Films

Hey, I'm still here and all that. Pretty much just been working on my cartoon or lazing around recently. Strangely I haven't really had a desire to play/write music at all as of late. What I have had the desire to do though, is watch some films! Apologies to people at the Projectorheads forums, because I have posted all of these there already. Spoilers beware, you're in for a...few of them:

Horseo (Actual title: Ponyo) (The guy who made Spirited Away, 2008): Very, very adorable movie, and one that I can easily admire for its practices used in making it alone. The predominantly coloured pencil backgrounds instead of the traditional gouache paint created a wonderful child like atmosphere around the whole thing, and I often found myself just focussed. I didn't feel as much of a "this is entirely gorgeous" vibe when watching Spirited Away, and I'm not sure why that is since it was a lot more detailed. Maybe it's the fact that I watched Ponyo on a computer with a very high definition copy, rather than a dvd on a small tv but yeah. The whole sequence with the waves chasing after the car while Ponyo is running on top of them was pretty amazing.

However, I gotta say I didn't like this nearly as much as Spirited Away. It's very adorable and pretty, but definitely overly simple in its premise. That's not necessarily a problem I suppose, it's just that compared to Spirited Away, this felt like a movie targeted directly at children. None of the characters were really very interesting besides Ponyo (though the designs for a lot of them were very good), and some parts I just didn't understand, like... the moon is falling because Ponyo is becoming human? I felt like this is just something to make the movie feel more urgent, like there's some kind of danger (which it failed at, and didn't need to try to do either). And I also wasn't quite sure if the sea was rising a lot because of the magic potion thing or because the moon was out of orbit.

But when watching the movie, it's hard to convince yourself these things matter much. It makes you feel warm inside, it's very pretty, and it's a good film.

8.5/10

The Dad's name Tenebaums (Actual title: The Royal Tenenbaums) (Tom Bown (actual director: Wes Anderson, 2001):

I found this to be a very funny movie. I love how Royal can be so clueless about him saying stuff that is so obviously offensive to people, but yet dead on about other stuff that no one is even aware of (Margot having an affair with Eli). think most of my enjoyment of the film can be chalked up to this character, such as the hilarious scene in which he tells his wife he's dying, then he's not dying, and then that he's dying when he sees how mad she gets. I seem to love characters that aren't really "bad", but that everyone hates for being an asshole. The attempted suicide scene was really great because it used Elliott Smith and he's dead! Also Dudley reminds me of Solomon from Gummo. I'm not sure what else to say about this film, since it's not as fresh in my mind as the others...

But fuck everyone for just not giving a shit when the dog gets killed. The kids don't even shed a tear, and get given a new dog and suddenly everything is 100% fine magical ok. God damn it. They took that dog everywhere with them and they don't give a shit. What bastard kids. I wish the car had killed them, cos then maybe the dog would be upset and prove that it's better than them.

8.5/10

DULLholland doctor (Gordon Cole (actual director: David Lynch), 2001): I enjoyed this. It started to kinda drag on after a while until the last 40 minutes or so, which was very interesting and you could tell it came from an entirely different place than the first 2/3rds of the film. I think the film kinda suffered from being originally filmed as a pilot though, because while I just praised the last part of the film for shaking things up and being interesting, I don't think he would've originally wanted it presented like that, and would have probably taken some time to explain things further. Characters and other elements are involved, make you interested, and then are never brought up again or explained, probably because it was planned to go on a lot longer. I guess I don't exactly like having to look up "theories" on films to make sense of them, but maybe that's just me being a fuckin' moron!

It's made me wanna see even more Lynch though...but I hope me starting with his best work (in the eyes of Liam at least), Twin Peaks, hasn't made everything else seem worse in comparison.

8/10

Lesbian Human Sexers (actual title: Fucking Åmål) (Mad Eye Moodysson, yes this is the best I could do (actual director: Lukas Moodysson , 1998 )

First off, I want to say that I'm very amazed at Alexandra Dahlström for a number of reasons. First of all, how she was actually 14 at the time of recording is shocking for how good she is an actress. I found it so weird how I as I am now am 4 years older than when she was in this film. What have I been doing with my life? Secondly: she's really hot! I need to see other films that involve her being legal age so I can remove my creep status while holding the same opinion.

But yeah, this movie was really really great. It's the kind of movie that I wish I could just instantly play to the occasional homophobic bastards I argue with on the internet. I think what really made this effective is how young the 2 girls are. There's an innocence to it; it's not seedy, nothing sexual really happens, which makes its value much stronger and effective. But it's also really hilarious at the same time as its touching. Elin and Agnes walking hand in hand together, after the perfect toilet scene, to then say "we're going to fuck now" or whatever it is. And then the scene with the chocolate milk at the end. I often overtalk things when I like girls too!

Also gotta love it when Elin just says to Markus "You're a fucking idiot". I think this is a very good film for youngish teenagers to see to make sure they don't grow up to be bastards.

9.5/10