Things I recently watched and read

[schneefink]

The Lego Movie: I saw this one on the bus to Prague, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Entertaining and not too stupid.

Student of the Year: tanndell promised a completely over-the-top ~dramatic movie and it did not disappoint. Extreme idfic in movie form. It was entertaining; I'm not sure how much I would have enjoyed it on my own, but with company it was great.

Princess Mononoke: I love "Spirited Away" and I'd been planning to watch Princess Mononoke for years. Unfortunately I didn't like it as much. I sort of liked Ashitaka, and his ideals are admirable, but I was with San on being frustrated by the question of exactly whose side he's on. The central conflict doesn't seem at all solved at the end of the movie: Irontown will be rebuilt – with Ashitaka's help, even – and even if Lady Eboshi plans to build the new town in a better way, what exactly does that mean? The way I understood it it's impossible for them to mine for iron in that area without destroying the forest. Maybe they'll be nicer about it? Idk. I did appreciate that they didn't make Lady Eboshi evil. The world domination plans were a bit much, but her taking in the lepers and former brothel girls and giving them work and a place to belong was a nice touch.

The 100, episodes 1-7: I made the tactical mistake to watch them together with DD. On the one hand it's fun to watch it together, on the other hand now it means I have to wait until we both have time to continue… On a related note, it's been almost three months since we last watched Bab5 -.-
I was warned that the first few episodes are less good, so I had low expectations, but I liked them. Episode 7 was the first one that really annoyed me. I guess they wanted a scene where they felt forced to torture the guy, but the situation just felt so contrived. Shouting at a guy who probably can't understand you or talk to you and not even giving him an opportunity to gesture doesn't seem smart, but they were under pressure. The whole time we were watching DD and I asked "why don't they just use his knife? It's right there, wtf guys." We were expecting them to use the knife on him though, not on Octavia. The reason not to do that would be if they thought he'd rather die than tell them, but then it would be very likely that he wouldn't give an answer via torture either. The immediate conclusion that the guy's people were killing them off also seems way too hasty, they could just have been keeping track. I'm not sure why they don't seem to consider the fact that there could be different groups of grounders out there? I don't know if there are, but it's a valid hypothesis.
In general I like most of the characters, especially Clarke. Extremely difficult situation, and she's seventeen! She's usually good at long-term thinking, except when one of her friends is in danger, then she can act recklessly, like when she immediately decided to go after Jasper. She got lucky and it worked, but it was easily possible that the grounders had taken him prisoner to their "lair" and she wanted to, what, attack them with five people?
I liked Finn, but I hate love triangles so currently I like him less. Though this one at least so far isn't done too badly. Yay for Clarke being sensible about it.
I know that several characters die in this show and I have a mental list of who I want to die and who I don't. More people on the latter list currently. I'm sorry that Wells died, and I hope that (in addition to Clarke, Octavia, and Bellamy, who I'm pretty sure survive) we keep Raven, Abby, Monty, and probably Finn depending on how that situation develops.
As usual, no spoilers please.

Simon Kirby-Jones mysteries by Dean James: DD recommended these to me as the only vampire books that she likes. They're good 10pm-books: entertaining and very easy to read, I enjoyed them. Giles pining after Simon was delicious. Poor boy. And Simon kept kissing him every once in a while, that must have been confusing. On top of that, Giles is a romantic! To be fair Simon did have a good reason, but I could still imagine Giles being somewhat angry with him (or at least thinking that he should be. The poor boy is besotted.)

Handcuffed to the Bear by Lauren Esker: Supernatural romance, not usually something I look for. Okay, not quite true, I read a lot of it, but usually all fanfic. Because I already know how to find what I want, and it's free and convenient. But this one is by sholio, one of my favorite fic writers who I know writes excellent h/c and lost-in-the-wilderness stories, and she had a promotion, so I decided to check it out despite the to me not at all appealing blurb. (And despite the fact that I don't have a Kindle. I now have a PC app because amazon didn't let me just download the file. Stupid.)
I'm glad I did! The book has the same good stuff I loved in her fic, with a bonus romance that (apart from one moment early on where I couldn't help but think that now was really not the moment to think about her gorgeous eyes) felt quite natural. I liked the worldbuilding, though it does require suspension of disbelief similarly to many urban fantasy books - seriously, shifters have been around for centuries, there's an official government agency even, and the general public doesn't know about them?
She also did a great job introducing the main character for the sequel, and I'm looking forward to that as well.

