I watched the bluray version of these episodes and thus will be a slightly technical review. Mainly because I made a mistake and in the process of correcting it found out some stuff about the audio and subtitle options.
On my remote control for my sony bluray player, I have shortcut buttons for both Audio and Subtitle. So I can just press them and supposedly bring up the various options for the disc. It’s worked before on both bluray, dvd’s AND digital files I’ve watched off of a thumbdrive. This time I accidentally hit “play” before choosing English Language with “limited subtitles” (for the opening and closing songs) and thus it started in Japanese with full subtitles. I wanted to do some Magic posts while “listening” to these episodes and just occasionally glancing up to take in the full picture. I clicked on “Audio” to change the language. Up pops an error of “This Operation is Prohibited for this Disc”. Come on, really!? What kind of lousy no good release won’t allow you to change at least the Audio options on the fly? Boooo!
These were all summer vacation themed episodes. I appreciated that because it’s fully fall now and the temps are no where near Summer. I can pretend to be all warm and summery anyway, hahahahaa 😀
Episodes
Episode 17 – Sakura’s Scary Test of Courage
Episode 18 – Sakura, Yukito, and the Summer Festival
Episode 19 – Sakura and the Summer Holiday Homework
Episode 13 – Sakura and the Elephant’s Test of Strength
Episode 14 – Sakura, Touya, and Cinderella
Episode 15 – Sakura and Kero’s Big Fight
Episode 16 – Sakura and the Rainbow of Memories
This dvd was a mix of capturing Clow cards and fill-in stories about Sakura’s history and current life. It was cute, it was fun and it filled a Sunday afternoon perfectly. While this is aimed at the tween girl crowd, CLAMP still tells a good story that everyone can appreciate.
With so much darkness out there, violence, destruction and existential despair and hopelessness, watching a movie today is fraught with the danger of wondering if anything is worth it. CCS is a good antidote to such a world view. It’s not a deeply philosophical counterpoint, mind you, but considering how shallow the bad movies are, it only follows that an antidote should be just as shallow. I guess today is your lucky day, hahahahaa!
In the last episode, we were introduced to Li Syaoran and boy, was he a real jerk. He also comes from a family of magicians that gives him the ability to capture, and thus use, Clow cards. Unfortunately for Sakura, Li thinks his family is the ONLY one “good enough” to do so.
Each episode is a Clow Card of the week and follows the predictable pattern of Sakura and/or Li discovering a Clow Card and then having to capture it. But we begin to see Li more as a person and he begins to understand that not everything is quite as cut and dried as he declared when we first met him.
Being a Magical Girl anime, there’s romance here, albeit from a 10/11 year old’s viewpoint. From a schoolgirl crush on her teacher to Sakura’s dad fighting with his dead wife’s cousin, there is no lack of relational drama. Throw in that this was created by CLAMP and there’s the almost obligatory boyslove that those perverted women just love.
We also get adults acting like how 10year olds must imagine they do. Which is some real writing, as most of CLAMP were in their 30’s (I believe. It’s hard to tell as the members have changed throughout the years). But adults play a VERY small part and thus are relegated to almost non-beings. It does keep the show focused on Sakura and forces her to solve her own problems, with the help of various friends of course. Kids need that.
Another quite enjoyable foray into a wonderful shojo anime. Only the utterly curmudgeonly and cantankerous wouldn’t love this.
Episodes & Summaries
Click to Open
Episode 9 – Sakura and the Mysterious Brooch
Tomoyo and Rika try to cheer Sakura up by taking her shopping after Syaoran upsets her, but Rika suddenly attacks Sakura when she puts on a new brooch.
Episode 10 – Sakura and the Sport’s Day of Flowers
It’s Sports Day at Sakura’s school. Tomoyo’s mother seems to know Sakura’s father, but her glares say that it’s not a friendly reunion.
Episode 11 – Sakura, Tomoyo, and a Mansion
Tomoyo asks Sakura over to get her help opening a special box full of mementos. Kero senses the presence of a Clow Card.
Episode 12 – Sakura’s Never-Ending Day
Sakura messes up during her music test; the next day at school everything repeats in exactly the same way. Syaoran and Sakura realize it’s a Clow Card
This second dvd of the anime Cardcaptor Sakura, contains the following episodes:
Sakura, the Panda and the Cute Shop
Sakura and Memories of Her Mother
Sakura’s First Attempt as a Thief!?!
