A great nostalgia item, a new episode of Firefly in graphic novel form, set (obviously) between the end of the series and the movie. Another of the nominees for the experimental Hugo category Best Graphic Story, and so far my favourite of the three I’ve read. I tried the early Buffy season 8 comics, but didn’t like the artwork on the characters; Will Conrad seems to have tried harder here, so that they actually look like who they’re are meant to be. Though really what makes it is the script; a fairly ordinary space opera story, shot through with those moments of wit and characterisation that made the original TV series such fun. I can’t imagine this appealing much to people who hadn’t seen Firefly or Serenity, but they are clearly not the intended audience!

This is an audiobook of five stories about future cities, read mainly by actors from Battlestar Galactica, on the Hugo shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form. I whined a few weeks back about the technical difficulties I had in getting hold of it, because of the DRM protection on the official publication; my thanks to the person who helped me over that hurdle.

I confess that audiobooks, as opposed to plays, don’t always work for me. Each of these five stories is of the order of two hours in length, so not well suited to the concentration span I normally have while commuting. In addition, I found the voice registers of three of the actors doing the readings (Michael Hogan, Scott Brick and Stefan Rudnicki) too low to really hear distinctly over the bacground noise of my train journey. This isn’t usually a problem for me listening to Big Finish or Shakespeare productions with numerous actors playing different parts. I therefore didn’t really take in much of the stories by Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder, though I liked what I could hear.

The basic concept of the shared world, set in a near future where state structures have collapsed and cities per se have become largely autonomous political actors, combined with a somewhat sinister worldwide culture of game-playing which mixes geocaching with Diplomacy, is a great idea. Unfortunately I can’t really render a judgement as to how well it was executed.

Having said that, I enjoyed the two stories I was able to hear clearly – Elizabeth Bear’s “The Red in the Sky is Our Blood”, read by Kandyse McClure, and in particular John Scalzi’s “Utere Nihil…”, a rather charming coming-of-age story in the comedic cyberpunk thriller mode, read very effectively by Alessandro Juliani, which to me stood out as the gem of the collection.

So, that concludes my absorption of the Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form nominees. My ballot in the end will probably go:

1. Dark Knight
2. WALL-E
3. METAtropolis
4. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
5. Iron Man

Unlike the films, I’m tallying METAtropolis as a book for bookblogging purposes, which is my usual practice for audiobooks with only one actor per story..

• Six things you must do in… Northern Cyprus
  I have done three of them.
  (tags: cyprus)
  Somalia’s only pirate
  Turns out not to be a terribly exclusive interview
  (tags: somaliland)

Some day, or set of days, I shall have a nice long holiday in a temperate climate without too many distractions, and immerse myself in Proust, Ulysses and Virginia Woolf. As predicted when I read Mrs Dalloway, I very much enjoyed To the Lighthouse, with its intense description of two days separated by years and a war, but its not really the kind of book to fit into my commuting, or to get to grips with over a hot weekend when one is cooking lunch for guests. It requires, and I suspect rewards, patient concentration; and yet is only 150 pages long. Very easy to pick up, very difficult to properly absorb. (Perhaps this is one book that might work well in audio format.)

Another solid enough Tenth Doctor novel from Rayner (I haven’t checked, but she must by now be one of the most prolific of Who writers, combining books and audio). In a slightly confusing stylistic quirk, about half of the book is told by Martha Jones in the first person, while most of the rest is also from her point of view but in the third person in varying degrees of tightness. This does give us odd moments of nice characterisation like this:

‘Doctor!’ Vanni said (people do that, you know. It’s always ‘Doctor!’ Never ‘Martha!’ Same with villains. ‘Get the Doctor and the girl!’ Oh well, maybe one day it’ll be ‘Get Martha and the man!’ and he’ll know what it feels like to be the anonymous spare part. Not that I actually want to be captured by villains or anything, I should point out).

Which is more of a meditation on the companion’s lot than we are used to. As usual (as I’m beginning to realise) a slightly out-of-nowhere ending, but basically a decent addition to the shelves.

explains.

