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Mar. 8th, 2008 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blodeueddBecause it can't be Prince of Tennis all the time:
The Jane Austen Book Club:
With a title like that, how could I not want to watch this?
I'm of two minds about this movie. On one hand, it's about the experience of reading, and how one relates to books and their characters (and no matter what hobbies I may pick up during my lifetime, I've always been and will always will be a reader, first and foremost). On the other, it's got so many different storylines that I kept feeling something was missing. It's not only that the book club has six members, it's that on top of exploring their lives, the movie also wants to explore Austen's books and how the characters interpret them in relation to their experiences. That's quite a lot for a single movie, no?
On the whole, I felt the bad outweighed the good, and that the characters all managed to be properly developed, no matter that they didn't all get the same amount of attention. Still, I was a bit annoyed at one major theme that went mostly unexplored, namely the issue of gender.
At first, some of the women object to including Grigg in the group, because he's a man (and their reasons are quite valid, and deeper than just "But men don't get Austen!"), and this is more or less resolved when they meet Grigg and mostly decide that he's fairly harmless. Still, Grigg's later testimony about his love of sci-fi and his shock at discovering that "all these" authors he liked and thought were men were actually women (he lists a whopping two names) smacks of... I'm not sure how to explain it, other than that I assume to script meant to show that just as men can understand and appreciate Austen, so can women understand and appreciate (and write) science-fiction. And while that's absolutely true, it doesn't change the fact that it's still a male-dominated genre.
Grigg, however, was adorably geeky.
Also of note was the spot-on casual banter between the women: I'm thinking about the scene where they walk up to Grigg's house in particular. They're cracking jokes, talking about inconsequential things that don't really have anything to do with the rest of the plot, and it feels so real that it made me want to join in.
Another nice thing was that while the film assumes the viewers are familiar with Austen, and it certainly helps to have read all the books, it manages to work in recaps of all six in such a way that it doesn't feel like a lecture.
Final verdict: 7/10
Tokyo Godfathers:
One of the results of having more or less stopped watching anime five years ago is that ever since then, there's been a list growing in the back of my mind, a list of Anime I Should Watch, titles that I've heard or read about and that piqued my interest. This is their story.
:D
Fine, it's the story of one of those titles.
While I'm not one to really pay attention to who's directed what (exceptions are made for Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai), I seem to be unintentionally following Satoshi Kon. I saw (and was appropriately disturbed by) Perfect Blue, saw the world premiere of Millenium Actress at FantAsia in 2001, and have Paprika ready and waiting. So far, though I'll reserve judgement until I've seen Paprika, this is by far my favourite of Kon's films, and the only one I'd watch a second time without hesitation. (Though I did quite enjoy Millenium Actress, I've never felt the desire to see it again.)
The makeshift family made up of Gin, Hana and Miyuki feels so real that I was surprised at how attached to them I was by the end. Their stories, while sad, are perfectly balanced by the comedy of the movie, and things never degenerate into trite, maudlin territory. They squabble, they insult each other, but they do care and watch out for each other; by the end, when they needed just that little touch of magic, and it came through, I had tears in my eyes.
As much as I loved the human characters, the character of the "hidden" side of Tokyo also plays a starring role, and I found it all the more fascinating because this is the side that you rarely see in film, yet I see everyday. There are a lot of homeless people who live along the river in my neighbourhood, and they do indeed have elaborate shacks made up mostly of blue tarps, and Gin looks like the guy who lives under the train overpass near Asakusa station, only with more facial hair.
Final verdict: 8.5/10
The Golden Compass:
While I didn't have all those years of love invested in this story, as I did with The Lord of the Rings, I was still nervous when I heard that His Dark Materials was being made into movies. So, I suppose it's only fair that my pleasure at the movie be proportionate to my worry beforehand: I enjoyed it quite a lot, though I wasn't absolutely blown away. My main problem with it is that the exposition we're given in the beginning is a touch clunky and after that, the story proceeds to jump about without much "in-between time". Also, no explanation is given as to why Lyra seems to keep going off on her own. I know this wasn't a problem in the book, because that's the kind of thing I notice, but the movie shows Lyra's (correct) leaps of logic without always showing her using the alethiometer, so she seems unusually bright for a child. Not that she isn't, but the movie makes her out to have inside information without reminding us why she does.
Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Lyra, is marvelous, and I'd recommend the movie based on her alone. In fact, all the actors are good, and I can only say it's a shame that we don't get to see more of the luscious, lovely Eva Green -- is that woman HOT, or is she HOT? My only complaint is that my darling Ian McKellan, who did Iorek's voice, wasn't too convincing in his first scenes. On the other hand, we got to see Christopher Lee! :D
I saw this with two girls who've read the book far more recently than I have, so they were able to point out events that had been rearranged, as well as other changes, but the one that stood out the most to me, apart from the (completely understandable) decision to end the movie before the events that end the book, was the changing of the scene in which Lyra finds a child who's had the intercision performed on him. That scene was so incredibly poignant that when I first read it -- and I think I wrote about it here, 6 years ago -- I was choking back tears. I'm not sure whether that remembered emotion is what had me tearing up in the cinema today, though I'm sure Ms. Richards' acting didn't hurt, but Lyra's pained and shocked expression when she figures out what's going in Bolvangar had me tearing up.
