it can’t all be about manga…

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, other winter holidays and a fun New Year.  I had my joint Christmas/New Year’s Eve celebration this evening where we got to open presents (I got a very very proper teapot and a Yotsuba posable figure, which made me hurt my throat with the squeaking) and watch the CN Tower lights flash at midnight.   Our tradition of dinner and cheesey movies to usher in the new year was continued with Planet Terror (truly horrifying in places, but a lot of fun to watch when I didn’t have my hands flung up to block the screen) and Balls of Fury (filled the cheese requirement nicely, but I think I was so emotionally spent by the first movie I had little reaction left in me).

Tomorrow: Sweeney Todd.  I should have already seen it by now, but I spent the holidays in Sault Ste Marie where apparently they think people don’t want to see Johnny Depp in a musical.  Who wouldn’t??  I did get to see Alien Vs Predator 2 on Christmas night, though.  Sheesh.  Those are some twisted cinematic priorities!

It seems like all I’ve been doing lately (when I haven’t been reading new stuff) is watching movies.  I haven’t done that in a while, which is why it seems so unusual.   Let’s see… in the past three weeks (I think three) I’ve seen:

Ghost Rider - not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  In fact, I’d say it was good cheesey fun with only one line bad enough to make me cringe in disgust.  Spider-Man 3 should be ashamed of the fact that I like this more.  Bad Spidey!  They did a good job with the flaming skull, but I wish someone had given the poor leading lady some buttons for her shirts. 

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - better than the first one, but I was distracted by Jessica Alba’s crappy make up job.  Someone should be fired for that.  The Surfer looked pretty cool, the plot was fairly simple and I was happy that they didn’t try to spend a lot of time on the characterization.  Some movies put too much of that in, and fail miserably.  *cough*spider-man*cough*  However, I would like to ask someone at Marvel why they think putting embarrassing dance sequences in their movies is a good idea.  Fire that person too.  (There was no dancing in Ghost Rider, thank God.)

Sicko - yes, it’s overdramatic and one-sided, but even if only one story in this movie is true, that’s appalling.  It makes me happy to live in a country where I don’t have to pick which fingers I’d like sewn back on should I ever lose any.  Though a 45 minute wait at an ER in Canada is mostly fiction.  I don’t know anyone that’s happened to, but if you’re going in for the sniffles, you know you’ve got to wait for the bleeding people to go first….  (I think we should all move to France, actually.)

Crank - Jason Statham in a movie where he has to keep pumping adrenaline or he’ll die.  How did this turn out to be so boring?  It should have been extra cheesey fun, but instead the best thing I can say about this movie is that I knitted a whole dish cloth while watching it.  I also wandered away when he started to rape his girlfriend in the middle of the street while everyone stood around and watched, but when I came back she was still around so I guess she was okay with it.  Poor Amy Smart.  She’s usually better than that.

The Holiday - two weeks after watching I can’t really remember much about this one.  Impressions left are that this would have been better as a book, and Jack Black isn’t a great romantic lead.  He’s too evil looking.

Paprika - got to see this in a theatre last night.  When my friend and I left, we just kept asking each other, “So what did you think?” like we weren’t quite sure.  It was a visually stunning movie, though.  I think the problem is that the plot involves a machine that lets people enter others dreams which eventually starts intruding on reality.  I wasn’t exactly sure when the intrusion began, and what was real and what wasn’t.  (I never really expect to fully “get” an anime movie, though, so that was okay.)  As the movie went on I started to be reminded of Millennium Actress (it was the way the reporters in that movie would enter and become part of flashbacks and stories) and when there was a blatant plug for Tokyo Godfathers I was sure it was from the same person.  :)  It was also nice to see it was subbed.

Curse of the Golden Flower - starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li and a cast of a billion extras, all marching in time.  A very beautiful movie about an Emperor, his Empress and their screwed up family.  There wasn’t a lot of action in the movie - it was all plotting and backstabbing and watching the poor Empress as she tried to survive the Emperor.  Gong Li was absolutely stunning in this movie.

Transformers - twice!  The second time was helpful with keeping track of who was who in the giant battle at the end.  I had fun watching this and I thought the robots looked great.  I watched the show growing up, but was more attached to Beast Wars than the original, so I had no problems with any of the designs, etc.  (Aside from wishing everyone could have been a little more distinct while in robot form.)  I also read the prequel novel a couple of months back, so I found myself filling in some of the background they didn’t touch on in the movie.  Eh.  I thought it was a good action flick.

Linda Linda Linda - I watched this one tonight.  It’s a Japanese movie about a group of high school girls who are performing in a rock band at their festival.  One of the original members breaks a finger and can’t play while another quits after fighting with one of the other girls.  The three remaining recruit the Korean exchange student to do vocals and dig up an old (I think) song called “Linda Linda” to play in the show.  So they have three days to learn the song, deal with crushes, find rehersal space, etc etc.  It was a quieter movie than I thought it would be - it was funny, but not the comedy I was expecting.  Great movie, though I now have the title song stuck in my head.  (which is:  Linda Lindaaaa!  Linda Linda Lindaaaa!)