I was off work for most of last week, but clearing my inbox have found this press release from the Czech government (currently holding the EU presidency), published last Thursday (11 June):

Presidency Press Statement on the state of play regarding the ‘telecoms package’

The Council of the European Union today held an informal discussion on the state of play regarding the ‘telecoms package’. The Member States consider this set of legislative proposals very important, not least because of the current economic downturn and the role the sector of information and communication technologies can play in mitigating its impact. The Council agrees that the three proposals of the ‘telecoms package’ should be adopted as soon as possible.

That is also why the Council, represented by the Czech Presidency, had spared no effort in intense discussions with the European Parliament on the package earlier this year, and finally reached a compromise solution with the Parliament’s negotiators on 28 April. However, in a plenary session on 6 May, the European Parliament adopted one provision (known as amendment 138 or 46) that runs counter to the agreement.

The Council is ready to work towards a solution of this last outstanding problem and looks forward to working with the newly appointed European Parliament during conciliation. However, the Council cannot take any formal position at present, since the Parliament has still not officially informed the Member States about its second reading position.

I suspect this is more an attempt by the caretaker technocratic Czech government to explain to the more impatient member states (ie France) why they haven’t done anything about it, rather than an attempt to nudge the new European Parliament into changing its mind. Will keep watching this space though.

I guess that the idiom of “to twig” meaning “to understand” originates in a direct lift from the Irish verb “tuigeann”.

I very much enjoyed Delisle’s book about Burma, but was disappointed in this. Some of the oddities he describes (cavernously empty restaurants with fictional menus and crap service, frenetically alcoholic international NGO workers) are entirely familiar to me from my time in the Balkans and could happen anywhere in the world where there is or has recently been a crisis. His description of the Koreans he actually meets is patronising rather than sympathetic; he somehow got the balance better in Burma. I would have liked to know a bit more about the economics of film animation that led to a Québecois cartoonist ending up in Pyongyang in the first place, but that remains a mystery. The situation in North Korea is clearly awful for its inhabitants and potentially dangerous for the rest of us, but I didn’t get the insights I had hoped for from this book.

Announcing Round 2 (Great Home Decorating Ideas)Round 1 (An Older Kind of Magic).

“…for her own part she liked her boobies. Paul must sit by her. She had kept a place for him. Really, she sometimes thought she liked the boobies best.”

• Ireland As 100 People – Strange Maps
  What languages are spoken in Ireland?
  (tags: ireland)
• Making writing | Digital strategy & essays about being alive
  How to write good blog entries
  (tags: blogging)
• The SWISH Report (15) | open Democracy News Analysis
  Advice to Al-Qaeda
  (tags: war)
• The new parliament: A bit like the old one | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion
  Analysis of the European elections (across the whole EU)
  (tags: eu)

Some of you know of the Book Game. It has the following rules:

Each game is run by one person, and is made up of a number of identical rounds (usually 5)

Each round, the person who’s running the game picks a book, and tells everyone else the author, title and some description of the book (I usually use the blurb on the back and an extract from the text). A fixed amount of time passes, during which the players write and submit a plausible first line. Then all the first lines, together with the real one, are published and the players have to guess which is the real one. A point for guessing correctly, a point for someone guessing yours. At the end of the game, the player with most points wins.

Over at the LJ community dedicated to this, which rejoices in the name of , I am moderating the next round. Feel free to come and join in.

This is another Hugo nominee in the Best Related Book category, a collection of Paul Kincaid’s excellent essays and talks about sf. I particularly enjoyed the first quarter of the book, which includes the title essay and some fascinating analysis of various sf encyclopedias, Year’s Bests, and the influence of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness on the genre. There are substantial sections on two authors, Christopher Priest and Gene Wolfe, and also essays on various British sf writers, and writers from elsewhere (including an excellent piece on Borges). There is a surgical dissection of Haldeman’s Forever Free, which I would point out as a great justification by example of writing negative reviews (in case anyone thinks such justification is necessary). I admit that I skimmed the chapters on books or writers which I don’t know so well, but it is all entertaining and insightful, as you would expect. Strongly recommended, if you can actually get hold of it.

