WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last weekend (the weekend before the 4th, that is). This movie has had a long period of advance advertising, with cardboard WALL-E models in theater lobbies and such, and when I first saw those models, I thought that this was a sort of cartoony Short Circuit, and I wasn't really interested. Even when I learned that it was from Pixar, I wasn't intrigued, which indicates a shortcoming on my part, since Pixar generally puts out a good, thought-provoking product. But I caught a review in the paper (The New York Times, I think) and leared that the movie, though animated, digs into some very real issues: what is the likely outcome if we human beings continue in our present path of consumerism and laziness. The outcome is potentially bleak, and all the more so as we don't really seem to notice what it is that we're losing. Just now, for instance, in one of my rare free moments, I'm sitting here at the computer blogging instead of playing with my ca