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Wall*E + Kleenex = Iron*E
There’s a secret that Kimberly-Clark does not want you to know: Every Kleenex tissue is made from ancient forests. In fact, the tissues contain no recycled fiber at all. None. Instead, Kleenex is made from trees up to 180 years old cut from ancient forests that are up to 10,000 years old. These forests are home to eagles, bears, foxes and endangered caribou that are losing more habitat with every box of Kleenex bought.
Despite mounting pressure Kleenex’s parent company, the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, has been unwilling to improve its practices, continuing to rely on paper and pulp made from clearcut Endangered forest, including North America's Boreal Forest. Kimberly-Clark clears these ancient forests, essential in fighting climate change and providing home to wildlife like caribou, wolves, eagles and bears, to make products that are flushed down the toilet or thrown away. Greenpeace has directly communicated with Kimberly-Clark employees at various company outlets asking them to take action, worked to get Kimberly-Clark products removed from 12 universities, and issued a report last year, Cut & Run, which details Kimberly-Clark's continued devastation of the Kenogami Forest.
Now celebrated animator Mark Fiore and Greenpeace have released parody featuring the popular character Wall*E. The piece highlights the biting irony of the world’s largest maker of disposable tissues, Kimberly-Clark, using a children’s movie with a strong environmental message to sell a product made of ”virgin” fiber clearcut from ancient forests and containing no recycled content. In this new spoof, our hero Wall*E is wandering a devastated future world when he stumbles upon one of his robot predecessors: a demonic machine named Kleer*E bent on clearcutting forests to create Kleenex brand tissues. In song and dance, Kleer*E reveals why Wall*E lives in a world without forests, wildlife or people. There’s a secret that Kimberly-Clark does not want you to know: Every Kleenex tissue is made from ancient forests. In fact, the tissue... more -
CGI or not CGI?
The Dark Knight, The Matrix, and ... Angelina Jolie's breasts. They're all cultural flashpoints. But which were bolstered with Computer Generated Images and which weren't? You might be surprised ... The Dark Knight, The Matrix, and ... Angelina Jolie's breasts. They're all cultural flashpoints. But which were bolstered ... more
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Pop Waffle Vol. 20: Oh, that Jesse Jackson!
for the week of 7.20.08
Another round of This is the new That.
My Dad weighs in on the whole A-Rod/Madonna/Lenny Kravitz fiasco.
And how could Heidi and Spencer be worth 3 million?
All this and more in this week's Pop Waffle!
music: Left Behind by CSS for the week of 7.20.08 Another round of This is the new That. My Dad weighs in on the whole A-Rod/Madonna/Lenny Kravitz fiasco. ... more -
The Environmentalism of Wall-E
The decade's most powerful environmental film doesn't star Al Gore or Greenpeace activists, but a trash-compacting, Hello Dolly-loving robot with a cockroach for a best friend.
Backdropping the Chaplin-esque romantic robot comedy is a barren Earth smothered in junk, deserted but for the movie's eponymous hero, who is fated to compress garbage under sandstorm skies until his battered processors wind down.
When Wall-E meets the not-so-subtly-named Eve -- Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator -- love is as inevitable and precious as a seedling that emerges, against all odds, from the waste. But overriding Eve's heart is her prime directive, and Wall-E hitches a ride as she takes the sprout to her ship.
(The unsullied starscape into which they burst from the Earth's satellite-encrusted atmosphere is a moment of visual bliss and a reminder of the inspirational transcendence of space, however light-polluted our view now may be.)
Here the movie takes a mythological jump: the seedling is an olive branch delivered to a vessel waiting, like Noah's ark, for word of land. Aboard it, however, are not two of every different thing, but endless numbers of the same thing -- people living in consumer coccoons provided by the Buy'N'Large corporation.
Promised that "There's No Need to Walk!" by By'N'Large's ubiquitous billboards, the couchbound exiles spend their days in a haze of flat-screened entertainment and oversized sodas. In a perfect metaphor for the lazy thoughtlessnes that ultimately ruined their planet, they're literally too lazy to carry their own weight.
A whiff of puritanism and smugness is soon evident, and I was reminded of Freeman Dyson's description of environmentalism as secular religion. Any religion is prone to orthodoxy and dogma -- but just as some religious practices are simple common sense, so are the tenets of environmentalism.
People rely on other Earthly life for both survival and pleasure; our habits affect it in self-defeating ways. I'm willing to accept on faith the universal poignance of the ship captain's remarks upon return: "It looks like Earth. But where's the blue sky? Where's the grass?"
Wall-E creator Pixar has disavowed the movie's environmental overtones, and little wonder. Parent corporation Walt Disney is the essence of inoffensive, all-inclusive and merchandise-friendly branding. But even if its bubble-wrapped tie-ins end up clogging our great-grandchildren's landfills, Wall-E's point is no less potent. And if your kids want Wall-E toys, buy them a planter and some seeds. The decade's most powerful environmental film doesn't star Al Gore or Greenpeace activists, but a trash-compacting, Hello Do... more -
infoMania 07.03.08
Chewing up the week's media so we can regurgitate it, half-digested, into your mouth.
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The Week in Media
Massive Wipeouts, mini-sex tapes and a promise that we all hope Stephen Baldwin keeps.
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WALL - E?
Disney and Pixar are at it again with their highly anticipated animated summer movie, Wall-E. Does this little robot join the ranks of Nemo and Toy Story? Current viewers give their review. Disney and Pixar are at it again with their highly anticipated animated summer movie, Wall-E. Does this little robot join the ranks o... more
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"WALL-E is a leftist propaganda pushing, fear-mongering fascist..."
Apparently, Pixar's latest film has outraged some folks who believe it to be nothing but anti-Bush propaganda.
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Pixar hits another home run!
Check out some of these movie reviews from top critics. It looks to be another smash hit from the people that brought you Toy Story.
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Real-Life Wall-E Rolls the Streets of Los Angeles
The city of Los Angeles comes to a stand still amidst mass swooning over the uncontrollably cute real-life model of Wall-E, the star of Pixar's upcoming film. The city of Los Angeles comes to a stand still amidst mass swooning over the uncontrollably cute real-life model of Wall-E, the star o... more
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The new WALL-E trailer
I watched "Ratatouille" just before Thanksgiving and was reminded just how incredible Pixar's aggregate creative talent is. Now they've just released a new trailer for WALL-E -- their next movie -- and I am reminded once again.
(I mean, for the record, physical comedy with cute robots is not necessarily my thing, but I've learned better than to second-guess this studio.) I watched "Ratatouille" just before Thanksgiving and was reminded just how incredible Pixar's aggregate creative talent... more
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WALL-E
