And remember, if you hurt her, I will beat you to death with a shovel.

Willow ,'Conversations with Dead People'


Buffista Movies 7: Brides for 7 Samurai  

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.


Laga - Jul 03, 2010 9:29:49 pm PDT #9556 of 30000
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.

I've seen budget estimiates from 250-280 million for The Last Airbender. I think chances are still pretty good that MNS won't get to make a sequel... oh please.


Frankenbuddha - Jul 04, 2010 4:02:12 am PDT #9557 of 30000
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

"Really? That's badass!"

Was that Emmett, or Matilda?


DavidS - Jul 04, 2010 6:22:10 pm PDT #9558 of 30000
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

That was Emmett. "Badass" has replaced "Tight" as the descriptor of cool things.

So, a remembrance of seeing Pippi Longstocking movies in the early seventies made me think of semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment. Like...The Point! And, The Phantom Tollboth (by Chuck Jones) and the Rankin Bass version of The Last Unicorn (okay, 1982).

Now, Matilda is into unicorns with the fervor of a true Rainbow Unicorn Princess Warrior.

But I wasn't sure whether she'd want to see the movie so I showed her some clips on YouTube. She was entranced.

She described what she saw to her mother thus (fyi, "bully" = The Red Bull): "Did you know about the bully and the unicorn? He pushed them all into the water, but then they escaped away! I think if we push the bully into the water, and poke a hole in him, and take out all his blood, and then cut off his horn, and then cut off the horns on his head, and then cut his head off, then we could EAT HIM."

So I looked up a review on a blog and found this interesting tidbit.

People with a sharp eye often compare the art of The Last Unicorn with that of NausicaƤ of the Valley of the Wind (1984) -- especially their use of deep blue backgrounds -- and rightly so: they were animated by the same people! You see, the last project Topcraft worked on was NausicaƤ, under Hayao Miyazaki. After the success of their first solo film, Topcraft became Studio Ghibli.

Whoa! I didn't know that!

Here's the blog entry with lots of fascinating screenshots of the backgrounds.

Note: I read The Last Unicorn many times in my youth and it conveyed a bittersweet and melancholy that I had not been acquainted with up to that point in my life. I saw the movie once in the theater and once on VHS.

But I'll still get the movie version for Matilda.

Because she's Running With the Rainbow Unicorns.


amych - Jul 04, 2010 6:24:18 pm PDT #9559 of 30000
Now let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?

She's not much of a vegetarian, is she?


DavidS - Jul 04, 2010 6:24:47 pm PDT #9560 of 30000
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

You know who also runs with the Rainbow Unicorns? Azula, Mai and Ty Li


DavidS - Jul 04, 2010 6:27:09 pm PDT #9561 of 30000
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

She's not much of a vegetarian, is she?

Actual Matilda Quote Tonight: "I want meat!"


JZ - Jul 04, 2010 6:29:45 pm PDT #9562 of 30000
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

Though when she says, "I want meat!" what she generally means is "I want exactly three bites of meat and no more!" So she's not much of a vegetarian, but she's also not exactly covering herself in carnivorous glory.


tommyrot - Jul 04, 2010 6:42:19 pm PDT #9563 of 30000
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

she's also not exactly covering herself in carnivorous glory.

But clearly when she's older she wants to hunt the wild cow....


Kathy A - Jul 04, 2010 8:23:51 pm PDT #9564 of 30000
We're very stretchy. - Connie Neil

So, a remembrance of seeing Pippi Longstocking movies in the early seventies made me think of semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment. Like...The Point! And, The Phantom Tollboth (by Chuck Jones) and the Rankin Bass version of The Last Unicorn (okay, 1982).

That's my time period, but I don't remember seeing any of those except for Pippi in the theater. The other example of "semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment" that I remember is Benji.


DavidS - Jul 04, 2010 9:01:15 pm PDT #9565 of 30000
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

I saw Benji in the movie theaters. The Point was on TV (I think. Jilli's a big fan). The Phantom Tollbooth was barely in theaters and I don't remember ever seeing it on TV.