Stuff Wot We Watched
Feb. 4th, 2008 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
A summary of some of the last month's viewings in a single post :-) We've seen anime and live action, film and TV, cult classics and the real thing. Paranoia Agent, Metropolis, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and more below....
Paranoia Agent - an older anime by the director of Perfect Blue and Paprika, one that several people have recced to me in the past and I've been meaning to watch for a while. Hey, we finally got round to it! I don't want to say anything about the plot of this series, because it's tough to know where to stop without giving things away. The first four eps were fantastic and really grabbed me, the fifth pleased me less, but six pulled it back.
And then it went off wandering for a while. You might wonder how much wandering there could possibly be in a series 13 episodes long, and the answer is quite a lot! It's not that there was anything bad about the places it wandered to - all the eps held up well in their own right, and there was some interesting social commentary, but all the time I was watching I found myself thinking, 'But what happened to that other plot? I was enjoying that!'
The other plot did eventually come back, and the anime ended with some of the inevitable weirdness that series like this always do (though nothing on the scale of, say, NGE). I wouldn't call it a classic, but I'd certainly call it interesting, and well worth watching once. 13 eps won't chew up that much of your life.
And while I'm on the anime bit, Metropolis, the 2001 animated film - another one I'd been meaning to see for a while, ever since I caught a fantastic AMV at a con. It shares with the 1927 German classic the concept of a city in levels, an oppressed workforce and a remarkably human-seeming robot, but then it spins a completely different story around them. Some great visuals in this film (hence the impression-making AMV), and a solid story that maybe tries to pack in a little too much - the politics in particular seem to be introduced and then disappear just as quickly, a waste of some good material and characters. But it's the usual problem of the time constraints of a film, and I'd prefer trying too much to staying too simple. Not a genre stand-out, but a good staple of its kind, and I really enjoyed it. (Interestingly, the DVD menu gave us a choice of subs as a Japanese translation or as the US cinema release. Guess which one we watched? But I'm wondering now if I shouldn't rewatch and find out just how much was changed to try and tailor it to 'American tastes'....)
Swinging into the western world, we've now seen the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I had some grave doubts about this series, about Summer Glau (I wasn't impressed by the way she delivered The Line in the trailers) and mainly about the ability of a TV actress to follow Linda Hamilton's performance in T2. But so far it's been damn good stuff, and the most promising new show I've seen in several years - I hope it can keep up this consistency. I really like the way the plot incorporates elements from the films - so many nice touches there, all the trickle-down consequences of Sarah's actions. Summer Glau's working for me in a way I'd thought she might not, post-River, in a role that could easily have been a little too close for comfort.
And as for Sarah - she's fabulous, with great writing. She's confident, single-minded, decisive, and willing to be just as much of a cold bitch as she thinks she needs to be without ever liking it, or losing herself. And Lena Headey is seriously hot in this role. She's convincing as Sarah in all her facets, she's sexy without trying to be (probably because she's not trying to be, unlike her role in 300 where she made no impression on me at all). She's a woman with forehead wrinkles and lines around her mouth that make-up haven't tried to hide under an inch-think layer of crap. I adored her from ep one, before I even twigged that she's another from the Hugh Laurie school of talented Brits who can do fabulous American accents :-) Try this one,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
k_julia, I think you'll like her XD
Then yesterday, while a large portion of the US indulged in a bizarre annual ritual of mass TV-watching, we took the opportunity to drop into town on a traffic-light day and watch a double-bill organised by SIFF - Godzilla (the original Japanese suit-mation cult classic) and The Third Man. A very odd-seeming pair, but definitely not one to get bored by! This was the first time I'd seen the first Godzilla. It was cute and amusing (unintentionally so in places, with the gratuitous abuse of biology, chemistry, archaeology and geology, among other respected sciences XD), while suffering from the pacing issues and odd-seeming editing choices that are so common to films of its age. It started off really well, setting up a lovely creepy atmosphere while resisting the urge to show the monster. Unfortunately, when it did first show the monster, it showed just a little too much! A claw, a tail and a tight shot of scaly skin would have worked much better than what we got. Later, the film actually improved in that respect, with lots of night shots and firelit scenes, which worked to the suit's benefit. The director really should have made that choice earlier XD
And the Third Man. What can I say about the Third Man? I'd seen it once before, back when I was in university, and remembered being blown away by it. The SO had never seen it and needed to be educated. And this is one case where memory, if anything, had underestimated. A film nearly 60 years old where you don't have to say, 'It's good for its time' or 'It's good by its own standards', but which is just seriously good. The dialogue's sharp and spiced and witty, the characters bounce off the screen at you, the plot hurtles along with secrets and lies and red herrings, and I guess I don't have to mention the direction and editing. If this film was made today, you'd need to shoot it in black and white, because it's perfect for the world, the story, the people. Film polls somehow always seem to come up with Citizen Kane as the best film ever made, conveniently somehow forgetting how it's over-long, rambling and incoherent. Well, here's my contender - tight, dark and twisting, and as fabulously involving to watch today as when it was first screened. Just how many films can you say that about?