Comments

[genarti]

The first time I saw Princess Mononoke I was frustrated with the ending too. The second time, years later, I loved it especially for the ending, and the very lack of a solution is what knocked me sideways emotionally.

As I read it -- and this is my take, not from reading anything about the studio's intentions -- it's about how there are no really good solutions between industrialism and preserving the environment. There are only ones that are a little less bad than the others, ones that try to take into account all the contradictory factors and honor them when the inevitable hard choices are made. They can't build the new town and mine for iron without harming the forest, and maybe destroying it. They can't leave the forest in peace without condemning all these lepers and brothel girls to horrible lives and horrible deaths -- and other people will come along, too, even if they did. The iron is there. You can't undo all humanity's knowledge of what to do with it, and if you could it wouldn't be a very morally defensible decision either, because that technology and that town help people. How do you support both? You can't. You just can't. But you have to try, all the same.

[schneefink]

I like your take on it, though I'm not quite sure I see it. It's certainly closer to reality than a happy ending. They could have made it more explicit, but they didn't: Ashitaka seems to think that it's a mostly happy ending (or does he? I just needed a lot more on what exactly he's thinking all the time because the alternative is that he doesn't, which unfortunately seems plausible), and Lady Eshobi saying that things will be better also hints at that. San says that she can't forgive what the humans did, but she doesn't mention what will happen from now on, and even seems willing to meet with Ashitaka who's planning to rebuild Irontown. None of them really seem to have thought about how to compromise, beyond maybe vague ideas of "maybe the other side is not completely evil/bad, just 98% of them."

On the other hand getting into actual compromises for a difficult situation like this is probably beyond the scope of a movie like that. I'd still like to see the characters acknowledge the dilemma more explicitly, mostly Ashitaka.

[the_rck]

When I watched Princess Mononoke, I felt like I couldn't connect to it. I'm not sure if I was looking for something simpler, something with some actual answers, or what. For what it's worth, I felt the same way about Nausica.

I really like Kiki and Totoro a lot and would recommend them highly. They're sweeter and simpler and much easier to deal with.

I'm torn about Ponyo-- I can't tell how much of my reaction to it comes from my phobia of deep water (this is really not a movie to watch if you have that issue). It was very pretty and aimed at the same audience that Kiki and Totoro are, but I didn't enjoy it much.

[schneefink]

Thanks for the descriptions! I could watch Totoro next :) For some reason, even though I've seen very cute fanart, I never tried to watch it. I should correct that.

[the_rck]

The main thing to be warned about with Totoro is that the mother in the family is sick and in a sort of hospital/rest home. It's not clear what's wrong with her, but I kind of suspect TB (the place where the mother is seems to feature a lot of fresh air and natural surroundings), but it's never stated outright. The older of the two girls is very much afraid that her mother will die when she allows herself to think about it.

It's not the sort of movie where that even feels like a possible thing that might happen, but it is a factor that affects the family. My daughter first watched the movie when she was three and never noticed anything sad or scary about it, so I think this is something that is primarily noticeable by adults.

I can't think of any particular warnings for Kiki. I might have a little trouble with it now simply because my daughter is Kiki's age and the thought of her needing to leave home to seek her fortune... Well.

[schneefink]

Thanks for the info :)

[naye]

Yeah, resolutions are... not always a thing you get in Japanese stories? There's a whole different tradition on what makes a good ending. The first time I saw Spirited Away I really didn't like it because I felt kind of cheated by how so much is left unanswered at the end? And then I watched it again and came to my senses because it's a gorgeous film and the ending is perfect for it, but this is definitely a thing I've found when watching Japanese stuff with Western expectations of how stories should be told.

That said, I still prefer Spirited Away, but Mononoke Hime is so beautiful - all those scenes in the deep woods are like touching magic to me. (And of course Totoro is my all time favorite Studio Ghibli film!)

[schneefink]

I had no problems with the ending of Spirited Away, even though as you said there are unanswered questions of what exactly happened. I think I might just be really annoyed/frustrated by Ashitaka: I wanted to like him, he has good intentions, but he seems incredibly naive and I don't really know what he thinks he's doing. I'm not sure he knows either. That seems like an extremely dangerous approach to take in such delicate situations like the one he finds himself in. Sure, he's young, but iirc he was also a prince so he should have been taught to think about things like this. He seems to act mostly on instinct.
I think I'd feel better about the film if there was an "Ashitaka thinks about things" coda, at least in fic.

I'll have to check out Totoro :)