Anjchang movie blog on blogspot.com

For Two-fer-Tuesday at Hollywood video this week, we rented Howl's moving castle. It was awesome, I have to watch it again sometime. The story was awesome, and the characters were so bold and noble. I also enjoyed the scenery, many nice touches in the water and fire elements. This was just awesome in everyway. I have liked all the movies by Miyazaki so far, but this one was very romantic and exciting. Howl was very cool, and the storyline about the man who'd eaten a star was tied up *perfectly*! Wow! The plot had me going, and I didn't want the adventure to end. The characters were addictive (Calcifer, Turnip Head, Marco, Howl, even the Witch of the Waste). You can tell that things were going to get exciting and funny. Howl saying "I don't want to live if I can't be pretty" was hilarious... and throwing a tantrum! Yay! I wish I could throw tantrums that awesome! :) :) :) This is a MUST see!

Unfortunately, can't say I enjoyed Tristan & Isolde as much. In the first scenes, not only do we see the kid stalking a rabbit, but then we see the poor rabbit on a spit in the next scene. With storytelling this eclectic, you just knew this movie was going to be a tragic series of hold-yer-breath nothing happens and sad bad things. Then there was the weirdness in the characters, the actual roles that the main characters had to enact were just plain stupid, and so were many of the other characters. The love sick swooning was so bad (and drawn out), we couldn't stop making snide comparisons to Monty Python. I liked the generous, handsome, one-handed King way better than I liked the main characters "I'm not a whole man- lolz". Anyway, I recommend NOT watching this movie, there were a lot of long agonizing (to watch) death and rebirth scenes. The dialog could have been better, and the white text over the shimnering moving water was impossible to read. I hated, absolutely hated, that water effect-- what was the director thinking???? What's with the moony maid in waiting, anyway... useless!

Crash was good. I think it reflected American society in general. Particularly in cities where we have to drive everywhere, there is more classism because people who drive seem to be disjointed from other people. they don't see each other face to face and they don't exchange pleasantries because they're always surrounded by metal and glass (cars and buildings). There's no level playing field where people from different backgrounds really interact with each other-- they don't have to deal with each other, they don't learn about other cultures, and there you get more racism and stereotypes. Its really too bad that our car-loving society drives us to alienation and estrangement from each other. Everyone's too "busy" and too "mobile" to actually be there with each other and spend quality time.
Ari says, "is this one of those movies where these suspicious coincidences happen all the time"... yes it is, ari, yes it is....

Pirates of the Carribean, Curse of the Black Pearl was awesome the 2nd time. As always, I always liked Johnny Depp's pirate character, Captain Jack Sparrow, and his funny mad way o' looking at things. Reminds me of Cap'n Kennit from the Live Ship Series by Robin Hood. Orly was okay, as usual, but I think the tops was the plot with all the crazy pirate-ghosts running around. Everyone loves a scare from dem pirates!!! Arrrrggghhh! All the main characters were strong and noble, and I really liked the ending. I'm shivering me timbers for Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy!

Mission Impossible 3 was pretty good. The action was good, but the characters and plot was a little formulaic. I think the problem with Tom Cruise is that he's such a big star, that I couldn't think of him as Ethan Hunt during the whole movie. The other characters in the movie were pretty nameless and faceless, but I think it was cause of Cruise dominating the entire movie script, and most of the action. I did like the "cool tech" they showed. Most notable was the face-mask 3D machining and then the automatic speech generation tech. Wooow. Other than that, I wish that I cared more about the characters because not once during the movie did I ever really believe they weren't acting... Still, it was a good way to spend an afternoon with V & R!