WALL-E!

Pixar is the animation king, and that's a fact.

When they can take a love story between two robots and make it not only believable but beautiful, the magic of what Andrew Stanton and his brilliant team of animators are doing cannot be denied. And the love story IS beautiful - from WALL-E's first glimpse of EVE zooming around Earth to their dance among the stars - mostly because of its wonderful simplicity and its unshakable truth: we all want someone to share our life with - someone to hold our hand.

The animation is also extraordinary. Really, I wish I had a stronger word to use - breathtaking might be a good one. Pixar continues to outdo itself with the absolute brilliance and clarity of it settings and characters. We all thought nothing could get better after The Incredibles, then Ratatouille proved us wrong. WALL-E once again raises the bar for beautiful animation. I can't wait to see what comes next.

Of course, the movie is not perfect (nothing is). The human part of the story - which involves the evolution of the humans into sedentary, oblivious beings that are unable to to anything on their own - was not as magical or as well explored (though it contained an important message) as the robot part. I also missed the dialog. Though the animation did a wonderful job of conveying the emotions of the story, the writer in me would have liked some more dialog to help out.

These are small complaints. Mostly, the movie was very good. I know that the audience I watched with - a sold out audience, by the way - laughed almost from start to finish at the many, many sweet, funny, and clever moments.

Anyway, in honor of this great movie, today's special is cupcakes - in a cup! :-)