Last movie you watched

[esm]

I only have streaming, but thanks for the list! I finished Nobody Knows, and it's great!

I've seen Departures (Okuribito), and I think it's definitely one of my favorite Japanese films. I've also seen Red Cliff (both parts), and while it started a little slow I really liked the second half of it.

[stam4o]

Any of the Satoshi Kon movies. They're pure masterpieces.

[esm]

I Wish (Kiseki) - It started out a little slow, but I definitely liked it a lot. The ending is great.

Frozen - I loved it so much <3 <3 <3

[erilaz]

When I was visiting the relatives for Christmas, my sister, my 16-year-old nephew, and I stayed at my cousin's otherwise vacant house. One evening my sister went out to spend some time with one of her old high school friends, so I picked a few movies from my cousin's small collection of DVDs and videotapes to broaden my nephew's cinematic knowledge:

Casablanca (1942) — A classic that everyone should see at least once. 'Nuff said.

Yellow Submarine (1968) — My nephew's knowledge of the greatest band in the history of the world is sorely lacking, so I served this up. I would have preferred to show him a real Beatles movie, especially A Hard Day's Night, but this was the best I could do with what was available.

The Color of Pomegranates (Նռան գույնը) (1969) — My nephew is a quarter Armenian but knows virtually nothing about Armenian culture, so I had to try to remedy that somewhat. I also needed to expand his horizons by showing him a truly bizarre film.

[erilaz]

I finally got around to seeing that new Peter Jackson movie. The usual formula applies: the more it deviates from the book, the more it annoys me. So there was a lot of sighing, moaning, head-shaking, and sotto voce commentary coming from me.

The positives: I've always enjoyed McKellen as Gandalf, and Freeman makes an excellent Bilbo. I also quite like Movie-Balin. Stephen Fry was a brilliant bit of casting as the Master of Esgaroth, even though he doesn't quite fit the image of the overweight bureaucrat in my mind's eye. Smaug, both in Cumberbatch's voice acting and the CGI realization of the dragon, was excellent.

I also think that the meeting in Bree (including Jackson's cameo) was a smart way to start the film. The ending made a lot of people in the theater groan, but I think it was a well-chosen point to have a cliffhanger. It was also a reasonable place to end this film with respect to the chapter divisions in the book: the first film covered the first six chapters, the second film covered the next six, and the third film will cover the last seven.

I should probably put my complaints behind spoiler tags, even though I'll limit myself to a couple and try not to spill too many beans.

Spoiler: show

The Jacksonian embellishments to the barrel sequence had me saying, "Are you fucking kidding me?!" Pretty much every scene that had Orcs and/or Elves where they shouldn't have been (and there were a lot of them) annoyed the crap out of me.

The goings-on inside the Lonely Mountain once again demonstrated Peter Jackson's love of Rube Goldberg contraptions. If the giant golden dwarf had turned out to be a Japanese-style mecha, it wouldn't have surprised me one bit.

[erilaz]

Drones (2010) — A low budget indie film directed by Buffy alums Amber "Tara" Benson and Adam "Warren" Busch. It's a quirky workplace comedy. It's a quirky romantic comedy. And it has aliens. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it made me laugh a lot.

[erilaz]

Last movie of 2013: Lost and Found in Armenia — Even though it stars Jamie Kennedy, the overwhelming majority of this film is in Armenian with subtitles. It's an amusing indie comedy, but it's particularly interesting as a picture of small-town life in present-day Armenia. Still, it's not as good as director Gor Kirakosian's previous comedy, Big Story in a Small City.

First movie of 2014: 47 Ronin — This Hollywoodized Chūshingura is even less faithful to the original 18th-century events than Jackson's Hobbit is to Tolkien's novel, but having seen the wacky supernatural elements in the trailer, I knew that going in. View it purely as a fantasy film; don't trust it for anything resembling historical accuracy.

I had to see it first and foremost for Shibasaki Kou. Her pronunciation of English was exceptionally good in the film, but I suspect that her dialogue was dubbed over.

Maybe I should see Morning Musume's Edokko Chūshingura again, with this movie fresh in my mind.

[erilaz]

I finally got around to seeing Frozen. I can see why esm loves it so much.

But how about that short, "Get a Horse"?
OH. MY. GOD.
The business of the characters popping out of the screen into the "real" world was fun, but the film within the film was what really caught my attention. Being a fan of those delightfully politically incorrect Pre-Code cartoons, particularly the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts, I thought it was absolutely brilliant! And it even has Walt himself doing Mickey's voice! to Disney for having the cojones to make a faux vintage cartoon like that, udder gags and all, in this day and age.

[esm]

^ I didn't watch the trailer for it or anything, so I had no idea that it was going to be Nordic-themed. It's easy to catch on really quickly though, so I was really excited right from the beginning.

There's one part where Hans said something like, "Get them some warm gløgg/glögg," and I caught that except it's mispronounced as "glogg" (like if you were to use the American pronunciation).

Spoiler: show

And of course he turned out evil.

I liked the short a lot too.

[erilaz]

^ I'm going to be freeze-framing the runes when it comes out on DVD.