Buffista Movies 5: Development Hell
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
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.
So, for someone that wants to fill this egregious gap in her film education, which ones would the Buffistas recommend I start with?
Okay, ranking Howl above Nausicaa I can understand, because for some reason there are plenty of otherwise right-thinking people who don't care for that one. But ranking Howl above Porco Rosso? That's just crazyness!
I could lend you my grey-market boxed set, megan.
Eh, Porco Rosso was alright, but I didn't think there was much there there. I liked Howl's story more.
Megan, I'd start with Spirited Away or Totoro. That said, the first one I saw was Mononoke, which was also fantastic.
which ones would the Buffistas recommend I start with?
I've seen only three of the the films listed about, but I'd say, go with Spirited Away. I found the environmental messages in Princess Mononoke way too heavy-handed for my liking -- something SA does with a lot more subtlety. SA also has a great balance of humour and wonder.
