response 5 of 112:

Jul 7 00:20 UTC 2003

T3 was the best movie out there in the theaters X2 is good too but u got to
watch T3 its the $hit!!!

response 7 of 112:

Jul 7 00:58 UTC 2003

resp:4 no, no, my good man, Beast is furry.  Nightcrawler is not furry 
at all.  They changed him a little bit with the jagged teeth and the 
glyph tattoos, but they remained moderately faithful to his appearance 
in the comic books.  As for Beast, he has a cameo as Hank McCoy-- he 
was in the scene on the television at the bar with Mystique and the 
security guard.

(I am still waiting to see if they will play out the fact that 
Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother in the comic books.)

response 9 of 112:

Jul 7 07:35 UTC 2003

You may have something there.  Why did it flop?  Was it up against too
much?  Or was it 'sinful' and 'bad'?  Did parents drag their kids to see
something they wanted instead of apparently a very nice kids movie?

response 13 of 112:

Jul 11 20:40 UTC 2003

I saw "Whale Rider" this week. Best movie I've seen in years. Will see it
again. Anyone want to join me?

response 15 of 112:

Jul 11 23:42 UTC 2003

resp:13 is that still at the michigan?

response 17 of 112:

Jul 12 06:26 UTC 2003

I'll go with ya, Katie.

response 19 of 112:

Jul 12 07:05 UTC 2003

"On Guard" is the first of a four-week series of contemporary French
movies being presented by the Michigan. 
 
The USA title of the movie seems to have been chosen just because
there are lots of swordfights; the French title was "Le Bossu," 
The Hunchback.  The star was Daniel Auteuil, who I last saw 
as an office worker pretending to be gay in "The Closet."
 
In this movie, Auteuil is a poor guy in the 1700s in France who 
has aspirations to become a great swordsman.  He's befriended by a duke 
and hired as a bodyguard, so he's around when the Duke is killed as
part of a plot to steal his fortune.  Auteil saves the Duke's infant
daughter who is also a target of the baddies and raises her himself, and 
16 years later the story starts moving towards retribution and revenge.
It was old fashioned fun, with a really likable and well played hero.   
Based on an 1857 novel, roughly contemporary with the novel "The Three 
Musketeers."  

My favorite French actor Philippe Noiret has a small 
role as the senior French nobleman of the family who goes on to become
the regent in charge of the kingdom.   (I looted imdb.com extensively
for details here...)   Director was Philippe de Broca, who made two 
wonderful comedic police thrillers, DEAR DETECTIVE and JUPITER'S THIGH,
both starring Noiret.

Not available on home video, it seems.

Speaking of sword fighting: the Michigan's summer classic film series 
offers THE SEVEN SAMURAI on Sunday and Tuesday.  One of the greatest 
action-adventure films; the Michigan promo blurb credits it with 
inventing the modern action movie, IIRC.  Directed by Akira Kurosawa,
black and white, 1954.  This is one of the Movie Classics that 
Everyone Should See; Hollywood remade it as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. 
 
And then, back in the French series: in two weeks the movie will be 
GOD IS GREAT, BUT I'M NOT starring Audrey Tatou, who played the lead 
in the very successful movie AMELIE.

response 21 of 112:

Jul 15 02:01 UTC 2003

Missed "Spirited Away" in the theater but watched it on DVD
last night.  Quite blew me away.  An animation masterpiece.

response 23 of 112:

Jul 15 14:14 UTC 2003

Re #21: I only recently discovered Miyazaki's movies.  The four I've seen so
far were all good:  Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service
and Castle in the Sky.

"My Neighbor Totoro" has a totally off-putting CD box.  Looks like it's going
to be a really cheesily animated stupid kiddy film.  But from the first frame
of the actual movie you know you are in for something quite different.  The
animation is mostly gorgeous.  (Some of Miyazaki's kids have oversized mouths
of a style that always reminds me of "Speed Racer".  Maybe it's a Japanese
style thing, but it always puts me off.)  Story is about two little girls
and their dad who move into a rundown old house to be near the hospital where
their mom is recovering from some illness.  The kids eventually start trading
favors with a forest spirit.  The relationships among the characters are
uniformally realistic and charming.  The supernatural elements are inventive
and just plain cool.  There are no villians.  In fact, everyone is stunningly
nice.  And yet the film has plenty of dramatic tension.  I suspect this was
the breakthrough film for Miyazaki - the Totoro character from it is used
as the logo for his studio.  Many elements from it reappear in "Spirited
Away" - it's in some ways a first glimpse of the same spirit world.

"Kiki's Delivery Service" is almost not a fantasy at all.  There is only one
fantasy element - the heroine is a witch who's only magical ability is to
fly on a broomstick.  She is 13 years old and off on her own for a year to
try to learn the witch business.  She settles in a town where the people
are mostly rather bored by the idea of a witch in their midst.  Since her
only trick is flying her broomstick (which she isn't particularly good at),
she starts a flying delivery service.  It's a story about loneliness, and
finding your own way in the world.  Again, no villians, no scares.  I
thought the ending was flawed - a big action sequence which gives Kiki a
bit too easy an out for resolving her doubts.  Arlo loves this one.

Castle in the Sky was the weakest of the ones I've seen.  It's cool.  The
Disney version has the oddity of Mark Hammill (aka Luke Skywalker) voicing
the villian's part.  This one is full of gun fights and explosions and
killer robots and all that old stuff.  It has a fun pirate queen and a
visually interesting world, but basically it's a pretty standard adventure
flick,  Ok, but not as good as the others.

response 25 of 112:

Jul 16 01:41 UTC 2003

Re Mark Hammill:  I'm told he also voiced The Joker for the animated
Batman.  Apparently he thinks the work is a huge amount of fun.

response 27 of 112:

Jul 16 02:24 UTC 2003

My son and I watched a couple of older movies recently.  The first was 
Mulan.

Mulan is a Disney movie set in medieval China.  I'd never seen it 
before, and was quite surprised.  I liked it.

I liked Mulan, who goes to war in place of her aged father, disquising 
herself as a man and then encountering reasonable difficulties.  I 
liked the way she was clearly a woman, having realistic enough 
problems fitting into a strictly man's army and overcoming them in a 
clever enough way.  

I enjoyed the humor of the situation, and of the movie; the rough 
humor of the songs the soldiers sing and things they do, the obvious 
humor of the captain training his troops (including Mulan) and 
declaring in a song, "I'll make a man out of you", and I liked the 
bath scene, which was well targeted at adults while not much raising 
the notice of a young child.

I liked the basic training section quite a lot.  I liked the setting.  
I don't know anything about China, and don't imagine this was in any 
way accurate, but it was appealing enough.

I often don't like movies (or books) the first time.  I liked this one 
just fine.

response 29 of 112:

Jul 16 07:47 UTC 2003

re#27: oddly enough _Mulan_ probably was in keeping with the chinese
oral traditional history more in the observation than not.  I know many
chinese families that enjoyed it.  The irony in _Mulan_ is that the "bad
guys" in the movie in fact ruled china from about the middle 1600s to
modern times - it is even politically correct in the current PRC (not
that I suggest there will be another - a politically correct statement).
Contrast _Mulan_ with another animated feature, _Pocahontas_ et al where
the events portrayed had little or nothing to do with actual history
other than perhaps some names.