Wall E

The makers of the Walt Disney/PIXAR CGI-animated movie WALL·E, which concerns the adventures of a cute robot in a post-apocalyptic future, must have had quite a budget. Thomas Newman has composed what sounds like five different movie scores for it, and he has gotten a giant studio orchestra (there are 52 violinists, just to begin with) as well as plenty of other instrumentalists, to play it. There are grand orchestral themes full of lush string playing, stirring action music, cues that sound like they combine sound effects with the music, contemporary pop tunes, and even a complement of those quirky little motifs, usually played on odd instruments, that are Newman's signature as a composer. (Think of the theme he wrote for the TV series Six Feet Under.) As if that's not enough, there are plot-derived excerpts from the soundtrack to Hello, Dolly!, Louis Armstrong playing and singing "La Vie en Rose," and, last but not least, a story-concluding song by Peter Gabriel that earned him (and Newman) an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. Clearly the music plays a big part in WALL·E, and Newman has done his part to make it another hit from the already wildly successful PIXAR animation studio.