Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[Ghoulish Delight]

We had a really great day yesterday and between laundry, dishes, feedings, vacuuming, yard work, cleaning bunny cages, and playtime, we somehow managed to watch two movies.

Polyester. That's the first John Waters movie I've actually seen. I've long guessed I'd like his movies, just never got around to watching any. It's amazing just how familiar that suburban world is to me. I mean, my family and childhood were not even remotely as dysfunctional as all that, but the suburban trappings it's set in are straight out of my childhood (my parents HAD that couch!). Plus it helped to think of the characters as embodiments of the worst-possible-caricatures of each other that they all imagine. So the bimbo daughter and delinquent son were depictions of what an over-protective mother imagines happens when they're out of sight. And a ludicrously nosy mom who can literally sniff secrets out is how an angsty teen imagines their mom when they've been caught. I think he nailed that.

The second movie was Metoroporisu (Metropolis), the anime version, loosely based on the german silent film of the same name. Loooooosely. Based on in the same way the series Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water is "based" on 20,000 leagues in that it has an eccentric guy named Nemo with a submarine, this is "based" on Metropolis in that there are underground workers and a girl who doesn't realize she's a robot.

But that's not to take away from it. I actually rather like the Japanese tendency to pick the bare essentials from an old story like that and splice it into the usual nuclear-arms-race context that you can't blame Japan for obsessing over. I didn't care for the character animation design in Metropolis so much, and it's not the most well constructed film ever, but the setting is gorgeous and the story is fairly compelling. It was worth it just for the scene where the robots come to put out the factory fire.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

You're telling me there was never a thread on Alice?? MMM thread, we have a love/hate relationship for sure. I'll go back and read your posts in a minute.

SPOILERS, of course, it's an old film already, and I'm not using tags.



I loved the whole beginning and a good third of the Wonderland part, but then it lost me. The affronts piled up and the comparisons to Harry Potter and LoTR piled up and the seriousness piled up and the fun leaked out the bottom.

Quick rants:

Mad Hatter as love interest, Scottish warrior? No thanks.

Story entirely too straightforward and fate-laden. I know Carroll included fated requirements of Alice but nothing as huge as this. I think they were going for the storybook fate concept, as in Humpty Dumpty having to fall off the wall, etc, but it just didn't read that way. The desperation of the characters was depressing and the demands of Alice didn't feel like destiny. I got extra mad when the White Queen said it was "her choice", riiight.

Hard to understand even harder to remember names made up for the characters, as well as similarly lame place names - wtf?

Recharacterization of White Queen and especially the Dormouse as Reepicheep, wtf?

Effects made me feel like I could see the green screen, though that may be the actress' fault.

I swear, I was totally on board for the longest time but it totally lost me.

Ok, yeah, enough.