Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Have you ever had a prophetic dream?
Yes, but I don’t claim to be a prophet. My prophetic dreams are really just when the clues are starting to fit together. When I’ve seen a pattern for a few days in a row and suddenly when I’m sleeping, the pieces start to slide together and my dreams tend to predict what will happen next. It’s a symptom of knowing your friends, your family, and yourself really well.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Favorite animated film
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) (2001)
THIS MOVIE. OH MY GOODNESS. I DON’T EVEN. I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.
I’ve watched it sixteen times. Not nearly enough if I can still keep count.
I don’t know why I love this movie so much. Well, I do, and there are so many reasons I love this movie that I just- my heart- it explodes with love for this movie.
Why I love Spirited Away
1. Chihiro is adorable.
Look at that face. Look at it.
2. Haku is such a badass.
Any dragon is a badass in my book.
3. I love this world.
And this is just the OUTSIDE.
4. The soundtrack is AMAZING.
Click here to see a recording of the orchestra
5. Yubaba has the most amazing sidekicks
WHAT IS UP WITH THAT BABY?
6. These guys:
ffffffffffffff.
7. The dialogue is perfect.
9. No-face.
He’s a silkworm and it’s really cute.
10. It makes references to…
11. It is referenced in:
12. The dubbing was directed by Pixar’s John Lasseter.
Lasseter is such a fanboy.
13. This movie kept Director Hayao Miyazaki from retiring.
Oh BBC… Gotta love this interview though.
14. First ever anime film to be nominated for and win an academy award.
For reals.
15. I just freakin’ love this movie.
THIS MOVIE. OH MY GOODNESS. I DON’T EVEN. I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.
I’ve watched it sixteen times. Not nearly enough if I can still keep count.
I don’t know why I love this movie so much. Well, I do, and there are so many reasons I love this movie that I just- my heart- it explodes with love for this movie.
Why I love Spirited Away
1. Chihiro is adorable.
Look at that face. Look at it.
2. Haku is such a badass.
Any dragon is a badass in my book.
3. I love this world.
And this is just the OUTSIDE.
4. The soundtrack is AMAZING.
Click here to see a recording of the orchestra
5. Yubaba has the most amazing sidekicks
WHAT IS UP WITH THAT BABY?
6. These guys:
ffffffffffffff.
7. The dialogue is perfect.
Chihiro’s Father: Look, Chihiro! There’s your new school!Door Knocker: Aren’t you even going to knock? You’re the most pathetic little girl I’ve ever seen.
Chihiro’s Mother: It doesn’t look so bad.
Chihiro: It’s gonna stink. I liked my old school.
Zeniba: I’d like to help you, dear, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s one of our rules here. You’ve got to take care of your parents and that dragon boyfriend of yours, on your own.8. It’s a heartwarming story.
Chihiro: But, um, can’t you even give me a hint? I feel like Haku and I met, a long time ago.
Zeniba: In that case, it’s easy. Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it.
9. No-face.
He’s a silkworm and it’s really cute.
10. It makes references to…
a. The Wizard of Oz (1939)…and more.
b. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
c. The Birds (1963)
d. Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
e. The NeverEnding Story (1984)
f. Castle in the Sky (1986)
g. Luxo Jr. (1986)
h. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
i. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
j. “Ranma ½” (1989)
j. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
l. Alien (1992)
m. Princess Mononoke (1997)
11. It is referenced in:
a. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)…and more.
b. Darkness Falls (2003)
c. Finding Nemo (2003)
d. “Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Library (#2.10)” (2006)
12. The dubbing was directed by Pixar’s John Lasseter.
Lasseter is such a fanboy.
13. This movie kept Director Hayao Miyazaki from retiring.
Oh BBC… Gotta love this interview though.
14. First ever anime film to be nominated for and win an academy award.
For reals.