I’ve been enjoying the first few Fables volumes, but skipped ahead to the latest because it is one of the Hugo nominees for Best Graphic Story. It is rather fun: starts with a vignette of the relationship between Little Boy Blue and Rose Red, then Cinderella’s daring rescue of Pinocchio, then most of it is the war between the good guys led by Prince Charming (using machine guns and bombs) and the bad guys led by their mastermind Geppetto (who restrict themselves to magic, and therefore lose). I did feel a lack of moral ambiguity on either side – the good guys are all good, the bad guys all committed to their cause; I suppose it is a fairy tale, but Willingham’s interpretation of the characters is so sophisticated in other ways that I was disappointed in this respect. (I know that Rose Red at least has a more ambiguous past, in one of the previous volumes, but there’s no mention of that here.)

I’m glad, as I said before, that this Hugo category has been introduced for this year, and I hope it returns.

• watervole: Star Trek XI and thoughts on Kirk's motivations.
  (tags: sf)

I don’t actually follow Northern Irish news all that closely these days, but one of the ways I keep in touch is to read the weekly political update from lobbying firm Chambré Public Affairs (I still feel a bit guilty about nearly putting the author’s eye out with an arrow from a toy bow when he was five and I was six). Here’s a glorious piece of snark from this week’s edition, about the conduct of the successful candidates in this week’s election:

Doing the Hokey Cokey

PUT your right arm in, pull your right arm out, do the hokey cokey… Poll-topper Bairbre de Brún must have felt like she was in a weird version of the playground game at Monday’s European election count in Belfast’s Kings Hall.

She congratulated Jim Nicholson with a handshake, but when she put her hand out to the DUP’s Diane Dodds, the newly elected MEP steadfastly refused to shake the proffered digits of Ms de Brún.

Mrs Dodds said the DUP wasn’t there to be “best buddies with anybody”.

Mission achieved then Diane!

I believe subscription is free from the Chambré website.

There are a number of theories explaining where the name “Leuven” originates from. The frame on the right illustrates one of them: that it commemorates a Scottish nobleman of the era of Julius Caesar, himself named “Loup”, who founded a settlement called “Lupolin” on the site of the future university city. Note his drooping bagpipes, perhaps a subtle reference to the future importance of beer in the city’s economic development, a theme to which the book returns over and over again.

There are a number of other stories about the history of Leuven, all retold and illustrated here by François Stas, all in Dutch (which I can at least read) with commentary from the characters in local dialect (which I have a lot more trouble with). I’m still a bit confused about the stories of Fiere Margariete and Paep Thoon, but at least I now know the details, even if I can’t quite see the point. I was enlightened to discover the origin of the city flag – which is identical to the Austrian flag, but it seems this is just coincidence; it commemorates the battle of Leuven of 891, when Arnulf of Carinthia defeated the Vikings and afterwards the river Dijle flowed clear between two bloodstained banks.

There have been a lot of invaders around here. I had forgotten that one of them was Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, he of the Bodleian Library. Most of the others were Germans, French and Dutch (with the odd incidence of Spanish in the 16th century). It’s quite difficult to make war and massacres funny, and on the whole Stas skates around the historical details rather delicately, apart from the rather unavoidable matter of August 1914. It’s entertaining enough, and I certainly learned from it.

Since I’ve written up all the films I’ve been watching in bed this week, I’ll also say something about the one we actually saw in the cinema last week. As it happens, the only Trek novel I have read in the last twenty years is a Vonda McIntyre story about how Kirk and Spock got together, so I had already been exposed to one origin tale. (Her recent account of her involvement with the Trek franchise is also entertaining.)

I am sure Vonda McIntyre, who I know reads this lj occasionally, won’t object to my conclusion that the film is much more memorable. Films generally are more memorable, because they are more of a social experience: it’s not just you communicating with the author via a hunk of dead tree, it’s your imagined interaction with the characters on screen; and your shared reactions with the person you’re seeing it with, plus all your friends and acquaintances who have seen it, in a group experience that only books about Harry Potter can achieve. (All of which is muted but still not entirely absent if you’re watching the film a year later on a crappy MP4 player while in bed dosed up on painkillers; cf my write-ups of Hellboy II, Iron Man and Dark Knight.)

