What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Those newer mickey mouse shorts are pretty good. A little more bite to them. Art style is cool as well, real thick lines and abstracted backgrounds.

Yeah those recent Mickey Mouse shorts are amazing, I’ve watched them all and several multiple times. They are just good old fashioned cartoons and like old timey cartoons they are a little edgier than you might expect. Some of them are hilarious laugh out loud funny. They also go DEEP into Disneyana with some of the references- there’s one with the classic Disney ghosts and they are watching Scarecrow of Romney Marsh on TV. There’s also a lot of surprise cameos that will likely bring a smile if you like Disney stuff. I mean this show brings back Mortimer Mouse FFS. The art style is really good- very modern. I also really like the episodes in languages other than English…French, Japanese, Dutch, Hindi, Spanish…really cool touch.

One of the more recent rides at Disney, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad, is based on this show. It’s a great ride too.

jason10mm wrote: Those newer mickey mouse shorts are pretty good. A little more bite to them. Art style is cool as well, real thick lines and abstracted backgrounds.

Can confirm. When I was at Disneyland two years ago (probably one of the last days they were open in the Before Times), they played a bunch of the shorts for people waiting in line. I was dreading the typical Mickey ho-hum blandness, but they were a pleasant surprise. Caught a little of the old Warner magic, a real sense of anarchic possibility where it could all go off the rails at any time.

And yeah, the art was great! Very stylized and energetic.

+1 for the new Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Something I've had to admit is that my kids have access to way better cartoons than I ever did when I was their age. Thankfully it's become (somewhat) more acceptable for a grown-ass man to watch cartoons.

san il defanso wrote: Thankfully it's become (somewhat) more acceptable for a grown-ass man to watch cartoons.

xkcd.com/37/

Watched Monty Python's the Meaning of Life with the kids. I gave them a choice of three movies off of Peacock (so nothing great that isn't old; Conan the Barbarian, Balls of Fury, and MP's Meaning of Life). Had to explain at a few points the absurdity of the movie is just pointing out the absurdity of many aspects of life. Several of the scenes hit a particular chord with me this time, especially the "every sperm is sacred" number. Really hit a modern Texas vibe there.

Then on my own after they go to bed I watched an Amazon Prime movie called Undergods. It's just a bizarre collection of stories in a broken modern eastern european setting. Then interspersed with the vignettes there is a alternate dimension that some folks end up or come from that is a dystopian broken world with tons of crumbling soviet style apartment blocks with the vast majority of people who find themselves in that dimension as slaves turning cranks in a bizarre factory. Like folks were talking about in the TV thread, a bunch of broken people with broken relationships and no goals or motivations. The pairing with the absurdity of Monty Python's was a bit odd and made the theater of the absurd of Undergods a bit sharper.

Speaking of recent cartoons:

The Chip N Dale Park Life cartoon was outstanding. I think it wouldn’t be as good if it actually had talking in it.

New Animaniacs is hit or miss for me. I think Pinky and the Brain ones have a better hit rate.

The new WB cartoons on HBO Max are mostly meh. It seemed derivative a lot of times.

Ghostbusters Afterlife is possibly the finest sequel/remake film ever. While it is basically GB remade, it builds on on GB1 substantially. The kid actors are great and it's nice to see a film that remembers how story is supposed to be structured versus all the streaming crap we are subjected to these days. Alas I watched this in a theater with my son and we were too close to the kitchen where someone was cutting lots of onions, no other explanation for why my eyes were so watery at the end

Imagibe a time when the 3 films I've seen in a theater are James Bond, Dune, and Ghostbusters. What year is it???

Saw King Richard. I thought it was well done and properly conveyed a lot of the Williams' story. From things I read 20 years ago and from interviews I've seen, Will Smith did an excellent job portraying someone who is, baseline, an obnoxious asshole who's in love with his own opinion. His opinion did turn out to be right in many ways, but he was still an obnoxious asshole about pursuing it. It's a measure of a solid actor when they can take someone like that and make them even somewhat sympathetic, which is what Smith does.

Also saw No Time to Die: dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2021/11/e...ly-or-otherwise.html
Was decent.

I've now seen another of Miyazaki's films: Spirited Away and I'm now convinced the main reason I disliked the man was that I had seen his worst films.

Of course, I'm going from memory, but I did turn off Princess Mononoke halfway through while the very similar Nauiscaä won me over. Having now seen his early films and his latest ones, I would venture there was a shift in which he became much more political, sentimental and creatively dominant, to the detriment of his films. This is an old tale, he won't be the first nor last artist who became worse when he could get away from pesky editors and juniors who don't know their place.

His love of flight is a good example. Many of his movies feature planes, often very prominently. But his early movies were not about them and the flight sequences were often drawn by animators with a different style. The planes in Nausicaä and Castle in the Sky are mechanical and gritty. The explosions and violence reminds me more of Gainax than Ghibli, they are very much not in Miyazaki's style. But, as time went by, these animators must have left the company and flight sequences turned more sentimental and less visceral. In the end, Miyazaki would end up making a move about a cute fascist, because anyone who makes planes is good.