Sakura’s Rival Appears
This time around I watched these twice, once on the dvd with the subtitles and once on the bluray with the dubbed version. I must say, I did not care for the dub. Sakura sounds like a teenager, not a 10 year old, the pronunciation differences are more glaring (“Clow” is pronounced like “Glow”, not “Plow”) and references are more NorAm oriented than strictly Japanese or Chinese. I must also admit, that with my eyes and my old tv, I couldn’t tell the difference between the dvd and the bluray for resolution. It all looked the same to me.
The stories were just as saccharin as the previous ones and that’s why I skipped a month between reviews. Only so much concentrated sweetness I can handle at one time. But they were fun and I enjoyed them and that’s all that really matters when it comes to watching something on the tv.
Next time I will talk about the episodes themselves (hopefully).
Hang on to your hats folks. After the utter disaster that Dune, Part 2 was, whereby my last remaining shred of interest in modern movies was completely ground into the dust, I decided to look backwards in time, to a completely different country, when story telling actually counted for something.
So back to a beloved anime from 1998. Cardcaptor Sakura is a Magical Girl anime about a girl named Sakura who accidentally releases a bunch of magical cards created by a Magician named Clow. The Guardian of the Cards, who had been sleeping on the job for 30 years, gives Sakura the job of re-capturing the Cards before a prophesied disaster befalls the entire world. Sakura is given magical girl powers by Kero, the Guardian and each Card she captures gives her additional magical powers.
CCS has had quite the storied release here in North America. It was released as a completely butchered tv version where Sakura plays a minor part instead of being the main character. It was subsequently released on dvd, uncut but subtitled only. Finally, it was released on Bluray, uncut and with both dubs and subs. There were other releases as the rights jumped from one company to another, but our interest here is the Uncut DVD release and the Bluray release.
I bought the entire 70 episode series (18 dvds) back in 2005. 18 dvd’s was quite an investment for me back then and I treasured this series. It was light, fluffy, upbeat and so positive that you could pour it on pancakes for breakfast. At the time, I didn’t mind the subtitle only release. This was the only way to watch CCS and so I watched it this way.
Fast forward to now. I was despondent. I was in despair. Movies were anathema to me. I was ready to nuke Hollywood as a whole and damn the civilian casualties. I needed something light, fluffy, upbeat and so positive I could pour it on my waffles for breakfast. CCS immediately sprang to mind. But I have a touch of the snob in me and merely re-watching my old dvd’s was not going to be nearly good enough for me. So I ordered the entire series on bluray. I wanted to do a compare/contrast and see if I had wasted my money on an upgraded version. I’ll be looking into that aspect next month.
This dvd, The Clow, has four episodes on it. They are as follows:
Synopses – Click to Open
1) Sakura and the Mysterious Magic Book” -Sakura Kinomoto, a ten-year-old, experiences dreams involving a peculiar book and Tokyo Tower. After returning home from school, Sakura is drawn to the basement by strange noises. In her father’s library, she discovers the Clow Book, the same book from her dream. She accidentally breaks its seal, unleashing the magical Clow Cards into the world. The cards’ guardian, Cerberus, awakens and appoints Sakura the role of Cardcaptor – to catch and seal the cards using the Clow Wand. They successfully catch the Fly Card, allowing Sakura to fly.
2) Sakura’s Wonderful Friend -Tomoyo meets Cerberus after she discovers Sakura’s secret and becomes involved in Sakura’s quest. Cerberus gets given the nickname “Kero-chan”, which will stick for the rest of the series. The next day, the students find the school’s desks and equipment in large piles. Kero believes it was the work of a Clow Card and forces Sakura to go to school at night where she confronts the Shadow Card. Using Windy, Sakura is able to capture it. Sakura finally accepts her role as a Cardcaptor because of Tomoyo’s support, who begins providing battle costumes for her to wear, as well as filming her endeavors.
3) Sakura’s Heart-Racing First Date -Sakura’s class is on a field trip to the aquarium. During the penguin show, something catches the trainer’s leg and a penguin and pulls them into the water, but they are saved by Sakura’s brother, Toya, who is working part-time there. At school, Tomoyo gives Sakura and Kero mobile phones and on the way home, Sakura bumps into Yukito who invites her on a casual “date” to the aquarium. While they are eating, the Watery Card attempts to drown Sakura. For the first time, Sakura has to formulate a plan to capture a card. Using her wits and an unintentional clue from Yukito, she lures Watery into a freezer to immobilize and capture it.
