Ratatouille

Yester-day I watched Ratatouille, and I noticed something interesting about the designs surrounding the food critic Anton Ego.  At the very beginning of the movie, he's briefly present (on television), but when he's first properly introduced, there are design elements around him that are suggestive of death.  The typewriter on which he types his reviews vaguely resembles a skull:

And the room in which he does his writing - as viewed from above - has the same shape as a coffin, even with padded walls:

Both of these death-like features visually connect Ego with the restaurant fatalities that his reviews can cause.  He's a Grim Reaper, but of a different type of death: closed restaurants.

Additionally, while watching the movie, I found some of Pixar's hidden references.

I've seen this elsewhere, but I might as well mentioned it.  While Remy is first exploring Paris, he's startled by the silhouette of a dog that looks like that of Doug from Pixar's Up, which would be released a few years later (Ratatouille was released in 2007; Up in 2009).

Pixar's A113 is present on one of the rat's ear tags.

"Light" in Star Wars: A New Hope

Last month I read Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy.  While reading it, it occurred to me that the name Luke probably comes from lux, the Latin word for light.  I looked this up in a name source book I have and confirmed it.  Incidentally, Lucas also comes from the same root.

As a name for the character, it's apt because he's one of the heroes of the original trilogy, and it's especially apt because he embodies the light side of the force.

But because I'd been reading this book of the storyboards, it occurred to me that Luke's manifestation of light is also represented visually.  One of the first scenes that he's in features the double sunset of Tatooine:

(I have only the full screen version.)

There are two suns, which in the immediate context tacitly illustrate Luke as light, but they're also an indication of the two twins - Luke and Leia.