Wall-E

The success of computer animation studio Pixar is so unprecedented that it’s beyond comprehension at this point, so let’s move on. Wall-E — which uses minimal dialogue to tell a love story between a Buster Keaton-like trash compactor and a sleek, modern, beautiful robot — is Pixar at its best, full stop. From sound design to animation to storytelling to DVDs, it’s pretty much perfect. And a single-disc DVD, which features a couple of deleted scenes and a look at sound design with modern godfather Ben Burtt (who created the sound of R2-D2), as well as a new animated short called Burn-E, which concerns a maintenance robot peripherally affected by the film’s main action, is great. But when you look at a three-disc version, the world of Pixar opens up immeasurably — more extensive featurettes outline the extent to which major changes were made throughout the process, and details on robot design, cinematography and storytelling are great. Add in the 2007 feature-length documentary The Pixar Story and suddenly Wall-E is more than a night’s entertainment: it’s a landmark achievement in animation — nay, in film — history, part of a golden age being led by a company that George Lucas let go when it was just a division of his empire, because he didn’t want to be making "cartoons.” How’s Clone Wars doing? Plus: digital copy, deleted scenes, storybooks, audio commentary, BNL corporate messages, more.