[mousepod]

Alex - Sorry you didn't groove on the Kurosawa flick. He's certainly a director whose work can alternately enthrall me or leave me cold. While his movies always appeal to my film buff intellectual interest, when I'm not in mood, sometimes they can be a real chore to get through.

To prepare myself for Pan's Labyrinth, I've spent a couple of nights over the last few weeks watching Chronos and The Devil's Backbone. I had written off del Toro in '97 upon my first exposure to his work (I recall asking Heather,"If Mimic is supposed to be a horror movie, why isn't it scary?") and was amused enough by Hellboy to reconsider (but not to get the director's cut DVD). Now that I've seen his two Spanish-language films, I'm beginning to understand what he's trying to do. I'm not sure if I need to see Blade II, but I think I know his vocabulary well enough to appreciate "The Citizen Kane of fantasy cinema" on the 29th.