The visuals didn't disappoint, although they could have looked a little less computer generated. I mean, if LotR managed it years ago... For some reason, I thought Mrs. Coulter's daemon was the worst in this respect, but I really liked the ice bears, especially the fight between Iorek and Ragnar (not his book name), even though we weren't shown a drop of blood.
Speaking of fights, I thought the staging of the final one very effective, and certainly it was miles above the bore that was the great battle in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Final verdict: 8/10 (actually 7.5, but Lyra was so good I rounded it up)
And speaking of Narnia, there was a preview for Prince Caspian, which I feel I ought to go see, if only to encourage fantasy films. After all, Prince Caspian was always my second-least favourite of the books, after The Silver Chair, and I wasn't all that impressed with the first movie.
And speaking of previews, one was for a Japanese film called Sushi Ouji -- it's the Prince of Sushi! The preview was actually pretty funny, and it seems it's based on a tv series, and not a manga or anime, as I'd assumed. I think I'll have to track that down, it looks completely insane.
After the movie, we went out to eat. None of us really knew any places in Shinjuku, and one of the other girls isn't too fond of Japanese food, so we decided to go to an Italian place in Harajuku, which is only a couple of train stops away. It was 5 o'clock, and we figured we'd have the place to ourselves, since the dinner rush only starts around 7, here. Well, when we got there, we found that the entire restaurant had been reserved for a reception, so one of the girls suggested a nearby pizza place she liked. On the way there, we joked that if it were also reserved, we'd have to settle for crêpes.
Wouldn't you know it? It WAS reserved! We couldn't believe it. Strike two! We ended up walking to Shibuya to go to Outback, because surely, they wouldn't also be reserved? They weren't, though we had to wait a little while for a non-smoking table. We split an onion bloom (huge! greasy! delicious! but I won't feel the need to eat another one for years!) and nachos (which we didn't even manage to finish) three ways, and I split a salad with one of the girls, and I still felt overly stuffed. Ah, how I've grown used to Japanese serving sizes, so much more reasonable!
One last thing, today I used the JR Shinjuku station's South exit! *hums along with Nagayama Takashi*
I'll post my reviews of the two Prince of Tennis movies later, as I've got lots of screencaps for those. Stay tuned for Live Action Impossible Tennis and Ryouma's Symbolic Orange!
The Jane Austen Book Club:
With a title like that, how could I not want to watch this?
I'm of two minds about this movie. On one hand, it's about the experience of reading, and how one relates to books and their characters (and no matter what hobbies I may pick up during my lifetime, I've always been and will always will be a reader, first and foremost). On the other, it's got so many different storylines that I kept feeling something was missing. It's not only that the book club has six members, it's that on top of exploring their lives, the movie also wants to explore Austen's books and how the characters interpret them in relation to their experiences. That's quite a lot for a single movie, no?
On the whole, I felt the bad outweighed the good, and that the characters all managed to be properly developed, no matter that they didn't all get the same amount of attention. Still, I was a bit annoyed at one major theme that went mostly unexplored, namely the issue of gender.
At first, some of the women object to including Grigg in the group, because he's a man (and their reasons are quite valid, and deeper than just "But men don't get Austen!"), and this is more or less resolved when they meet Grigg and mostly decide that he's fairly harmless. Still, Grigg's later testimony about his love of sci-fi and his shock at discovering that "all these" authors he liked and thought were men were actually women (he lists a whopping two names) smacks of... I'm not sure how to explain it, other than that I assume to script meant to show that just as men can understand and appreciate Austen, so can women understand and appreciate (and write) science-fiction. And while that's absolutely true, it doesn't change the fact that it's still a male-dominated genre.
Grigg, however, was adorably geeky.
Also of note was the spot-on casual banter between the women: I'm thinking about the scene where they walk up to Grigg's house in particular. They're cracking jokes, talking about inconsequential things that don't really have anything to do with the rest of the plot, and it feels so real that it made me want to join in.
Another nice thing was that while the film assumes the viewers are familiar with Austen, and it certainly helps to have read all the books, it manages to work in recaps of all six in such a way that it doesn't feel like a lecture.
Final verdict: 7/10
Tokyo Godfathers:
One of the results of having more or less stopped watching anime five years ago is that ever since then, there's been a list growing in the back of my mind, a list of Anime I Should Watch, titles that I've heard or read about and that piqued my interest. This is their story.
:D
Fine, it's the story of one of those titles.
While I'm not one to really pay attention to who's directed what (exceptions are made for Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai), I seem to be unintentionally following Satoshi Kon. I saw (and was appropriately disturbed by) Perfect Blue, saw the world premiere of Millenium Actress at FantAsia in 2001, and have Paprika ready and waiting. So far, though I'll reserve judgement until I've seen Paprika, this is by far my favourite of Kon's films, and the only one I'd watch a second time without hesitation. (Though I did quite enjoy Millenium Actress, I've never felt the desire to see it again.)
