A couple of people have been griping about Wall-E director Andrew Stanton's refusal to admit that his cute little movie about a robot in love actually contains some pretty upfront green politics, but there's a far more polarizing reference in the film than its harmless pro-environment agenda. It's no major plot spoiler to reveal that, about an hour or so into the story, Fred Willard appears in a recorded message as the mysterious president of Earth's corporate government and orders the ship's captain (Jeff Garlin) to "stay the course." Wait, we've heard this one before: It was the go-to statement used by the Bush administration for about three years or so when describing its modus operandi in Iraq (the term was abandoned when staying the course started to sound like a bad idea). In Wall-E, the context is quite different -- it's an order to not do something, rather than take action -- but hard to ignore nonetheless.

Certain critics with (surprise!) conservative slants have taken issue with this. At Dirty Harry's Place, John Nolte expresses his disappointment in the first paragraph of his review: "Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome?" he asks. New York Post critic Kyle Smith picked up the rant and decided to write his own, even though he hadn't seen the film yet: "This kind of crack, lame as it is, also breaks the spell of the movie by hurling you out of the theater and back into reality."

" ... 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.

It's hundreds of years from now, practically no life (save for a cockroach) remains on the giant garbage dump that's become Earth, and, funnily enough, the only remaining sign of humanity can be found inside the planet's last functional robot: a trash collector (and compactor) named WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). It's been roughly 700 years since humans last populated Earth, and in that time WALL·E has wasted away doing what he was originally programmed for: collect, compact and pile trash so that it's out of the way.

However, over the years WALL·E has managed to develop a bit of OCD, collecting certain items and methodically storing them in the large metal container he calls home. One day, while out searching for more trash (and knickknacks), a spaceship arrives to drop off another robot -- one whose mission it is to scour the area and search for life. And it's a girl ... named EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator).

Thus begins what is perhaps Pixar's most romantic film yet -- a beautiful sci-fi tale complete with all the feel-good vibes and fantastic, cutting-edge visuals we've come to expect from a film wearing the Pixar name. Despite a few small bumps in the galaxy, WALL·E can easily claim a spot up top on a list featuring the best films of the year so far, and it will surely go down as one of Pixar's most memorable -- because it's also one of their most personal.

I'm not at all familiar with Portia Doubleday (pictured right), so I was a little nervous to learn she had nabbed the part of one of my all time favorite female characters (from a novel): Sheeni Saunders. Those who've read Youth in Revolt know Sheeni quite well, but if you haven't picture every girl you've ever had a crush on combined into one, all-knowing, beautiful piece of work. That's Sheeni. And according to a press release, Doubleday will be joined by Justin Long, Fred Willard, Zach Galifinakis, Erik Knudsen and Mary Kate Place.

All of those people will join Michael Cera, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi and Jean Smart, among others. Wow. Interesting cast, if I may say so myself. Youth in Revolt tells the simple (yet very complex) story of Nick Twisp, a teenage troublemaker (Cera) with a wacky, white-trashy family who falls desperately in love with the girl of his dreams and goes to great lengths to win her over. Out of the new cast additions, we know Knudsen is playing Twisp's best friend Lefty, Long will play Sheeni's older brother Paul, Willard will play Nick's communist neighbor Mr. Ferguson, Place will play Sheeni's mother and Zach G. will play Jerry, an early (and seedy) boyfriend of Nick's mother (Smart).

I'm a huge, nerdy fan of the original novel written by C.D. Payne, so expect to hear a lot about Youth in Revolt from Cinematical. My fingers are crossed and I wish everyone involved good luck. Production is now underway and I've been told the film will hit theaters this December. Yay!

There is something very dated about therapy in movies. Sure, millions of real people continue to see psychiatrists, psychologists, analysts and therapists, but the depiction of therapy on screen feels so, I don't know, yesterday. Or maybe it's neurotic characters that seem old hat, but either way therapy has at least become dated by association. Of course, as a genre, romantic comedy needs the occasional shrink, because it needs that convention of neurotic characters and those neurotic characters generally (and generically) need therapy. One day, perhaps, someone can rewrite the book on romantic comedy, which hasn't been adequately revised or updated since Woody Allen turned in his version thirty years ago. Until then, we are stuck with movies like Ira and Abby, which utilizes not one, not two, but at least eight therapists or analysts.