4) Sakura’s Tiring Sunday -While cleaning the house, Sakura finds two dormant Clow Cards, the Wood and the Rain. But while running an errand for her father, the two cards activate creating a jungle inside the house. Sakura uses Watery to capture the Rain Card and the gentle Wood Card yields on her own. Sakura gets the hard-earned lesson that a card is not fully subdued until she signs her name on it.
When I remembered these as sweet, I wasn’t kidding! I am talking totally saccharine here. By the time I was done with these 4 episodes, I was done for this month. I thoroughly enjoyed these but just like a bag of gum drops, you can only take so many at once.
I realize I blabbed a lot at the beginning and didn’t talk a lot about the specific episodes. I’ll eventually get around to that, but not at this time nor next month. I’ll provide a synopsis in a Details code next time just like this time but am hoping to focus on the differences between the dvd and the bluray releases. After THAT we’ll see if I can be bothered to talk about the episodes themselves. Don’t hold your breath though, I’m not feeling very “talky” when it comes to movies anymore.
When I watched Dune Part I, I knew the director Villeneuve was taking liberties with the story but didn’t mind that much. So going into Part II, I knew he would continue to make changes and I mentally and emotionally prepared myself. And it was good that I did, because there were some significant changes from the book.
Paul and Chani never had their first son, so he was never killed by Rabban.
Alia, Paul’s preborn sister, was not born in this movie. She was totally in-vitro the entire time. So she never killed the Baron. That fell to Paul.
Chani was a fremen warrior and nothing else. She was not the protege of Lady Jessica, a Wise Woman in training.
Paul’s transformation into Muad’dib was very understated. His visions were ones of billions starving, instead of a monstrous galaxy wide jihad where billions were killed. His prescient sight was almost non-existent.
I could live with those changes. I didn’t care for them and I thought the director was wrong, but I was ok. I was fine with this movie and those changes.
Until the last five minutes of the movie. Then I exploded at the last scene. I was angrier than I have ever been about changes from a book to a movie. I was angrier than when Lucas changed the dvd release of Return of the Jedi and cgi’d in Christian Hayden at the ghost scene with Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. I was ready to take a dull spoon to Lucas then.
And that was nothing to how I felt at the ending of this movie. I had gotten this bluray for my b-day and after that ending, I will be throwing it into the garbage along with Part I. I am so done with Villeneuve that I will never watch another movie by this expletive expletive expletive guy if I can help it. If there is a Dune Part III (which it really seems necessary as this doesn’t complete the book’s story at all), I will ignore it harder than I did Star Wars episodes 7, 8 and 9. Villeneuve is not only dead to me, he is the devil incarnate and the source of all evil in the world.
In Part I, Villeneuve kept the relationship between Paul and Chani kind of at odds, which made sense. But in the second part of the book, Chani and Paul were not just lovers, but soul mates. They had a child together. Chani knew that she had to share Paul as Duke Paul Atreides, Muad’dib the Fremen Leader and The Kwisatz Haderach, the genetic superman that was the next step in humanity’s path. She knew all this, even knew what the cost was, and she not only accepted it, she gave her heart and soul to support Paul. She was the bedrock upon which Paul rested. He knew his time was limited with her and he knew that any outcome that would prevent her death would make the Jihad unimaginably worse, trillions dead instead of billions. They were the two sides of one coin. In the book, Paul had to marry the daughter of the Emperor, Princess Irulan. But it was a marriage of politics and Chani was always his love and the mother of his children. Irulan was simply a figure head. Lady Jessica had to go through the same thing with her Duke Leto, being his concubine and mother of his heir, but leaving marriage open to other Great Houses. Jessica counseled Chani on the reality of the situation and Paul reassured Chani of his love and devotion. Chani knew what she had to sacrifice and chose to still love Paul.
In the movie, Chani storms out of the Imperial Hall and calls a worm to go off by herself into the desert. She abandons Paul. She abandons Duke Paul Atreides. She abandons Muad’dib. She abandons the Kwisatz Haderach. She abandons who she was in the book.
If Villeneuve will make such a fundamental change to a character, he has completely lost my trust.
From a purely technical side of things, I didn’t like this movie either. First, the bass track also contained the audio track, so if I wanted to hear what anyone was saying, I had to put up with floor rumbling noise that I could literally feel from 20feet away, while sitting on my couch. There is no need for crap like that. The other thing that annoyed me greatly was how dark many of the scenes were. There were times I turned my tv on and off to make sure it wasn’t misbehaving. There is no need to make a movie so dark that the audience HAS to sit in complete darkness to make out the details.
