ben burtt Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Quick! Who played the title role in WALL-E? If you answered "Ben Burtt," chances are you're either a hard-core geek or someone who stayed for the credits and thought, "Who the heck is Ben Burtt?" Burtt, well known to Star Wars and Spielberg fans for his superb work as a sound designer -- he's won two Oscars and received two Special Achievement Awards from the Academy -- picked up his first credit as an actor for providing WALL-E with a voice. And he drives home the point that cartoons, or "animated films" if you prefer, don't need celebrity voices anymore.

Once upon a time, Robin Williams agreed to voice the part of Genie in Disney's Aladdin. Disney decided to capitalize on his stardom and advertised his supporting role heavily, probably the first time a celebrity voice was used to sell an animated film. Aladdin became the biggest hit of the year. This was the tipping point. Millions of adults, notably those without children who hadn't been convinced by the previous year's Beauty and the Beast, decided that cartoons were not just for kids anymore.

The rest is history. Celebrity voices became the norm, and if one celebrity helped bring in the box office bucks, three or five or seven must be even better, and voice casts soon became filled with celebs both major and minor. Celebs had another advantage: they could give interviews and go on talk shows to promote the movie. Inevitably they'd say, "I wanted to do something my kids could see."

" ... and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

-- Horace Smith, Ozymandias

WALL-E, from Pixar studios, shows us a ruined city, centuries from now, where a single (and singular) robot toils to cube trash and, it seems, will never lack for work. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class)), a two-treaded solitary worker robot, spends his days cubing trash and his nights shut in safe from the cataclysmic garbage-gales that sweep the planet, inside a repair truck he's filled with things that have fascinated him; garden gnomes, butane lighters, a copy of Hello, Dolly! And in WALL-E's nearly-silent opening minutes, we get a sense of the world he lives in. Everything is ruined; there are no signs of life but for cockroaches; the only voices you hear come when the motion-activated Buy 'n' Large holo-billboards go off. WALL-E strips his broken-down brethren for parts and recharges by the sun's rays and stacks trash-cubes to imitate the skyscrapers decaying all around him, garbage as a pale reflection of glory.

Its still Saturday and I'm still in the spacious and oddly cold Hall H. I have to say that in all my years coming to the Con I have never had the experience of being cold. Walking from the hotel to the Con, waiting in line at the bathroom, to wondering the exhibit hall, I've usually been hot, sometimes sweaty, but never cold. New one on me and a trend I don't mind continuing. I don't like being hot.

Anyway, this time around I'm in Hall H or the Disney / Pixar presentation where they are going to talk about two of their biggest upcoming projects. No, its not another Pirate's film. Instead, the folks from the Mouse house are here to showcase The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and a Pixar film called Wall E.

Regarding Narnia, Kevin already let you know one of the big announcements from today. But in case you didn't see it or don't feel like clicking, I'll tell you again. Disney and Walden Media announced they intend to make all seven books of the Chronicles as films and release one each May for your viewing pleasure. So, if you're a fan of the books and films that's gotta be pretty great news. That announcement, although pretty exciting, didn't come at the beginning of the presentation, so let's back up and start there.

First up was some of the creative team from the film, including effects supervisor Richard Taylor from WETA Workshop and creature effects creator Howard Berger. They were also joined, via satellite from Prague, by director Andrew Adamson, who proclaimed "Welcome back to Narnia" and Prince Caspian himself, actor Ben Barnes. Then, it was on to a clip showing a pre-viz animatic from the movie.