The movie even makes a distinction about the difference between therapists and analysts (therapists talk; analysts listen) and hardly features a character that isn't one or the other. There are personal analysts, group therapists and marriage counselors, doctors assigned to every stereotypically Jewish surname known to screenwriters (Rosenblum, check; Goldberg, check; Silverberg, check; etc.). While neither of the two title characters is technically in the profession, Ira (Chris Messina) is writing his dissertation in order to become a psychologist and Abby (Jennifer Westfeldt) is constantly told she should open her own practice, simply because she's so good with people.

Note: This is the final review in my five-part series on the Vacation movies. Click on the links below to read my previous reviews from this franchise:

National Lampoon's Vacation / National Lampoon's European Vacation / National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation / Vegas Vacation

There are three factors that might compel you to watch Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure:

1) Love for the original. "Hey, Christmas Vacation was hilarious! I watch it every year! And now my beloved characters are going on a new holiday-themed outing? Radical! Sign me up for some island fun and adventure!"

2) A desire to complete the series. "Well heck, Vegas Vacation was pretty lame, and my heart tells me this might be even worse, but I've got to see it, right? I've seen all the others!"

3) It is on TV, and you are trapped under something heavy. The remote is nowhere to be found, and your face is pinned to the floor in a manner that makes looking away from the television an impossibility.

Hopefully, after I share my thoughts with you, #3 will be the only reason you might watch this "film" in its entirety. Some of you might not even be aware that this "movie" existed (it aired on NBC in 2003 before being given a DVD release), so I guess what I'm doing here is a public service announcement more than a review.

Allow me to share the opening exchange of the "movie," a labyrinthine conversation that I had to rewind four times before I even understood what was being said. I'll set the scene. Clark "Third" Johnson (played by Jake Thomas), son to Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) and his wife Catherine (Miriam Flynn), is talking to a girl on the way home from school.

CLARK: I was named after my mom's cousin's husband -- Clark Griswold the 2nd. I'm the third Clark Griswold. Clark Griswold Johnson.
GIRL: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
CLARK: Yes, they're with my grandma in Kansas. Except for my oldest sister, she's working at a strip club in Las Vegas
GIRL: A strip club? Where do you live?
CLARK: My mom and dad and I are staying with my cousin Audrey Griswold. She's visiting her boyfriend in Indianapolis. So we're kind of house sitting for her. You know, over the holidays.

These are the first words spoken in the "movie!" As an aspiring screenwriter, if I ever put that exchange to paper I would shoot myself in the throat. What a needlessly complicated, bizarre bit of exposition! And that's how you hook the audience? That's your big opening scene? It would have been better to just have the kid look into the camera and explain, in monologue form, who he is related to and what the hell is going on.

Matty Simmons, producer on all of the Vacation films, "wrote" this one, despite having no real previous screenwriting credits. Hey Matty? I'd like to be a professional golfer, but I suck at golf. Therefore, I don't play golf on a professional level. Makes sense, right? If I were given two hours in the back seat of a bumpy truck, a note pad, and a stick with poo on it, I could write a better script than this. I'm not kidding. Give it up. You're a successful man in other fields, you've got loads of money. Don't write anymore scripts. Stop.

The "film" was "directed" by Nick Marck, a television director who has helmed episodes of some really great shows -- The Wonder Years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars. Mr. Marck, I'm willing to believe this wasn't your fault. I'd take it off the old resume, though.

So Eddie and Catherine are house-sitting for Audrey. Fine. Whatever. As the film opens, a wasted Fred Willard is firing Eddie from his job, which seems to consist of playing tic-tac-toe with a monkey. There are several "jokes" about how Eddie is dumber than said monkey. Eddie returns home, decides to take a bath. Plumbing hijinks ensue. Their dog farts a lot (No, a lot). And they smell bad, see? The farts that the dog has, I mean. Laughing yet?