Oh, yeah, and I lied about the Rolex watches, sorry. But I guess so do all those emails collecting in my spam filter XD
Paranoia Agent - an older anime by the director of Perfect Blue and Paprika, one that several people have recced to me in the past and I've been meaning to watch for a while. Hey, we finally got round to it! I don't want to say anything about the plot of this series, because it's tough to know where to stop without giving things away. The first four eps were fantastic and really grabbed me, the fifth pleased me less, but six pulled it back.
And then it went off wandering for a while. You might wonder how much wandering there could possibly be in a series 13 episodes long, and the answer is quite a lot! It's not that there was anything bad about the places it wandered to - all the eps held up well in their own right, and there was some interesting social commentary, but all the time I was watching I found myself thinking, 'But what happened to that other plot? I was enjoying that!'
The other plot did eventually come back, and the anime ended with some of the inevitable weirdness that series like this always do (though nothing on the scale of, say, NGE). I wouldn't call it a classic, but I'd certainly call it interesting, and well worth watching once. 13 eps won't chew up that much of your life.
And while I'm on the anime bit, Metropolis, the 2001 animated film - another one I'd been meaning to see for a while, ever since I caught a fantastic AMV at a con. It shares with the 1927 German classic the concept of a city in levels, an oppressed workforce and a remarkably human-seeming robot, but then it spins a completely different story around them. Some great visuals in this film (hence the impression-making AMV), and a solid story that maybe tries to pack in a little too much - the politics in particular seem to be introduced and then disappear just as quickly, a waste of some good material and characters. But it's the usual problem of the time constraints of a film, and I'd prefer trying too much to staying too simple. Not a genre stand-out, but a good staple of its kind, and I really enjoyed it. (Interestingly, the DVD menu gave us a choice of subs as a Japanese translation or as the US cinema release. Guess which one we watched? But I'm wondering now if I shouldn't rewatch and find out just how much was changed to try and tailor it to 'American tastes'....)
Swinging into the western world, we've now seen the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I had some grave doubts about this series, about Summer Glau (I wasn't impressed by the way she delivered The Line in the trailers) and mainly about the ability of a TV actress to follow Linda Hamilton's performance in T2. But so far it's been damn good stuff, and the most promising new show I've seen in several years - I hope it can keep up this consistency. I really like the way the plot incorporates elements from the films - so many nice touches there, all the trickle-down consequences of Sarah's actions. Summer Glau's working for me in a way I'd thought she might not, post-River, in a role that could easily have been a little too close for comfort.
And as for Sarah - she's fabulous, with great writing. She's confident, single-minded, decisive, and willing to be just as much of a cold bitch as she thinks she needs to be without ever liking it, or losing herself. And Lena Headey is seriously hot in this role. She's convincing as Sarah in all her facets, she's sexy without trying to be (probably because she's not trying to be, unlike her role in 300 where she made no impression on me at all). She's a woman with forehead wrinkles and lines around her mouth that make-up haven't tried to hide under an inch-think layer of crap. I adored her from ep one, before I even twigged that she's another from the Hugh Laurie school of talented Brits who can do fabulous American accents :-) Try this one,
k_julia, I think you'll like her XDThen yesterday, while a large portion of the US indulged in a bizarre annual ritual of mass TV-watching, we took the opportunity to drop into town on a traffic-light day and watch a double-bill organised by SIFF - Godzilla (the original Japanese suit-mation cult classic) and The Third Man. A very odd-seeming pair, but definitely not one to get bored by! This was the first time I'd seen the first Godzilla. It was cute and amusing (unintentionally so in places, with the gratuitous abuse of biology, chemistry, archaeology and geology, among other respected sciences XD), while suffering from the pacing issues and odd-seeming editing choices that are so common to films of its age. It started off really well, setting up a lovely creepy atmosphere while resisting the urge to show the monster. Unfortunately, when it did first show the monster, it showed just a little too much! A claw, a tail and a tight shot of scaly skin would have worked much better than what we got. Later, the film actually improved in that respect, with lots of night shots and firelit scenes, which worked to the suit's benefit. The director really should have made that choice earlier XD
And the Third Man. What can I say about the Third Man? I'd seen it once before, back when I was in university, and remembered being blown away by it. The SO had never seen it and needed to be educated. And this is one case where memory, if anything, had underestimated. A film nearly 60 years old where you don't have to say, 'It's good for its time' or 'It's good by its own standards', but which is just seriously good. The dialogue's sharp and spiced and witty, the characters bounce off the screen at you, the plot hurtles along with secrets and lies and red herrings, and I guess I don't have to mention the direction and editing. If this film was made today, you'd need to shoot it in black and white, because it's perfect for the world, the story, the people. Film polls somehow always seem to come up with Citizen Kane as the best film ever made, conveniently somehow forgetting how it's over-long, rambling and incoherent. Well, here's my contender - tight, dark and twisting, and as fabulously involving to watch today as when it was first screened. Just how many films can you say that about?
Oh, yeah, and I lied about the Rolex watches, sorry. But I guess so do all those emails collecting in my spam filter XD
