A solitary robot marooned on Earth to clean up after the humans have gone to live in a spaceship, WALL•E finds small joys in doing an impossible job well and salvaging the kitsch treasures — a spork, a Rubik’s Cube, a Beta tape of the movie Hello, Dolly! — that humans have left behind. The boxy little robo-guy (metallic voice supplied by genius sound-sculptor Ben Burtt) has so much love to give, it’s only natural that he should fall for the first female he meets: a sleek machine named EVE. A romance and an adventure, like all Pixar movies, director Andrew Stanton’s masterpiece here represents the decade’s full Pixar oeuvre, including Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and Up. It also stands in for all the glories of animation, whether CGI, traditional or stop-motion, that provided the greatest measure of joy in the new cinematic millennium.
“What happens next?” In books, on TV series and in film, this decade saw the triumphant return of the heroic narrative. Sometimes, as in (Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean, movies had sequels because the box office told them to, but frequently the sagas were organic and complex, obliging viewers to recall story elements from episodes a year or two before. (You can do that in the DVD era.) We mean Harry Potter, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, maybe Christopher Nolan’s Batman series and, above all, Peter Jackson’s 9 hr.-plus adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. The New Zealander spent seven years on the project, chose and directed its perfect cast and orchestrated the luminous effects work, all to create a fantasy epic of tremendous scope, gravity and heart. Props also to Jackson for his WETA digital shop, which helped bring the creatures of Avatar to persuasive life; for mentoring Neill Blomkamp on this year’s District 9; and for choosing Guillermo Del Toro, whose Pan’s Labyrinth found children’s fantasy in a much darker shade, to direct The Hobbit, the two-part prequel to The Lord of the Rings.
In light of the Material Girl performing at Super Bowl XLVI, TIME takes a look at her life and career, both of which have been lived firmly in the public eye.