Through complications involving a monkey attack and fear of a lawsuit, Eddie is awarded a trip to the South Pacific by his ex-boss. Ed Asner (a loooooong way from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) inexplicably pops up as Uncle Nick, and he joins them on their vacation. They run into Eric Idle, whom I believe is supposed to be playing the same role he played in European Vacation -- British guy who gets beat up by accident a lot. Wasn't funny then, is far less funny now. The gang gets stranded on an island, some atrocious green-screen technology is used, Eddie flies a plane, they get off the island. Fin.

Quaid tries his best here, but the guy had funnier material in Pluto Nash. Cousin Eddie was in maybe five minutes of Vacation total, and didn't enter Christmas Vacation until halfway through. He's a funny character to be sure, but only when he has someone reacting to or commenting on his antics. No one fills that role here. Eddie can't sustain a feature film on his own -- let alone one as stupefyingly awful as this. Flynn isn't given much to do as usual. Thomas is cute, and I thank him for giving me something to do while waiting for the "movie" to end -- figure out where I had seen him before (turns out he was the non-Haley Joel Osment kid in Spielberg's A.I).

Dana Barron, who played Audrey in the original Vacation 20 years prior, returns here for absolutely no reason. My guess is that offers went out to everyone who has ever played a Griswold, and Barron was the only one who agreed. She is the only Griswold kid ever to reprise his or her role. So...put that in your history books.

Sung Hi Lee plays Muka Laka Miki (and I don't want to spoil anything, but that name gets hilariously mispronounced several times!), but she might as well just be referred to as "Token Hot Chick." I can imagine some stressed out producer throwing his hands in the air, and bellowing "At least get some T&A in this thing or no one's going to watch to the end!" I'd like to thank that producer I just made up, because that extremely mild, PG-rated T&A is really all that kept me going.

In fairness, not everyone hates Christmas Vacation 2. After all, it was nominated for Best Hair Styling in a Television Mini-Series/Movie of the Week at the Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards. So someone was a fan. But please. Don't watch it. There isn't a laugh or a smile or a smirk or a grimace in the thing. It isn't so bad that it's good. It isn't even so bad that it's bad. To call it bad would be an insult to things that are bad. It hurt my feelings. They say depression rates go up at Christmastime -- I think I've found the reason.

Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure made me long for the subtle nuance, in-depth character development, and rib-tickling tropical comedy of Saved By the Bell: Hawaiian Style.

Note: This review originally ran during the Toronto International Film Festival. It is being run again in conjunction with the film's limited release this weekend. For Your Consideration opens in wider release November 22. - ed.

With his films Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, director Christopher Guest took the mockumentary approach he used in This Is Spinal Tap and brought it to a whole new generation. Guest assembled a cast of remarkable talent in Guffman, including Michael McKean (with whom Guest has worked for some 40 years), Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban and Parker Posey, and worked with the same cast (adding some new talent along the way, including the spectacularly funny Jennifer Coolidge and perfectly deadpan Jane Lynch, building an almost unbeatable ensemble of comedy.

Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind all took the mockumentary approach, dealing, respectively, with a play in a small town, an eclectic group of characters taking part in a national dog show, and the reunion of 1960s folk singers for a concert. Guest's previous three films with this ensemble worked, not just because of their mockumentary style, but because of the brilliance and energy of the cast, who worked improvisationally, with very little script. With his latest effort, For Your Consideration, Guest and co-writer Levy break away from the mockumentary mold to take a narrative approach, while still retaining the improvisational freedom that give the cast the room to make their characters their own.

The UK's Times Online has an interesting piece up about great Hollywood director-muse partnerships, from John Wayne and John Ford, to George Cukor and Katherine Hepburn, to Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman. As the article's author Ian Johns notes, these kinds of filmmaker-actor partnerships are less common these days, as directors have a wider array of big-name stars to choose from. Yet, there are still some profitable and creative partnerships out there. Martin Scorsese appears to have moved on from this 1970s and '80s pairing with Robert DeNiro to his modern creative muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom he has made Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and now The Departed, with a fourth partnership -- a film about Theodore Roosevelt -- reportedly in the works. Russel Crowe and Ridley Scott worked together first in The Gladiator, then most recently in this year's TIFF offering A Good Year, and they went straight from that into shooting American Gangster together.

