Yeah, GotF is in the category of "beautifully made but I'm never watching it again" along with such laughfests as Gallipoli and Schindler's List.

Ditto. Except I knew better than to see those other two.

Ooh, Colin Firth, Sam Shepard AND Jeffrey Dean Morgan cast in a romantic comedy. (With Uma Thurman and Isabella Rossellini.)

Oldies fans: Check out The Country Girl next time it's on TCM. Amazing movie about a has-been entertainer with a drinking problem (Bing Crosby) who's cast in a potential-Broadway show at the insistence of the director (William Holden). Only the entertainer's wife (Grace Kelly) causes problems. Or does she prevent them?

Crosby gives a magnificent performance, especially because he dispenses with the easy-going charm that's usually associated with him. Kelly (who won an Oscar for this one) does without the glamor and digs deep for a wonderful dramatic performance in a difficult role. Holden is great, too, but that's less of a surprise.

Another worthwhile one I saw over the weekend: 1776. American history and a musical. Hard to go wrong.

Mmmmmm...1776.....Too bad they cut that one song. Love the movie, though. Mostly the original Broadway cast, shot in Philadelphia. :::sigh:::

Debet, are you thinking of "Cool, Cool, Conservative Men"? It's in the TCM print, which added back in a fair amount of footage that was cut.

Ohh. I saw 1776 on Broadway years ago. Lovely, lovely and much more enjoyable than I expected.

ItotallyON. I know that mentioning Underworld is likely to get me pelted with tomatoes, but I gotta say... Fela brought over the 'unrated' version and we watched it last night. The reintroduced scenes (all except one that was groanworthy) actually make it a much more coherent story. And one character (the blond chica) comes off much, much better. Less the petulant child and more the righteously scorned woman.

Better still, it sparked a long conversation about directoral decisions, production requirements and how loooong a road it is from vision to visual. Sometimes, there are some wicked dog-legs in that road!

I read several reviews of Grave of the Fireflies, and while it's considered a beautifully crafted film, I could also tell from the synopses that it wasn't something I would voluntarily sit through.

I felt so unbelievably petty when I watched that film. It was beautiful and moving and it made me weepy, but OH MY GOD, the voice of the little girl made me want to drive nails into my eardrums.

I watched The Testament of Dr. Mabuse this weekend. We got it from Netflix to watch around Halloween, but we've been too busy to catch up on movies recently. Anyway, for those who haven't seen it, Mabuse is classic noir (and I don't throw that word around lightly in this place). It's a Fritz Lang joint, full of dramatic, carefully crafted sets and stark black-and-white. The story is basically a police procedural (one the first ever filmed, perhaps?), but the POV of the criminal mastermind is deeply unsettling in the best way. Highly recommended.

I watched Spirited Away yesterday. I've had it from Netflix for awhile and finally watched it. It was excellent. I loved the visuals and all the various creatures. I really liked the main character, she seemed to be very much like a real kid -- scared but being brave, not like some movies where the kids act too much in an adult manner.

I did watch the movie with subtitles and not dubbing, because that's how I watch all foreign films. But at one point I switched over to the dubbing to see what the voices were like and I left on the subtitles and it was weird because what the dubbing said was really different than what the subtitles said so I switched back to subtitles.

I haven't seen Howl's Moving Castle yet and I may bump it up to the top of my queue.

Have you seen any other Miyazaki movies? I liked Howl a lot, but his fans are fairly divided in opinion. I've watched a handful of Miyazaki movies both with and without the subtitles, and the story is ALWAYS better in the original Japanese, but the Japanese voice artists sometimes bug me.

Anyway, skipping the Lupin III movie, which I didn't care much about, and Sherlock Hound, which I haven't seen, I'd rank his movies thus:

1. Spirited Away
2. My Neighbor Totoro
3. Princess Mononoke
4. Howl's Moving Castle
5. Nausicaa
6. Porco Rosso
7. Castle in the Sky
8. Kiki's Delivery Service

Of the movies he worked on but didn't direct, I really like Pom Poko, thought Whisper of the Heart was ok, and never saw The Cat Returns.