Xander/Buffy ,'Help'
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Saw Pan's Labyrinth last night. Regarding the above discussion, there were three bits that I thought were difficult to explain without magic. 1) The mother getting better after the mandrake is put under the bed, and then getting sick right after it's thrown into the fire (could have been coincidence, but still...); 2) The labyrinth walls opening; and 3) Her escaping from her locked room to get to the Captain's room.
Off to read the interview....
del Toro is quite the pottymouth!
I found it gory--starting with the shot of the woman
True. I guess because the camera's always moving, I never felt that we lingered on any of those long enough to ping my gore-o-meter.
del Toro is quite the pottymouth!
I know, isn't he great?
I had an amazon gift certificate. I pre-ordered The Prestige and added Little Miss Sunshine. Since I bundled them together I won't get them until February 20th. I hate waiting for the one, but I be cheap. Ah, well. When they do get here I will wallow in movies.
Pan's Labyrinth question: how did Ofelia know which door to pick?
I like Pan's Labyrinth a lorra a lot but the politicking really pulled it down for me. It's a pretty inane move to draw connective lines between the modern day right wing and the Nationalists in Spain because they were also right wing and then to represent the Nationalists with self-loathing, child-murdering, apolitical-peasant's-face smashing, opulent-dinner enjoying, the-most-sympathetic-adult-character almost-torturing monsters. That don't like women.
I'm with Del Toro on the not-cool way horror and such is sneered at, and while God knows what I'm about to say doesn't factor in what most of the sneerers think, I do think that you're opening yourself to charges of simplistic thinking when you draw equivalencies between deformed, fairy-eating monsters and people in real-world political contexts.
What connective lines did you see? I totally didn't get that vibe.
P-C: Do you mean the tiny door she put the key in to get the knife? I thought she tried the middle one and it didn't work, so she tried the left one.
Also on PL, Does anyone have a non-magical explanation as to how Ofelia got out of her locked room?
Jon, that's what I meant, yeah, but that seems too easy. What's the point of having a choice if you can just try and see which one works? In those situations, choosing the wrong door would cause some sort of harm. I don't think she even turned the key in the door the fairies pointed her to; she was about to, and then she just decided it was the left one. I wasn't sure what made her do that. Del Toro says that choice is a strong theme, so this is an important scene. Maybe it's the very fact that she chose for herself rather than following what the fairies and the book said.
I was hanging out with a friend who has an HD tv and I watched bits of TNT's HD On Demand of the LotR movies.
Oh my. Totally worth it. You can see amazing detail on the costumes! Eowyn's particularly lovely as was Galadriel's dress in the Mirror of Galadriel scene.
Re: Pan's Labyrinth, I think that choosing the left door instead of the middle one was very much a choice, and one of the big tests of actual Princess-hood. She knew because she knew- it was built into her, somehow.
I loved that movie oh so much.