The makeshift family made up of Gin, Hana and Miyuki feels so real that I was surprised at how attached to them I was by the end. Their stories, while sad, are perfectly balanced by the comedy of the movie, and things never degenerate into trite, maudlin territory. They squabble, they insult each other, but they do care and watch out for each other; by the end, when they needed just that little touch of magic, and it came through, I had tears in my eyes.
As much as I loved the human characters, the character of the "hidden" side of Tokyo also plays a starring role, and I found it all the more fascinating because this is the side that you rarely see in film, yet I see everyday. There are a lot of homeless people who live along the river in my neighbourhood, and they do indeed have elaborate shacks made up mostly of blue tarps, and Gin looks like the guy who lives under the train overpass near Asakusa station, only with more facial hair.
Final verdict: 8.5/10
The Golden Compass:
While I didn't have all those years of love invested in this story, as I did with The Lord of the Rings, I was still nervous when I heard that His Dark Materials was being made into movies. So, I suppose it's only fair that my pleasure at the movie be proportionate to my worry beforehand: I enjoyed it quite a lot, though I wasn't absolutely blown away. My main problem with it is that the exposition we're given in the beginning is a touch clunky and after that, the story proceeds to jump about without much "in-between time". Also, no explanation is given as to why Lyra seems to keep going off on her own. I know this wasn't a problem in the book, because that's the kind of thing I notice, but the movie shows Lyra's (correct) leaps of logic without always showing her using the alethiometer, so she seems unusually bright for a child. Not that she isn't, but the movie makes her out to have inside information without reminding us why she does.
Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Lyra, is marvelous, and I'd recommend the movie based on her alone. In fact, all the actors are good, and I can only say it's a shame that we don't get to see more of the luscious, lovely Eva Green -- is that woman HOT, or is she HOT? My only complaint is that my darling Ian McKellan, who did Iorek's voice, wasn't too convincing in his first scenes. On the other hand, we got to see Christopher Lee! :D
I saw this with two girls who've read the book far more recently than I have, so they were able to point out events that had been rearranged, as well as other changes, but the one that stood out the most to me, apart from the (completely understandable) decision to end the movie before the events that end the book, was the changing of the scene in which Lyra finds a child who's had the intercision performed on him. That scene was so incredibly poignant that when I first read it -- and I think I wrote about it here, 6 years ago -- I was choking back tears. I'm not sure whether that remembered emotion is what had me tearing up in the cinema today, though I'm sure Ms. Richards' acting didn't hurt, but Lyra's pained and shocked expression when she figures out what's going in Bolvangar had me tearing up.
The visuals didn't disappoint, although they could have looked a little less computer generated. I mean, if LotR managed it years ago... For some reason, I thought Mrs. Coulter's daemon was the worst in this respect, but I really liked the ice bears, especially the fight between Iorek and Ragnar (not his book name), even though we weren't shown a drop of blood.
Speaking of fights, I thought the staging of the final one very effective, and certainly it was miles above the bore that was the great battle in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Final verdict: 8/10 (actually 7.5, but Lyra was so good I rounded it up)
And speaking of Narnia, there was a preview for Prince Caspian, which I feel I ought to go see, if only to encourage fantasy films. After all, Prince Caspian was always my second-least favourite of the books, after The Silver Chair, and I wasn't all that impressed with the first movie.
And speaking of previews, one was for a Japanese film called Sushi Ouji -- it's the Prince of Sushi! The preview was actually pretty funny, and it seems it's based on a tv series, and not a manga or anime, as I'd assumed. I think I'll have to track that down, it looks completely insane.
After the movie, we went out to eat. None of us really knew any places in Shinjuku, and one of the other girls isn't too fond of Japanese food, so we decided to go to an Italian place in Harajuku, which is only a couple of train stops away. It was 5 o'clock, and we figured we'd have the place to ourselves, since the dinner rush only starts around 7, here. Well, when we got there, we found that the entire restaurant had been reserved for a reception, so one of the girls suggested a nearby pizza place she liked. On the way there, we joked that if it were also reserved, we'd have to settle for crêpes.
Wouldn't you know it? It WAS reserved! We couldn't believe it. Strike two! We ended up walking to Shibuya to go to Outback, because surely, they wouldn't also be reserved? They weren't, though we had to wait a little while for a non-smoking table. We split an onion bloom (huge! greasy! delicious! but I won't feel the need to eat another one for years!) and nachos (which we didn't even manage to finish) three ways, and I split a salad with one of the girls, and I still felt overly stuffed. Ah, how I've grown used to Japanese serving sizes, so much more reasonable!
One last thing, today I used the JR Shinjuku station's South exit! *hums along with Nagayama Takashi*
I'll post my reviews of the two Prince of Tennis movies later, as I've got lots of screencaps for those. Stay tuned for Live Action Impossible Tennis and Ryouma's Symbolic Orange!