These flaws are pretty apparent, but they are hidden by the thick layer of uncritical praise Miyazaki gets. Since animation is "for kids" and has not artistic value, critics overcompensate by declaring him the exception. If the best film you've seen is Toy Story or the bland sludge produced by Contemporary Disney, you might very well believe he's a god above mortals. But he's just an artist and his work has good and bad sides. It reminds me a bit of Fantasia. It's a kistchy mess, but since it's serious and artsy (TM), it must be great.

Either way, Spirited Away was good and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The spiritualism went a bit over my head, as my knowledge of Shinto doesn't go further than reading the Wikipedia page. But it's fun, with some good scenes and great worldbuilding. It's clearly a film from his "worse later period" with its muddy plot and a couple forced themes. Chihiro's parents are supposed to represent how evil Western capitalism is ruining Japan, which is why they are rude and drive an Audi. Of course, planes and animation aren't Western nor Capitalist, so they don't count.

Fortunately, this stuff doesn't ruin the whole picture. You can overlook it and enjoy the setup without giving it more than a side-glance. It's not like Princess Mononoke where the whole plot is about evil industry and guns killing poor forest animals with hate

As of now, I would rank Miyazaki's films like this:

GREAT
Castle in the Sky (1986)
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

GOOD
The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
Spirited Away (2001)

POOR
Princess Mononoke (1997)

VERY POOR
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Ponyo (2008)

I haven't commented, but I pretty much completely agree with you, Erik.

I HATED Howl's Castle, one of the worst films I'd seen in a while and I'm one of the heathens who doesn't care for Princess Mononoke. The films of his studio I like are pretty consistent with the ones you like---I like Spirited Away more than you do but it stands out as head and shoulders among the work he's made during the time I started watching his movies vaguely while they were coming out.

My larger issue that doesn't touch on any of the heavy handedness you touch on is that a fair number of his films are boring. Like checking my watch boring, not thematically. I'll cop to having fully shifted to the post 2000 film pacing like the kids, but I find some of the films plodding af.

If y'all want to watch some anime from a true auteur, check out the work of Satoshi Kon. Perfect Blue, Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, for starters.

Moving Castle just doesn't work. The screenplay is a mess. I can't even remember the ending because it was too convoluted. Frankly, it's the logical conclusion of his flaws as a filmaker.

From what I've heard, the book is very good, but Howl is a jerkish womanizer, they kill the witch and the entire story is drenched in comedic English sarcasm. I can't see Miyazaki being the right animator for it.

My larger issue that doesn't touch on any of the heavy handedness you touch on is that a fair number of his films are boring. Like checking my watch boring, not thematically. I'll cop to having fully shifted to the post 2000 film pacing like the kids, but I find some of the films plodding af.

That's probably true. They do have a slow pace and it could be argue his films are a touch too long. It's not that the scenes themselves are poorly timed, but that they are too long as a whole. Castle in the Sky is two hours long, which is certainly excessive.

hotseatgames wrote: If y'all want to watch some anime from a true auteur, check out the work of Satoshi Kon. Perfect Blue, Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, for starters.

Satoshi Kon is great. Sadly, he only made the four films you mention. I would rank them like this:

GREAT
Paprika

VERY GOOD
Millenium Actress
Perfect Blue

GOOD
Tokio Godfathers

Sadly, despite anime being such a popular and growing industry there are barely any auteur or noteworthy anime films being produced. I liked Josee, The Tiger, and the Fish but it's not noteworthy like all these films are.

EDIT: I just got reminded of that brief scene in the opening to Paprika where the protagonists's face is reflected in four mirrors, each one with a different negative reaction to being hit on. There's more art in that short that there is in entire movies.

Erik Twice wrote: Satoshi Kon is great. Sadly, he only made the four films you mention. .

There is also a series he did called Paranoia Agent. I have yet to get my hands on it.

*cough* Christmas gift idea *cough*

Was looking for something to watch on Amazon Prime last night, and came up with Alien 3. I have watched the first two movies in recent months, so thought that the third might benefit from the proximity. The length of the movie (not quite two hours) made me think that this might be the revised version that significantly improved the movie. I tried to approach it with an open mind, especially since it features actual killer Charles Dutton as one of the convicts, plus David Fincher (Fight Club) directed the movie. Alien 3 was better than I remembered, but it remains the worst of the first four movies. The setup is good, with convicts adding to the existing menace of the alien. But the presentation is almost too drab and bleak and industrial. The pacing was good, the story was solid, but the downbeat ending leaves a bitter aftertaste. Afterwards, I checked and found that I had seen the original version of the movie, but it turns out that I have the improved cut in my dvd collection, as part of the Alien: Quadrilogy boxed set.

Maybe it was because of all the British actors in Alien 3, but somehow this movie seems like it was a big influence on Games Workshop. Not any specific product, just a general mood and style thing.