ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I mean, you probably have read them, considering that their plots are beat-for-beat from The Lord of the Rings with only some of the serial numbers filed off. Even when I read them at age fourteen, it was still absolutely shocking to me how someone could write Tolkien, with inferior prose and changed names, and make money off of it. Then again, we have Fifty Shades of Grey today, so...

 

I've heard that the first book at least is like that but the rest aren't as bad. I also heard the TV series starts with a later book than the first one.

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If you're not listening to the original language tracks in The Wind Rises, you're missing out on Anno Hideaki as Jiro, hand-picked by Miyazaki for the role. That's so much better than Werner Herzog making a cameo as Castorp!

 

Doesn't Miyazaki prefer dubs? I thought someone told me once that he'd rather people not have to constantly look down and read subtitles so they can focus on the images and animation.

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I've heard that the first book at least is like that but the rest aren't as bad. I also heard the TV series starts with a later book than the first one.

 

Well, that's good. I also remember that Elfstones of Shannara is less derivative, but sadly the quality of writing is very low for the first half-dozen that I read, at least.

 

 

Doesn't Miyazaki prefer dubs? I thought someone told me once that he'd rather people not have to constantly look down and read subtitles so they can focus on the images and animation.

 

I don't know for sure. I do know that, with the Disney dubs, he works with Lasseter personally on the script and approves the final product, so he definitely likes them more than, for example, the old Streamline dubs, but I don't think I've ever seen him express a preference for how his films are best to be experienced, no.

 

 

EDIT: There are some comments in this critical volume, with citations that I can't follow up, saying that Miyazaki likes dubbing because he believes anime is a global product and wants there to be as few impediments to its distribution as possible, but that's not the same as a preference.

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I don't have a strong opinion about dub vs subtitles for Miyazaki movies, but The Wind Rises is so fucking good. I got teary eyed from the thematic weight of that one. I picked up the blu-ray boxset for my wife for Christmas, so we've been working through that, but The Wind Rises has been my personal favorite by a long shot.

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Oh Man, i loved those SHannara books when i was young. Despite that, i misremembered them as the Magic Kingdom For Sale series which i also loved.

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I don't have a strong opinion about dub vs subtitles for Miyazaki movies, but The Wind Rises is so fucking good. I got teary eyed from the thematic weight of that one. I picked up the blu-ray boxset for my wife for Christmas, so we've been working through that, but The Wind Rises has been my personal favorite by a long shot.

 

Weird, it's my least favorite by a long shot. :D

I thought the romance was full of platitudes (iirc) and utterly unconvincing, and while Miyazaki tried to do a realistic movie with The Wind Rises, the details overall felt unconvincing to me.

I can't give a more detailed critique than that. Oh, except that, when I saw it, there was a break after the first half of the film. The first half I actually liked very much, and I was curious how the second half would play out. I was disappointed with the direction it took, the movie didn't seem to pay off a lot it set up in the first part.

 

My personal favorite is Kiki's Delivery Service. ^^

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I found the romance in it very bland, I did really like the story of the guy though who's just dedicating his life to something he sees as beautiful even if it can be destructive to the world and even partially destructive to his own life.

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Yeah, I agree the arc with his wife wasn't great (and also totally made up for the movie btw) but I liked the rest of it enough to overlook that.

 

But forget about that...more important news has come to light.

 

http://www.avclub.com/article/hbo-has-greenlit-deadwood-movie-230448

 

Start prepping that Idle Deadoowd Rewatch cast now plz.

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I finally saw Tangerine last year, a few days before christmas, and it was greaaat! Then re-watched Tokyo Godfathers on the appropriate day (which I keep forgetting to do). I had forgotten how fast and densely interwoven the narrative is, and how brilliantly sylleptic its editing is, and also how funny it all is.

 

I just saw Phoenix, which was really really great, I expect in time it will be considered a classic, if it isn't already.

 

Seeing Brooklyn tomorrow night at an outdoor cinema event, hopefully it doesn't get rained out.

 

Looking forward to Carol, Room, Spotlight, and Hateful Eight "in glorious 70mm"!

 

Oh and I finally watched The Tree of Life recently, which left me feeling pretty ambivalent. The Thin Red Line was one of my favourite movies I saw growing up, but haven't rewatched as an older person, so I don't know if my ambivalence is specific to the film, or if I just don't connect with Malick's spiritual philosophising as much.

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Yeah, I agree the arc with his wife wasn't great (and also totally made up for the movie btw) but I liked the rest of it enough to overlook that.

 

But forget about that...more important news has come to light.

 

http://www.avclub.com/article/hbo-has-greenlit-deadwood-movie-230448

 

Start prepping that Idle Deadoowd Rewatch cast now plz.

 

I also thought the romance was rather limp, making its inclusion odd since it's the part of the narrative that Miyazaki borrowed from his own father's life and grafted onto the well-established details of Jiro's professional career. You'd think that it was meant to humanize Jiro, but he makes the less human choice when presented with his love's illness (marry her, then keep working while she sickens) and it does nothing to draw me closer to him. Anyway, I think I made a couple of posts on my discomfort about Miyazaki using a historical figure to work out his feelings about his father's career little over a year ago in the Anime thread... Yeah, here they are:

 

I enjoyed The Wind Rises immensely, but I have trouble getting over the degree to which Miyazaki fictionalized the life of Horikoshi Jiro with details from his own father's life. I feel that the end product ultimately justifies the deliberate inaccuracies, but it's still uncomfortable that Miyazaki's essentially dressing a portrait (and, to some extent, a defense) of his father, who made the rudders for the Mitsubishi Zero, in the guise of a more famous and historically relevant figure. It doesn't feel right to me, especially since he already made My Neighbor Totoro to understand his father's role in and guilt from the war anyway.