15. I just freakin’ love this movie.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Best cameo in a film
Bill Murray
Movie: Zombieland (2009)
This movie is my hero. After character Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) repeatedly states throughout the movie that he loves Bill Murray, the actually meet Bill Murray. I think I was as stunned as Tallahassee was, and that’s only a fraction of the fun that occurs in this scene.
And yes, I consider this scene a public apology for Garfield.
Ruben Fleischer (director) on getting Bill Murray in the film: “Various people were sent the draft and passed, and then there was an actor that was attached but then two weeks before shooting he dropped out, and we were scrambling. Woody said ‘OK, let me make some phone calls,’ and he called Bill Murray and got him to do it.”
(movie quote) Bill Murray: My make-up guy taught me how to do this: corn starch, you know. Some berries, liquorice for the ladies. It suits my lifestyle. I like to get out and do stuff.
Movie: Zombieland (2009)
This movie is my hero. After character Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) repeatedly states throughout the movie that he loves Bill Murray, the actually meet Bill Murray. I think I was as stunned as Tallahassee was, and that’s only a fraction of the fun that occurs in this scene.
And yes, I consider this scene a public apology for Garfield.
Ruben Fleischer (director) on getting Bill Murray in the film: “Various people were sent the draft and passed, and then there was an actor that was attached but then two weeks before shooting he dropped out, and we were scrambling. Woody said ‘OK, let me make some phone calls,’ and he called Bill Murray and got him to do it.”
(movie quote) Bill Murray: My make-up guy taught me how to do this: corn starch, you know. Some berries, liquorice for the ladies. It suits my lifestyle. I like to get out and do stuff.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Favorite classic movie
Some Like it Hot
This movie isn’t only my “favorite classic movie” it’s among my “favorite movies ever” list. Some Like It Hot made me crack up laughing so many times. The characters are fantastic, the situation is beautifully absurd, and the way the A-story and B-story intertwine is extremely entertaining. In a word, this movie has “wit” and I love it.
This is the kind of movie I watch and feel a strange mix of satisfaction and envy. Satisfied because the movie was just that good, and envy because I wish I was the one to come up with it. ;D
This movie isn’t only my “favorite classic movie” it’s among my “favorite movies ever” list. Some Like It Hot made me crack up laughing so many times. The characters are fantastic, the situation is beautifully absurd, and the way the A-story and B-story intertwine is extremely entertaining. In a word, this movie has “wit” and I love it.
This is the kind of movie I watch and feel a strange mix of satisfaction and envy. Satisfied because the movie was just that good, and envy because I wish I was the one to come up with it. ;D
Friday, October 14, 2011
Is there a dream you had, that you wished it would come true? If yes, describe it.
Haha, this is a funny question because I have lots of dreams that I like but not many dreams I wish were true.
Mostly, dreams that I wish would come true are dreams where I hang out with my characters or characters from a show/book that I really like. Recently I hung out with Ivan and Keith, both superheros from a show called Tiger & Bunny. It was a lot of fun. We just chilled in Keith’s living room with our feet on the ottoman and watched TV and talked. John, Keith’s golden retriever, sat in front of the TV and chewed on his bone.
In my dream, the carpet was an off-white color that had a rolling weave in it. Something felt really familiar about it, and so I remember the carpet most. It was comfortably warm there too. Like it was the beginning of fall outside but the heater was on. We had hot chocolate on the coffee table. There was a pad of paper and a pencil that I played with while I talked to Keith and Ivan, but I don’t remember what I did with the paper.
I really liked Keith’s house. I wish I could go back there.
Mostly, dreams that I wish would come true are dreams where I hang out with my characters or characters from a show/book that I really like. Recently I hung out with Ivan and Keith, both superheros from a show called Tiger & Bunny. It was a lot of fun. We just chilled in Keith’s living room with our feet on the ottoman and watched TV and talked. John, Keith’s golden retriever, sat in front of the TV and chewed on his bone.