So between the technical annoyances and then the utter betrayal of the relationship between Paul and Chani. I ended up hating this movie. I don’t know what the normal person who has never read the book will think of this. They might be just fine. But I AM NOT JUST A NORMAL PERSON WHO HAS NEVER READ THE BOOK. Dune is as close to a sacred text as I’ll ever have in the fiction department.
Having read Persuasion last week, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to watch a new-to-me movie version. I have previously watched the 1995 version, but it really felt like that version just touched on the highlights of the story without getting into the nitty gritty details. It was enjoyable but not something I’d ever want to watch again. So I cruised on over to Amazon and perused their free offerings of Austen’s works. Thankfully, this 2008 BBC production was available, so I sat back and enjoyed.
First, this went off the story in a couple of places, mainly the ending. In this, Wentworth somehow buys the Elliott home estate and gives it to Anne as a wedding present. That never happened in the book. There were also a couple of smaller issues throughout the movie but they weren’t enough to really take notice of.
What really stood out to me was the emotional side of things. There was one scene where Anne is reading a letter from her brother-in-law stating that Wentworth is sure to be married. She’s just sobbing and you can feel her pain, the knowledge that she will never have the chance to be with Wentworth ripping her heart completely apart. You’d have to be a stone, or never experienced that level of heartbreak, to not be moved by it. That scene alone made this a great movie.
I really enjoyed watching this for free. I don’t think I’d go out and buy it, but if you can see it for free, go for it! Of course, read the book first. ALWAYS read the book first.
Nadesico was a 26 episode anime series released in 1996 in Japan and eventually made it to the US on dvd in 2002. Those were not the days of simultaneous releases. Pirate subbers roamed the interwebz and the battleships of Legality were hounded by impatient fans as well. When I originally watched this, I thought it was the most funny thing ever. I recommended it as one of the handful of “Auto-recommends” to non-anime people who wanted to know what “anime” even was.
Over the last couple of years with reading various old and new manga and rewatching some of my old favorite anime I have realized that I have aged out. Maybe “aged” isn’t the right word, but my circumstances have change enough that the messages anime promotes and counts on to attract viewers don’t appeal to me any more. This was quite apparent to me watching Nadesico.
I chose to binge watch all 26 episodes, back to back. That was a mistake and yet it was the only way I made it through at the same time. 10 1/2 hrs of youth, angst, love, uncertainty and trying to find one’s place in the grand scheme of things. Having it compressed into one viewing made those things very obvious. It is why I said I have aged out of anime. I am no longer young (even though I hate to admit that). My angst now concerns whether to make double mortgage payments or put the extra money towards savings for when a car inevitably breaks down. I’ve been happily married to Mrs B for over 15 years now and she still loves me. I have 24years experience doing my job and know what I am and am not capable of. I know where I fit in life and I am satisfied with that place. Maybe if they made middle aged anime? But that wouldn’t sell very well, not even to me, hahahahaa.
What did happen to me, that I wasn’t expecting, was the emotional impact of watching so much all at once. While I am stable, the built-in instability of the show affected me quite a bit. It made me anxious and depressed. I suspect that watching a tv screen for that long also played a big part of that. But I don’t want to experience that again. I want to make this clear, anime didn’t change, nor has it changed. I have changed. So if you can still enjoy anime, then do so, with gusto.
Which means I need to start getting rid of the majority of my anime. I don’t plan on rewatching 95% of it any more and sadly, this watch of Nadesico shows that even my favorites were for a different time, a different place, a different me.
Excess. Nihilistic Excess. This was not actually a movie. This was a video game with a body count so high that I’m never going to view the original John Wick film in the same light. JW should have been the lowest bar that has ever been set in terms of sheer violence. Sadly, it ended up being the top level of an underground bunker.
I have enjoyed each successive John Wick movie less and less. To the point where I actually questioned whether I would watch this or not. I enjoyed the pure brutality of the first movie. This, this made me sick and question myself as I kept on watching instead of turning it off.
Take everything you know about A Christmas Carol and reverse it and you’ve got this wonderful parody. First and foremost, if you are not familiar with the British tv series Blackadder, this won’t be nearly as funny. Because it’s not just the fact that everything is reversed, but who everything gets reversed on. You have to know the Blackadder cast to get a full appreciation of the comedic genius.
That being said, this being British tv, they are crude, profane and borderline blasphemous.