Tomorrow night I’m going to see Die Hard 4.  If the weather is anything like today, I’m going to be happy to be sitting in a cold theatre… 

I realized tonight that it has been two weeks since my last post.  It never feels like that long, since I’m still doing things like answering comments, or checking out other things online like email, etc etc.   My last post is also around when my last trip to the library occurred and I picked up about 20 holds that had come in.  I’ve been reading ever since.  :)   Nothing earth shattering - a few volumes of One Piece that continues to entertain, and the first 7 of Y: The Last Man which was good, but not as good as I thought it would be from the raves I’ve read.  Still, I’m glad I was able to get them all at once so as not to repeat the really really expensive Powers trauma of last month.  (Long story short, I borrowed the first two graphic novels from the library, LOVED them and had to go out and buy all nine since I couldn’t get any more for free.  Thank goodness the Silver Snail was having a blowout Spring break sale - I managed to get almost all of them for under $100.  arg.  Read Powers, though.  It’s awesome.)

So what’s new:

I can now say that I am going to Japan next Friday.  Next Friday, people.  That’s amazing.  Please note that the most exciting trip I have taken to date is to Halifax, Nova Scotia to visit relatives.   Aside from all of the local stuff I’m going to get to see and visit where Amy lives, we’re also going to be spending a couple of nights in Tokyo and I think we’re also going to be visiting Kyoto. 

Last Saturday at the bookstore I spent 6 hours fixing the documentary section, only to see it ravished by a customer half an hour after I finished.  Damn his cold black heart.  One day I’m going to work up the nerve to tell someone to stop making such a mess while browsing.  Yesterday I blew off any work to be done in my section to make up a manga list.  Some sort of ball was dropped somewhere and we missed getting about two weeks worth of Viz stuff.   No Bleach or Naruto on order but THANK GOD someone thought to get a bazillion copies of that crappy crappy Death Note in!  Honestly, I can’t even read it for free anymore it’s so badly written.

While wandering through Chinatown on Friday I found a copy of the second Death Notemovie… which I bought.  Damnit!  Kind of hypocritical, huh?  :)  I haven’t seen the first one yet, but I figured a live action movie would have to be more entertaining than the manga.  I also found a live action called Angel, which is based on the manga by Erica Sakurazawa.   It looks cute but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.  I have no idea what else I picked up though.  The sales girl planted herself in front of me and started thrusting movies at me things saying only “This is good, this is good” and I didn’t have the nerve to put most of them back.  Ah well.  I found a couple with Takeshi Kaneshiro in them and I’m happy with those.  :)   (Do yourself a favour and see The Returner.  Delightfully fun, cheese filled movie.  You can also play at trying to figure out which other movies show up in this one.  ET, Terminator, Pretty Woman…)

Speaking of movies, last week we tried to go see The Host but the online movie listings LIED about the showtimes and we ended up seeing The Reaping instead.  Not a great movie.  I’d give it a C-.  I admit I kept getting confused about which plague was supposed to be coming next which was distracting, and when they did arrive they weren’t really all that terrifying.  The worst was the locusts, the most disappointing was the rain of frogs.  Seriously, there were only about 20 of them that fell into the water.  It was more funny than anything else…  

I finally did get to see The Host and it was pretty good, though not what I was expecting.  From the reviews that raved about the monster being better than Godzilla, and the focus on the aunt I didn’t really get a good picture of what the movie was really like.  Plotwise:  mutated fish monster goes on a rampage on a beach (awesome scene, btw) and kidnaps a young school girl.  Her family finds out that she’s still alive and sets out to rescue her.  This attempt is hampered by government agents trying to get the family back into custody (there are suspicions of a virus caused by the fish-thing), family squabbles, the fact that no one really knows how to go about looking for the kid, they keep getting knocked out/passed out and go back to their store a lot to rest.  (I had a hard time figuring out the time line in the movie considering all of the rest stops and captures.  How long was this girl expected to survive on her own??)  It was a fun movie despite the odd pacing and the ending surprised me.  I thought they also did a good job on the monster special effects (it was graceful, yet skidded around a lot when it was on land which was believable considering the flippers).  Rating?  Hmm… B+ I think.

A friend gave me a pass for a free preview of Blood and Chocolate, which I went to tonight.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s the story of a werewolf-type girl who lives with her pack in Romania and falls in love with a charming American artist who is making a graphic novel about… werewolves (dun dunnnn!).  The leader of the pack creepily wants to mate with the young girl himself and so he and his equally creepy son try to drive the two apart.  Then there’s chasing and guns and… er… wolves… 

(Okay, I just checked out the trailer I linked to and that’s the ENTIRE movie!  In like, half a minute.  Ha!)