In my dream, the carpet was an off-white color that had a rolling weave in it. Something felt really familiar about it, and so I remember the carpet most. It was comfortably warm there too. Like it was the beginning of fall outside but the heater was on. We had hot chocolate on the coffee table. There was a pad of paper and a pencil that I played with while I talked to Keith and Ivan, but I don’t remember what I did with the paper.
I really liked Keith’s house. I wish I could go back there.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A film that angered you
Last Airbender, The (2010)
I know I mentioned this before just the day before yesterday, but I’m going to have to elaborate upon it for two reasons: 1) This film angered me. 2) Anything that deserves bashing deserves proper bashing, which I didn’t have time to get into previously.
Why The Last Airbender is a Shitty Movie
1. The Last Airbender is riddled with scenes that were obviously designed to hold kick-ass CG effects that weren’t there.
Allow me to be perfectly clear, though. What CG effects were there looked incredible. Check this out:
There simply wasn’t enough of it to make up for the terrible story. And when I say “wasn’t enough” I mean there were lots of shots like this:
Where the characters are standing around in some pose and nothing else is happening. I kept staring at the screen thinking “Okay, sweet, he’s striking a pose… He’s moving slowly… he looks like he’s about to bend something… come on… bend something… bend something… BEND SOMETHING DAMMIT WHY AM I HERE I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR LAME POSE.” I nearly rage-quit my eyes.
2. The story deviates drastically (and for the worse) from the series.
I’m usually very flexible with this kind of thing. Kudos for trying to capture an entire series in a two hour movie. However, when you have that much awesome material to draw from, and your story turns out this bad, I have to wonder what happened.
Besides taking well-developed characters and converting them to cardboard yawn-bots, the construction of this story is so muddled I don’t even know where to begin. Let me state my first retrospective observation, which is I don’t even remember what happened, only that I hated it when it was happening.
Here’s the thing that got me. The entire first half of the movie was spent moving from one location to the next, simply for the sake of moving somewhere new. It was as if in his attempt to show all four elements of bending, Shyamalan completely forgot the basic rules of story, such as 1) Beginning, 2) Middle, and 3) End.
It gave off the feeling of an ADD child attempting to tell someone what he did that day. “First I was in the south pole where there’s lots of ice and it’s cold but then Zuko was in the fire nation because that’s opposite of cold I think and then I decided to quest to the north pole but first I stopped to help some earth benders stop digging and then I went into the sky and then Zuko was in his ship some more and I was kidnapped and I was in the ship but then I somehow ended up at the north pole, insert some special effects, the end.”
3. The races of the characters make no sense.
“I come from a clan of eskimos but I’m white.”
4. It was anti-climatic.
What it was supposed to be:
What it was:
5. They repeatedly mispronounced the main character’s name.
This should be forgivable. After all, we only had sixty-one episodes in which “Aang” was pronounced ANG and not AHNG. (For the record, his name was NEVER pronounced AHNG.)
6. And worst of all, it gave the cartoon series a bad rep for anyone who hadn’t seen it yet.
I kid you not, as I left the theater I overheard someone say “Glad I didn’t waste my time watching the series.”
Enough said.
Still haven’t had enough The Last Airbender bashing for one day? Here, have some-
Great/Funny Reviews
“The Last Airbender” is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.
-Roger Ebert, Sun Times
“Please, Hollywood, if there’s to be another Airbender movie, hand the job to some efficient hack, and not to a once mesmerizing artist who’s lost his way.”
-Richard Corliss, TIME magazine
“Mere words can barely describe the sheer inanity on display.”
-Mike McGranagham, Aisle Seat
I know I mentioned this before just the day before yesterday, but I’m going to have to elaborate upon it for two reasons: 1) This film angered me. 2) Anything that deserves bashing deserves proper bashing, which I didn’t have time to get into previously.
Why The Last Airbender is a Shitty Movie
1. The Last Airbender is riddled with scenes that were obviously designed to hold kick-ass CG effects that weren’t there.