The decision to set the new Star Trek in a parallel timetrack, where Kirk’s father died, Vulcan is destroyed and Spock is in love with Uhura, also of course liberated JJ Abrams from many of the constraints that McIntyre’s novel had; she had to end up with the Enterprise as we know it, Abrams theoretically didn’t but we cheer because he did anyway. We cheer at a lot of places in the film, in roughly this order: Uhura, Captain Pike, the hungover McCoy, the green-skinned girl, the first appearance of Spock, the Enterprise including Chekov and Sulu, the appearance of Old Spock, Scotty (and his sandwiches and sidekick), and Leonard Nimoy’s closing monologue. It looks fantastic, spaceships, monsters, dying planets and all. The supporting characters – Chekov, Sulu, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and even Captain Pike – get a lot of very pleasing development. There are some cracking lines of dialogue, even if some of the references to Trek history may pass you by as they did me. There were of course a number of Things Which Don’t Make Sense (another area where films often seem to have more liberty of manœuvre than books) but it would be unkind to list them. (Just one example, though: McCoy smuggling Kirk on board the Enterprise would surely have resulted in court-martial and expulsion from the service for both of them!)

This was really good fun, and I venture to predict that it will win next year’s Hugo, and other awards, by a country mile.

• Monster Jellyfish : Discovery Earth : Discovery Channel
  (tags: climatechange)

This is one of the shortlisted entries for Best Graphic Story in this year’s Hugo awards, and the only one supplied free to the voters. Frankly, it’s pretty poor. A crew of badly drawn and poorly characterised space mercenaries try to get a profit out of capturing an old enemy, who is variously alive or dead as the plot progresses. There are some Funny Bits. I would say that Firefly did it better, but that’s a bit like comparing The Lord of the Rings with The Eye of Argon. I hope the Hugo category of Best Graphic Story continues, but I hope the other nominees are better than this.

I’ve been trawling through the various threads of discussion regarding the new Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics blog, whose aim is “to promote positive reviews of books, movies and comics.”

Well, I’m not interested. If a source tells me up front that it won’t publish critical reviews, I can’t be bothered engaging with it. Except to agree with Nic Clarke when she says “I’m still not clear on what ‘ethics’ have to do with celebrating books you like”.

Well, I thought that was tremendous; a dark meditation on the effects of Batman’s existence on his environment. The special effects are great, the direction and camera work are superb, but what carries the film is the acting, and the central commanding performance is Heath Ledger’s Joker, magnetic, horrible, fascinating, makes what could have been a painfully silly storyline into a mesmerising carnival of terror. The other stars are great too; I thought at first that Christian Bale was a bit subdued as Batman, but I came around to him in the end. Everyone else has seen this by now, so I’ll add that I was pretty impressed that they killed off a major character half way through – that really shows that all bets are off. Sorry, WALL-E, you were very cute but this will get my Hugo vote.

(I guess there is room for some debate as to whether or not Dark Knight is actually science fiction. But if it has made the shortlist, it is eligible for the Hugo, and it certainly feels sfnal to me.)

I was tipped off by to the fact that I actually owned one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lesser-known works, which was not published under his own name. He translated it from French, although the French text was itself a translation; apparently his manuscript notes indicate that he was using a dictionary to cross-check vocabulary with the original text (which was in a language he did not know all that well). Below the cut is the complete Tolkien translation as it appears in my 1966 copy of the book, presumably cut about a bit by his co-editors; an account of the whole affair is to be published very soon.

