‘Wall•E’ movie review (Baltimore Citypaper)

Mike Judge’s 2006 Idiocracy pictures a world in which garbage is stacked to the skies, the Earth is polluted beyond repair, and humans have morphed into brainless, TV-addicted lardasses who depend on machines to assist them in everything from mobility to bowel evacuation. Amazingly, this is the exact same world in which Disney/Pixar’s new WALL-E is set. The high-level horror depicted in WALL-E–in which a Wal-Mart-like megacorp has convinced the world’s population to buy buy buy itself into obedient numbness, creating a waste-disposal dilemma so enormous that people have fled into outer space, leaving robots behind to clean up the mess–is stunning in both its apocalyptic harshness and its anti-consumerist import. The dark milieu, however, allows the movie’s titular star to be that much more adorable. All the other clean-up bots have been overworked into disrepair and now, some several centuries after humans decamped to the outer reaches of the galaxy, WALL-E is the only one left, dutifully going about the Sisyphean task of compacting trash and piling it into miles-high edifices. Over the years, the little guy has developed a personality from repeated viewings of Hello, Dolly!, so when a feminized exploration bot lands nearby, the rusty little garbage collector gets predictably enamored. Adventures–both on earth and in outer space–ensue. The highly physical comedy at work in WALL-E combines with the wide-eyed “humanity” of the little machine for genuine laughs and character-driven empathy. That this is achieved during a largely wordless first half is a testament to Pixar’s highly skilled animators. That it’s achieved in a setting even more terrifying and dismal than the one Judge envisioned for Idiocracy is a testament to the fact that WALL-E is smarter, funnier, and sweeter than any recent Pixar production.

First appeared July 2, 2008 in Baltimore Citypaper.

Moonspell: Night Eternal review (Revolver)

As overwhelming as ever, Portuguese goth-metal outfit Moonspell deliver a ninth album that offers little in the way of surprises. The group has continually tinkered around the edges of their sound – a little less black metal here, a little more symphonic bombast there – but on Night Eternal, they seem content to continue on the same middle road of dark, melodic grandiosity they trod on 2006’s Memorial. Fernando Ribeiro’s unaplogetic sense of melodrama is still in full effect, both in his filigreed arrangements and his coffeeshop poetry lyrics. The moments of pure heaviness are fewer and far between than in the past, but when they do hit – as on the pounding “Moon In Mercury” – they serve as a quick reminder of this band’s true strengths.

First appeared in the July 2008 issue of Revolver.