Allow me to be perfectly clear, though. What CG effects were there looked incredible. Check this out:
There simply wasn’t enough of it to make up for the terrible story. And when I say “wasn’t enough” I mean there were lots of shots like this:
Where the characters are standing around in some pose and nothing else is happening. I kept staring at the screen thinking “Okay, sweet, he’s striking a pose… He’s moving slowly… he looks like he’s about to bend something… come on… bend something… bend something… BEND SOMETHING DAMMIT WHY AM I HERE I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR LAME POSE.” I nearly rage-quit my eyes.
2. The story deviates drastically (and for the worse) from the series.
I’m usually very flexible with this kind of thing. Kudos for trying to capture an entire series in a two hour movie. However, when you have that much awesome material to draw from, and your story turns out this bad, I have to wonder what happened.
Besides taking well-developed characters and converting them to cardboard yawn-bots, the construction of this story is so muddled I don’t even know where to begin. Let me state my first retrospective observation, which is I don’t even remember what happened, only that I hated it when it was happening.
Here’s the thing that got me. The entire first half of the movie was spent moving from one location to the next, simply for the sake of moving somewhere new. It was as if in his attempt to show all four elements of bending, Shyamalan completely forgot the basic rules of story, such as 1) Beginning, 2) Middle, and 3) End.
It gave off the feeling of an ADD child attempting to tell someone what he did that day. “First I was in the south pole where there’s lots of ice and it’s cold but then Zuko was in the fire nation because that’s opposite of cold I think and then I decided to quest to the north pole but first I stopped to help some earth benders stop digging and then I went into the sky and then Zuko was in his ship some more and I was kidnapped and I was in the ship but then I somehow ended up at the north pole, insert some special effects, the end.”
3. The races of the characters make no sense.
“I come from a clan of eskimos but I’m white.”
4. It was anti-climatic.
What it was supposed to be:
What it was:
5. They repeatedly mispronounced the main character’s name.
This should be forgivable. After all, we only had sixty-one episodes in which “Aang” was pronounced ANG and not AHNG. (For the record, his name was NEVER pronounced AHNG.)
6. And worst of all, it gave the cartoon series a bad rep for anyone who hadn’t seen it yet.
I kid you not, as I left the theater I overheard someone say “Glad I didn’t waste my time watching the series.”
Enough said.
Still haven’t had enough The Last Airbender bashing for one day? Here, have some-
Great/Funny Reviews
“The Last Airbender” is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.
-Roger Ebert, Sun Times
“Please, Hollywood, if there’s to be another Airbender movie, hand the job to some efficient hack, and not to a once mesmerizing artist who’s lost his way.”
-Richard Corliss, TIME magazine
“Mere words can barely describe the sheer inanity on display.”
-Mike McGranagham, Aisle Seat
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Favorite Pixar film
Monsters Inc. (2001)
This is SUCH a hard thing to decide on. Really, my favorite Pixar movie changes with my mood. It just so happens that my mood today is adorable things, of which there is plenty in Monsters Inc.
I think I have a certain affection for this movie because I babysat for an exceptional terror about Boo’s age. Boo seems like a cuter version of the little boy I had to watch over. Not that the kid was bad. He was just…energetic, you could say.
Anyway, most Pixar films are filled to the brim with vaudeville references/inspiration. Sometimes it feels like watching old Saturday morning cartoons. My particularly favorite scene in this movie is the part where Sully thinks Boo is in the trash compactor.
This is SUCH a hard thing to decide on. Really, my favorite Pixar movie changes with my mood. It just so happens that my mood today is adorable things, of which there is plenty in Monsters Inc.
I think I have a certain affection for this movie because I babysat for an exceptional terror about Boo’s age. Boo seems like a cuter version of the little boy I had to watch over. Not that the kid was bad. He was just…energetic, you could say.
Anyway, most Pixar films are filled to the brim with vaudeville references/inspiration. Sometimes it feels like watching old Saturday morning cartoons. My particularly favorite scene in this movie is the part where Sully thinks Boo is in the trash compactor.
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