The good:
Hugh Dancy is very cute and has an adorable mop of hair.  I’ve never seen him in anything, but Melrose mentioned him in her blog this week, so when he came on screen all I could think of was “Hey!  It’s that dude Melrose likes!”  Also, I didn’t have to pay for the movie.

The bad:
Er… the acting, the plot, the bad dialogue, the cheese…. oh dear God the cheese….  Even the special effects (which weren’t that bad - the people would kind of leap and glow and then wolves would land on the ground) were made worse by a LOT of dramatic slowdowns, spinning in mid-air (I was reminded of the acrobatic tennis playing in the Prince of Tennis live action movie as a matter of fact…) and just… well, I could go on but that would entail reliving the movie and I don’t want to do that.  It didn’t make much sense, though.

There was a lot of spontaneous laughing in the theatre at moments that weren’t actually supposed to be funny.  I was both amused and horrified by the movie and was also entertained by my friend’s sighs and the way she would clutch her head in her hands on a regular basis.  (She’s read the book, I haven’t.  Supposedly that helps.)  Seriously, though.  Save your money on this one unless you want to rent it with a group of friends to heckle while drinking.

I could go on but then I’d be swinging off into unnecessarily harsh territory and hey - it’s not like I paid for it.  If I had wasted 12 bucks then I’d make more fun.  It was not, however, worth missing what was apparently a completely kick ass episode of Supernatural.  I’m now sad.

On a totally different note, when I got home this evening there was  a voter registration card waiting for me that had an interesting variation of my name on it.  I’m used to my last name getting mangled in both spelling and pronunciation, but not my first.  They actually wrote down Katherane.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen it spelled like that before.  For the record, I’m “Catharine” and do take note of that second “a” in the name, for it’s a total pain in the ass. 

Up until the age of 16, I had been just plain Catherine.  Then I went on a trip to Halifax and got a copy of my birth certificate from the hospital where I was born and we discovered that when my dad filled out my forms he spelled my name wrong.  Or spelled it right and then forgot.  Whatever.  He was pretty defensive about it and I never really did get a clear answer from him.  So now some of my ID has the “e” and some has the “a” and I always have to chase after people to spell it right.  I’m happy to report that my passport will have the correct name on it.  I made him double check. 

No, there was no real point to that.  I’m just breaking my blogging dry spell with random chatter before going to bed.  There was an actual reason I stopped for about a week, and I’m planning on sharing it.  Just not tonight.  :)

Cromartie High - The Movie

Heh heh heh.  This cover induced a muffled laughing fit while I was at work.  I’ve read the manga, but have not watched the Cromartie High anime.  I can only take so much idiot bad-ass antics at one time, after all.  :)  My comic store friend told me that she’d order this for me, which is awesome.  I can’t wait to see it!

I’m not sure if this picture has two or three gorillas in it, though.  I’m pretty sure the blonde in the back is a female gorilla….  But why is she wearing a pink jacket?  (Now trying to remember if the girl gorilla in the manga wore anything besides a bow….)

On a slightly more personal note, I can actually predict for once that posting is going to be pretty non-existent this week.  In addition to a Christmas dinner with friends and going to the Nutcracker, I actually volunteered to work two extra shifts at the bookstore.  I’m so easy it’s shameful.  I think between now and Christmas Eve I have about 6 free hours.  And I think I’m supposed to be knitting a pair of mittens in that time too.  arg.  Of course, this is me I’m talking about so I could also be posting every night….  :)

Now I’m going back to watching Eureka (fantastic series, btw) and wrapping presents.  Gotta love multi-tasking.

Wow.  I just watched the preview for Pan’s Labryinth and it looks amazing… very dark and dreamy.  It’s coming out in limited release on December 29 so hopefully I’ll be able to find it playing somewhere in Toronto.

And check out the making of the live action Hogfather movie.  Pratchett fans rejoice!  Now if only we could get it aired here in North America.  What are the odds?  I suppose we’ll have to make do with the illustrated screenplay in the meantime.   Sadly though, I did not see the Death of Rats.

SQUEAK!

Guess what I finally managed to get!  No, I haven’t watched it yet, but I was flicking through the movie and saw this scene which made me laugh.  That’s some really noxious green juice…  I love that it made it into the movie.  Some of the best moments from the anime was when Inui was forcing that stuff onto people.  Even the mighty Tezuka would fall…

(Do I need to say this is from the Prince of Tennis movie?  Yes? No?)

Okay, this has probably been around for ages, but a friend told me today that they’ve made a live action Prince of Tennis movie.  The trailer is awesome and all special tennis moves are intact!  (And from the brief shot that I saw of Fuji, he looks very pretty.)  Here’s the preview, courtesy of You Tube:

I think it’s coming out on dvd in Japan in late September.