h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, my Christmas "vacation" to my grandparents' house has finished, and it was fun to see family. Business now is to get back to work on that novel and get back to finding a better job.

I did get a present for the fourth day of Christmas, actually. Someone decided to get me a cell phone, which was nice. It's something that I have *probably* needed for a few good years now. But it's also something that I'd never willingly buy for myself, so yay.

At the moment, I think the present that I've been enjoying the most was the DVD of Wall-E that my parents picked up for me. I couldn't decide over the summer, but I'm getting closer and closer to just saying that Wall-E was the best film this year (the only other one that I thought was close to that title was Dark Knight.)

From a storytelling perspective, Dark Knight and Wall-E are very, very different. Wall-E takes the three-act structure and simplifies it a lot to allow the events of the story to speak for themselves. Dark Knight takes the three-act structure and mega complicates it, so that each of the three acts could stand on its own as a three act story.

I may never really decide whether I think Dark Knight or Wall-E is technically superior...but I do think that I *like* Wall-E more, which is enough of a tie-breaker in my mind.

Analysing the films as you watch them? Why so serious?

To quote the Joker, "Blame it on the bats in my belfry."

I just saw Wall-E a week or two ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. But my favourite part was the short film in the bonus features, the one that followed the repair bot trying to fix the light on the outside of the ship. It was very well done. Sometimes bonus features can be just a lot of blah blah blah, but this really was a bonus.

I enjoyed that short as well, but not as much as I enjoyed Presto.

...though seriously, why list Presto as a bonus feature? It was in the theatrical release!

Yeah, presto was very good too, but I liked the other one better. I loved the interaction of the plot with the plot from the main story. And the very human personalities of the bots.