NSW: Pixar's star robot greets young fans with g'day

AAP General News (Australia)
08-24-2008
NSW: Pixar's star robot greets young fans with g'day

By Alyssa Braithwaite, National Entertainment Writer

SYDNEY, Aug 24 AAP - He is a robot of few words but Pixar's latest star Wall-E greeted
young fans with waves and a few g'days at the Australian premiere of his film.

Local celebrities, such as Wayne Cooper, George Miller, Sophie Lee, Jono Coleman and
Jay Laga'aia, brought their children down the red carpet at the Entertainment Quarter
at Sydney's Moore Park to meet the one metre-high robot.

Wall-E stars in the Disney film of the same name about a waste compacting robot who
is left on earth after humans abandon it 700 years in the future.

The film, which opens on September 18, is the latest offering from the team behind
Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc and A Bug's Life.

It made $US63 million ($A68 million) in its opening weekend in America, and the buzz
is that it could become Pixar's first film to be nominated in the best picture category
at the Academy Awards.

Wall-E writer and director Andrew Stanton said he tried not to listen to those rumours.

"I want to put my fingers in my ears and start going la, la, la, la, la, because I'm
so superstitious," Stanton told AAP on the red carpet.

"But that's such a compliment from a really jaded community.

"It was made by a bunch of people who love movies and wanted to go back to what it
felt like to see these kind of movies that I saw in the 70s as a kid."

Stanton said it was amazing to be joined on the red carpet by the million dollar real-life
Wall-E.

"It still blows me away," he said.

"It's as if somebody made a robot of my child."

Wall-E whistled and bleeped, laughed, said his own name and charmed guests with a few
g'days for good measure.

Sound designer Ben Burtt, who has worked on ET and Star Wars, said Wall-E could convey
a lot despite his limited vocabulary.

"I kind of learned that you can piece together sound affects that have an emotional
feel to them without even being words that we recognise," Burtt said.

"It's kind of a universal language."

AAP acb/sw/jfm/de

KEYWORD: WALL-E (PICS AVAILABLE)

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