One of the dominant interpretations of My Neighbor Totoro (but certainly not the exclusive interpretation) is that it's Miyazaki re-imagining his own childhood in a more "feminine" world where the Second World War wasn't happening, his parents had daughters, and his father was a literature professor at a university. Most of the other biographical details are virtually identical to Miyazaki's early life, particularly his mother's tuberculosis, and there's some kind of significant pun with the little girls' names that I can't remember now (ah, "Satsuki" and "Mei" both signify May, a month seen as both the perfect time of the year and as a metonym for growing and flowering, as opposed to violence and destruction). I think all the parallels and their connection to the Japanese concepts of satoyama and furusato are covered here, in an interesting albeit not terribly well-written article.

 

Basically, by setting My Neighbor Totoro in an idyllic rural setting pervaded by a traditional (but not militaristic) Japanese culture, Miyazaki was attempting to rehabilitate his family's history from the more modern and urban developments of the twentieth century. That's mostly why I'm surprised that he made The Wind Rises as a much more literal (but still not explicit) reevaluation of the same themes.

 

CLWheeljack later comments how its interesting that, after a career of setting his movies in settings where World War 2 or its analogue never happened or ended differently, Miyazaki finally sets his final film as directly at the heart of the conflict as he's able, which is a substantial sign of some personal growth.

 

 

Also, Deadwood movie! I can't let myself get excited, greenlighting happens all the time, but still...

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I just saw Phoenix, which was really really great, I expect in time it will be considered a classic, if it isn't already.

God, what a grand movie. 

Nina Hoss does a marvelous job playing a holocaust survivor whose just trying to get her life back. Her subtly body and facial expressions just made the movie. Also, the tight narrative and economic of it; fuck man.

 

Saw Carol yesterday with my friend and we both fell in love with it. I was awe struck by Blanchett and my friend was of Mara; I think they both did a wonderful job. I was expecting the colors to be vivid, but I found them dull and toned. I remember seeing the trailer a while back and remembering the colors to be vivid, but I'm probably remembering wrong.

 

Been meaning to see this

 

All done in close-ups, the entire film; it gives it a disorienting feel to it.

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Fuuucckkk... I've been using mubi.com for free for a while, I didn't really think about it, and even assumed that maybe I had payed for a longer time than I remembered. But it was due to a loophole... I hadn't launched it on the PS3 (where I first signed up) for about a year and now that I did, it stopped my weird limbo-subscription on all other devices. A sad day, but I guess I'll pay up. Also extra sad because I just got a friend to sign up, which would have given me a free month or something, but I guess the limbo-mode canceled that.

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Mustang is an incredible movie. It's like a war movie where the soldiers huddle together and desperately bond in the trenches because the invading army is approaching the border and a stray mortar shell could take anyone out at any time.

 

Except the soldiers are five sisters, the invading army is Men, and the mortar shells are weddings.

 

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I watched Slow West and enjoyed it a fair bit, been on a western kick lately, this, deadwood, might reread blood meridian. Any suggestions for great things with western settings?

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Film:

Bone Tomahawk

The Proposition

Django

Day of Anger

A Bullet for the General

Boot Hill

Unforgiven

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


Books:

The Son

Shadow Country

The Bully of Order

The Ploughmen

The Day the Cowboys Quit

 

 

Music:

Earth, starting with Hex and on

Anything by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

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A bloody love The Assassination of Jesse James. One of my favourites. Seen unforgiven too. Will definitely check some of these out. The son sounds great

Thanks!

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I watched Slow West and enjoyed it a fair bit, been on a western kick lately, this, deadwood, might reread blood meridian. Any suggestions for great things with western settings?

Warlock by Oakley Hall and Butcher's Crossing by John Williams are my two favorite westerns. (Caveat: haven't read True Grit or Blood Meridian.)

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I watched Slow West and enjoyed it a fair bit, been on a western kick lately, this, deadwood, might reread blood meridian. Any suggestions for great things with western settings?

 

If you are interested in spaghetti western and haven't already watched Sergio Leone films, I'd recommend you to start with Once Upon a Time in the West (worth it for the fantastically ominous train in the opening scene alone) or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The style of those movies is quite different from many of the other works recommended here, though.

 

True Grit was quite good in my opinion. The new one, haven't seen the original.

 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is absolutely incredible.

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Music:

Earth, starting with Hex and on

Anything by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

Nice, added a bunch of these to my watch list.

 

Also Earth / The Infernal Method sounds good, hadn't heard about this before. I would also recommend the Dead Man soundtrack by that asshole, Neil Young.

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I saw The Hateful Eight and wrote a bit about it here on Filmadeus.

 

Nice write up, even if I don't agree with it entirely. The tensions in the first half is definitely the better bit of the film. However, there are two scenes (both mentioned in your piece) that I would have happily axed from the film. It was nice to let the characters breathe and develop but the post intermission sequence was pretty awful and unnecessary.

 

Seeing this film reminded me of the story about how when Ian Banks's original editor died, his books bloated out of control as no one wanted to tell him to cut things from his book.

 

Tarantino needs an editor/producer that can slap every now and then and tell him to cut out the fat.

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Haven't actually watched these, but Appaloosa, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Homesman, sound like interesting contemporary (production-wise, not setting) westerns. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has has seen them.

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