Jonah

Jonah rebels against his mission
1 1 The word of Yahweh was addressed to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Up!” he said, “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and inform them that their wickedness has become known to me.” 3 Jonah decided to run away from Yahweh, and to go to Tarshish. He went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish; he paid his fare and went aboard, to go with them to Tarshish, to get away from Yahweh. 4 But Yahweh unleashed a violent wind on the sea, and there was such a great storm at sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5 The sailors took fright, and each of them called on his own god, and to lighten the ship they threw the cargo overboard. Jonah, however, had gone down below and lain down in the hold and fallen fast asleep. 6 The boatswain came to him and said, “What do you mean by sleeping? Get up! Call on your god! Perhaps he will spare us a thought, and not leave us to die.” 7 Then they said to each other, “Come on, let us draw lots to find out who is responsible for bringing this evil on us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us, what is your business? Where do you come from? What is your country? What is your nationality?” 9 He replied, “I am Hebrew, and I worship Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” 10 The sailors were seized with terror at this and said, “What have you done?” They knew that he was trying to escape from Yahweh, because he had told them so. 11 They then said, “What are we to do with you, to make the sea grow calm for us?” For the sea was growing rougher and rougher. 12 He replied, “Take me and throw me into the sea, and then it will grow calm for you. For I can see it is my fault this violent storm has happened to you.” 13 The sailors rowed hard in an effort to reach he shore, but in vain, since the sea grew still rougher for them. 14 They then called on Yahweh and said, “O Yahweh, do not let us perish for taking this man’s life; do not hold us guilty.” 14 And taking hold of Jonah they threw him into the sea; and the sea grew calm again. 15 At this the men were seized with dread of Yahweh; they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows.

Jonah is saved
2 1 Yahweh had arranged that a great fish should be there to swallow Jonah; and Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. 2 From the belly of the fish he prayed to Yahweh, his God; he said:

3 “Out of my distress I cried to Yahweh
and he answered me;
from the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you have heard my voice.
4 You cast me into the abyss, into the heart of the sea,
and the flood surrounded me.
All your waves, your billows,
washed over me.
5 And I said: I am cast out
from your sight.
How shall I ever look again
on your holy Temple?
6 The waters surrounded me right to my throat,
the abyss was all around me.
The seaweed was wrapped around my head
7 at the roots of the mountains.
I went down into the countries underneath the earth,
to the people of the past.
But you lifted my life from the pit,
Yahweh, my God.
8 While my soul was fainting within me,
I remembered Yahweh,
and my prayer came before you
into your holy Temple.
9 Those who serve worthless idols
forfeit the grace that was theirs.

10 “But I, with a song of praise,
will sacrifice to you.
The vow I have made, I will fulfill.
Salvation comes from Yahweh.”

The conversion of Nineveh and God’s pardon
3 1 The word of Yahweh was addressed a second time to Jonah: 2 ‘Up!” he said, “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach to them as I told you to.” 3 Jonah set out and went to Nineveh in obedience to the word of Yahweh. Now Nineveh was a city great beyond compare: it took three days to cross it. 4 Jonah went on into the city, making a day’s journey. He preached in these words, “Only forty days more and Nineveh is going to be destroyed.” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. 6 The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes. 7 A proclamation was then promulgated throughout Nineveh, by decree of the king and his ministers, as follows: “Men and beasts, herds and flocks, are to taste nothing; they must not eat, they must not drink water. 8 All are to put on sackcloth and call on God with all their might; and let everyone renounce his evil behaviour and the wicked things he has done. 9 Who knows if God will not change his mind and relent, if he will not renounce his burning wrath, so that we do not perish?” 10 God saw their efforts to renounce their evil behaviour. And God relented; he did not inflict on them the disaster which he had threatened.

The grievance of the prophet and God’s answer
4 1 Jonah was very indignant at this; he fell into a rage. 2 He prayed to Yahweh and said, “Ah! Yahweh is not this just as I said would happen when I was still at home? That was why I went and fled to Tarshish: I knew that you were a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, relenting from evil. 3 So now Yahweh, please take away my life, for I might as well be dead as go on living.” 4 Yahweh replied, “Are you right to be angry?” 5 Jonah then went out of the city and sat down to the east of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then Yahweh God arranged that a castor-oil plant should grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head and soothe his ill-humour; Jonah was delighted with the castor-oil plat. 7 But at dawn the next day, God arranged that a worm should attack the castor-oil plant – and it withered. 8 Next, when the sun rose, God arranged that there should be a scorching east wind; the sun beat down so hard on Jonah’s head that he was overcome and begged for death, saying, “I might as well be dead as go on living.” 9 God said to Jonah, “Are you right to be angry about the castor-oil plant?” He replied, “I have every right to be angry, to the point of death.” 10 Yahweh replied, “You are only upset about a castor-oil plant which cost you no labour, which you did not grow, which sprouted in a night and has perished in a night. 11 And am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?”

