How em WALL-E /em Invented the iPad

There Will Be Blood begins nearly in silence. Its stunning opening 20 minutes follow a solitary figure as he struggles through an American wasteland, digging, bleeding, building. In its howling quiet, its violent yet graceful choreography, the film presents an iconic image of the ravages of greed, the inextricable link between the mythology of American exceptionalism and the circuits of capital--a lone tragic hero representing the creation of the American dream as well as its inevitable apocalyptic end. Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic begins with one of cinema's greatest depictions of the desire and despair at the heart of American capitalism. But then, so does WALL-E. Nearly everything about the knockout opening of Anderson's masterpiece is also true of Pixar's masterpiece, released in theaters the following year, and, as of this week, the first film from the animation studio to be inducted into the vaunted Criterion Collection.