From Ebenezer Blackadder to Mrs Scratchett and her gigantic son Tiny Tom, to gin drinking, carol singing orphans to the Spirit of Christmas, to Ebenezer’s niece Frederika who steals everything she can, coupled with Baldrick stinking everything up (he’s Blackadder’s witless servant and must have been paid a LOT of money to appear in a leather breachclout on tv) and you have a recipe for hilarity. Even the opening song is a riff on the original Blackadder intro song.
The gist of the story is that Ebenezer Blackadder is the nicest man in the world. He gives everything away to everybody and they take advantage of him. The Ghost of Christmas visits him and is about ready to leave because Ebenezer is such a good fellow until he lets slip that Ebenezer’s ancestors were unscrupulous ne’er-do-wells. This gets Ebenezer curious and sees several Christmas’s past where his ancestors pull dastardly schemes quite successfully. This wets his appetite and make him wonder why he’s being so good. He forces the Ghost of Christmas to show him the future and in one, where Ebenezer turns bad, his descendants rule the galaxy. In the other future where he stays good, his servant Baldrick rules the universe and does it very badly. So Ebenezer tosses all the good out the window and becomes a true Blackadder. In the process he tosses a mysterious couple out on their ear. They turn out to be the king and queen who were going to give him a vast fortune and a title. Which is typical Blackadder. Even when he wins, he still manages to lose.
I laughed my head off. I watched this three times and it was as funny each time.
While I don’t foresee myself ever watching this again after this year, I certainly did enjoy it this time around. It’s silly beyond belief, which fit my mood just fine.
And here we go, the first bend in the railroad as the Christmas Carol Express begins to go off the rails! Choooo chooo!
First off, besides the Muppets, Michael Caine has the starring role as Ebenezer Scrooge. If a movie has Michael Caine in it, you know it’s going to be a good movie. While fringe nut job yobs might try to present evidence to the contrary, I simply ask my readers, who are you going to trust? Me, or some fringe nut job yob? Michael Caine = you know you are getting a good movie.
On to the slightly more serious.
The singing. Muppets movies always have singing, whether the audience wants it or not. I’ve resigned myself to this fact and tried to not let it unduly influence me. Of course, just because Michael Caine is a good actor doesn’t mean he’s a good singer. He does take part in one song and I have to admit, he’s not terrible but I think things might have had a bit more glitz if they’d dubbed him over with Michael Jackson, who was still arguably the Prince of Pop in ’92. The message conveyed by the songs are as trite and shallow as you’d expect from a Disney production but really, if you read Dickens’ book, he’s not really that much deeper. Oh yes, the Missing Song. In the theatres, there is an extra song that was subsequently cut out from all dvd/bluray releases. I personally didn’t miss it but if you’re a completionist, it is supposed to be included in the next “upgrade” to this movie. 4K I believe. Simply one more way for Disney to bend you over and make you think you like it. The picture below shows the type of propaganda Disney promulgates.
On to the good stuff.
If you are a fan of the Muppets and their zaniness, then this is a no-brainer to watch, even if Dickens isn’t your cup of tea. Between Fozziwig (a cute play on Fozzi’s name being used for that character) and his Rubber Chicken Factory to Gonzo playing Charles Dickens (and being distracted by every chicken that walks by) to Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy playing Bob & Mrs Cratchett, you get your fill. While a knowledge of the Muppets isn’t essential, knowing them as The Muppets gives an added dimension to the fun. An example would the single scene where Sam the Eagle is sending a young Scrooge off to his first place of business as an apprentice and rhapsodizes about the the beauty of business. Sam ends it with “…and that is the American Way!”. Gonzo whispers in his ear and Sam immediately says “…and that is the British Way!”. Which is really funny if you know that Sam is the proto-American Super Patriot as a Muppet.
The story proceeds at a rapid pace and almost feels like Scrooge changes for the sake of changing. However, this is in keeping with the original book and shouldn’t surprise anyone. Throw in that this movie was made for a juvenile audience and the pacing is perfectly in line with what out of touch Hollywood Directors think is appropriate for your child. Just don’t expect a deeply thoughtful, insightful and deeply philosophical movie and you should be just fine. You’re in this for the singing, dancing and laughs.
Last year, I listened to A Christmas Carol narrated by Patrick Stewart. After reading the original novella by Dickens and then listening to it again narrated by Tim Curry, I wanted to dive into the visual side of things with a serious start. There were so many options to choose from that I decided to stick to something that I was semi-familiar with. So Patrick Stewart as Scrooge it was.
This movie definitely takes liberties, mainly in padding out scenes merely alluded to in Dicken’s novella. But the director didn’t try to change the spirit of things. To me, that’s important.