• Climate change may displace up to 200 million – CNN.com
  (tags: climatechange)
• DUPs spectacular ascent not solid
  My article in the Newsletter
  (tags: northernireland)
• Suicidally strong IP? – Crooked Timber
  (tags: copyright)

…that comments on my review of Hellboy II have spiralled in several peculiar directions.

Well, another Hugo-nominated film based on a comic that I had barely heard of. I found the politics stupid to the point of being offensive: I don’t think anyone with the slightest notion about Afghanistan could find either the kidnapping plot or the Iron-Man-rescues-the-villagers scene anything other than crude and simplistic. (And bloke who’s grown up living off the fortunes of his dad’s arms business is converted to Doing Good when he suddenly realises that the bangy things kill people? Gimme a break.)

The effects were pretty impressive, but essentially allowed Iron Man and Iron Monger to ignore the laws of physics to the point where there wasn’t much tension left. This will not be at the top of my Hugo ballot.

I met up with Misha (I have known him for years) a few months ago at the Tube station close to his home. It was festooned with posters for his book (presumably a coincidence; I doubt that the advertising agencies care where he lives). I suggested he should autograph the posters but he sensibly declined to do so.

The book is an excellent run through the pervasive infiltration of organised crime around the world, which Glenny attributes largely to the collapse of the Soviet Union (though with a nod also to the US War on Drugs). He takes us on a breathless tour of the underworld in the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, India, Dubai, Nigeria, South Africa, North America, Colombia, Brazil, Japan and finally China – which will have a key role in the future of crime, for good or ill. As always, he mixes deft character sketches of the personalities with gobsmacked horror at what is going on.

I must say that in general his account reinforces my libertarian instincts – criminalising drug use has little effect other than to empower and enrich criminals; stringent immigration laws enable and reward human trafficking; prohibiting prostitution makes vulnerable women even more vulnerable. The one area where this doesn’t work of course is in the exploitation of scarce natural resources – the account of what is happening to the Caspian Sea’s caviar is very depressing.

An excellent book, and an easy if sometimes wrenching read.

…turns out to be on-line after all, so no need to expend efforts in getting it to me (but thanks for the offer). I am irritated that I used a double negative (“not unexcited”) where I meant a single (“not excited” or “unexcited”). I blame my sore back.

Working through the Hugo nominees is exposing me to a lot more parts of the sf world: it is a surprisingly good educational experience. I was vaguely aware of the Hellboy comics but had no idea that there had been a film version, let alone two.

I’ll be honest: the most exciting thing about the film for me was that the climactic segment is set in a steampunk elvish subterranean vault under the Giant’s Causeway. Unfortunately the local colour is just some aerial photography of the Antrim coast, before we return to location filming presumably somewhere in California (cloudless sky, wrong sort of vegetation, and crucially no hexagonal basalt pillars in sight) but I appreciated the effort (as I’m sure the Montenegrins appreciate Karlovy Vary and Lake Como in Casino Royale). The Bethmoora demon’s Ulster accent was not quite as bogus as I had feared (John Alexander is Scottish). Apparently King Balor’s lines are all in “Gaelic”, which presumably means Irish; would be interested to know what any gaelgeori thought of this. Also “Nuala” and “Nuada” do not have three syllables. (Maybe two and a half, depending, but the stress is certainly not on the first ‘a’.)

The special effects are great: thinking especially of the tooth fairies, the Elemental stomping New York, and the Golden Army reassembling itself; also Dr Kraus’s ectoplasm and Liz Sherman’s fiery manifestation. The script is OK, some witty lines, some interesting setup for future stories, but a lot of cliches. The plot is pretty straightforward. I will rank WALL-E ahead of this in my ballot.