (2008) - John

and in Up, you can hear him near the begining of the film as:

Up (2009) - Construction Foreman Tom

*All trivia is courtesy of IMDb

**Trivia written by James P.