Johns goes on to make mention of Pedro Almodóvar's ensemble cast in Volver, where the director featured his favorite muse of the moment, Penelope Cruz alongside Carmen Maura, whom he directed in the 1980s. He doesn't mention my favorite director/ensemble combo of the moment, Christopher Guest and his amazing repeat performers, including Eugene Levy (with whom Guest also co-writes), Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean and Parker Posey, to name only a few. So pivotal are these actors to Guest's latest films that I can't imagine him making a film without them at this point. They work together with an incredible ease that makes the improvisational style of Guest's films really work.

The article does give props to one of my favorite director/actor pairings: François Truffaut and his on-screen alter-ego, Jean-Pierre Léaud. One of the greatest joys of watching movies in my cinematically geeky life has been watching Léaud grow from boy to man as Antoine Doinel, starting in 1959's The 400 Blows, the film that first earned Truffaut respect at Cannes, when Léaud was just 15, through 1979's Love on the Run -- a 20-year run of great filmmaking. Leaud worked with other directors as well, of course, including Jean-Luc Godard, with whom he made 10 films, including Week End in 1967 and, nearly 20 years later, Détective in 1985, but nothing ever quite matched the magic of Léaud with Truffaut.

Who are some of your favorite director-actor pairs? And who would you like to see work together more?

With his films Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, director Christopher Guest took the mockumentary approach he used in This Is Spinal Tap and brought it to a whole new generation. Guest assembled a cast of remarkable talent in Guffman, including Michael McKean (with whom Guest has worked for some 40 years), Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban and Parker Posey, and worked with the same cast (adding some new talent along the way, including the spectacularly funny Jennifer Coolidge and perfectly deadpan Jane Lynch, building an almost unbeatable ensemble of comedy.

Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind all took the mockumentary approach, dealing, respectively, with a play in a small town, an eclectic group of characters taking part in a national dog show, and the reunion of 1960s folk singers for a concert. Guest's previous three films with this ensemble worked, not just because of their mockumentary style, but because of the brilliance and energy of the cast, who worked improvisationally, with very little script. With his latest effort, For Your Consideration, Guest and co-writer Levy break away from the mockumentary mold to take a narrative approach, while still retaining the improvisational freedom that give the cast the room to make their characters their own.

Are you ready to check out some brand new movie pics? C'mon now, don't sound too excited. On this edition of Movie Pics, we ask you to consider some images from Christopher Guest's new film, Jet Li and Jason Statham prepare to kick your ass right out of the theater and -- wait -- so that's what Kurt Russell will be driving in Grind House. Read on my fellow picture freaks:

• This fall, Christopher Guest returns to his mockumentary ways with For Your Consideration, a film that appears to poke fun at the way certain actors handle the tremendous burden that is Oscar buzz. As far as cast goes, Guest has assembled a few of his regulars (Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard, among others), as well as some new blood (ahem, Ricky Gervais). While I haven't been crazy about the last couple Guest flicks, the plot, the cast and these new pics have certainly kicked my anticipation meter up a few notches. [via JoBlo]
• Before he calls it quits as a martial arts action star, Jet Li will make sure he kicks as much on-screen ass as possible, what with his role as a mysterious assassin in the upcoming film Rogue. Pic revolves around an FBI agent (Jason Statham) who, after his partner and family are killed, sets out to avenge his buddy's death by targeting the man (is Jet Li a man or a machine?) responsible. Cinema Blend has the first images from Rogue, which also stars Luiz Guzmán (I take it we won't get to see a fantastic jump-kick from Mr. Guzmán) and Devon Aoki.
• Word on the street is that Quentin Tarantino has officially taken over the city of Austin (Jette, I want you on set, STAT!), while shooting Death Proof -- his half of next years double feature masterpiece, Grind House. Tarantino describes Death Proof as "sort of a slasher film, but instead of a knife, it's a car." Well, thanks to the good folks over at AICN, we now have pics of said car, which will be driven by Kurt Russell -- who I'm hoping brings a little old school awesome to the role.