Of course, Patrick Stewart being Ebenezer Scrooge takes center stage. I thought he did a fantastic job. From the beginning at the burial scene of Jacob Marley, Stewart projected that tightfisted, angry, self-centered and utterly materialistic man of the world. His facial expressions never wavered, never let the audience forget just what kind of man Ebenezer Scrooge was. And yet, just like in the story, I could SEE Scrooge changing as the night went on. It takes a consummate actor to display such little changes without coming across as hamming it.
The story is short and so thus is the movie. It’s done before it even started. I sat down to watch it and boom, it was over! I like that. No messing around, just tell the story and move on with your life. More movies should take the hint.
Another BBC tv miniseries. One thing I’ll note right off is that except for the 2008 version, the BBC has kept child actors out of the picture. While that means excising the third sister, Margaret, from the picture, she plays such a small part that it’s not that big a sacrifice. And not having child actors fully accords with my views on them. More harm is done to children than any possible good by either forcing them or even “allowing” them to be in movies and tv. So bravo to the Beeb for keeping them out. Hollywood should have taken note with their 1995 Version. Oh, won’t SOMEONE think of the children? ~wrings hands piteously~
This was a 4part series with each episode running around 45’ish minutes. Once again the entire run is just under the 3hr mark. That seems to be the regular time frame that the BBC considers optimum. Overall, I tend to agree. It works out very well.
After the 1981 Version, I was dreading taking yet another decade long step backwards. If the 1980’s was a stage play acting, what would this be like? I had horrible images of 70’s hairstyles prancing around in tight dance club suits and randomly breaking out into disco dance moves, ala John Travolta. Now I’m going to have nightmares again 🙁 Thankfully, this was nothing like that at all. This reminded me very much of the 2008 Version in terms of acting and how they presented the material. It felt like a movie. I enjoyed watching this. The relief at finding out there was no disco shouldn’t be discounted though, so maybe I didn’t quite enjoy this as much as I thought I did 😉
Another thing that struck me immediately, was the inclusion of Patricia Routledge as Mrs Jennings. Patricia is better known to me as Hyacinth Bucket, from the british sitcom “Keeping Up Appearances“. That show always leaves me rolling. Mrs Jennings was the perfect role, a good hearted, busybody with no malice whatsoever. Routledge totally owned the role and it was a joy to behold her.
While empire waisted dresses dominated the style scene, there was enough curled hair, jewels and variety of dress to keep every period fanatic in raptures. I also would like to re-emphasize, there was not ONE disco suit on display 😉
I do admit to feeling some story fatigue at this point. But as this is the last screen version, it didn’t hinder me, just kind of added a couple of pounds to my shoulders that I had to drag along. I didn’t force myself to watch this and there was no resignation when it was time to watch the next episode. I was thinking of trying to do this same thing for Pride & Prejudice when I do a buddyread with Lashaan next year. I am questioning the wisdom of that decision, as this experience has quite wiped me out. Not a bad experience, but a very tiring one. But that’s months away, so I refuse to make a choice now about something that far in the future.
As this is the last viewing, I’ve given a few thoughts about how I’d rank them in regards to each other.
When I popped this into the blurayer player to watch it with Mrs B, we both thought it was going to be another movie version like the 1995 version. So imagine our surprise when up popped a menu with Episodes 1-7. We looked at each other and immediately decided to watch just one episode a night.
We made the right choice.
I can’t say this was a horrible production, but one episode a night was all we could handle. It was from the BBC and they used their usual cast of ugly people. Why the BBC makes these kind of choices is beyond me.
In many respects this felt like a stage play instead of a movie. The actors spoke their lines to each other instead of having conversations naturally. Even how they moved and their body language felt like they were posing. It was uncomfortable to watch and wasn’t something we looked forward to.
We came to Friday night and had 3 episodes left. We were planning on watching our usual one episode and double up on Saturday. I had eaten two eclairs and the sugar coursing through my veins gave me an unparalleled amount of fake courage. With Mrs B’s blessing, we powered through the final 3 episodes. The series ended with neither of the Miss Dashwoods actually being married, nor even engaged. It was all implied that it was going to happen. Which given the whole issue is that Willoughby didn’t give his word to Marianne, seems to go against everything they were trying to show. It was a very anticlimactic ending.
We were both happy it was over and I have zero interest in ever rewatching it. Not a terrible experience but this version is not one I’d ever recommend anyone ever watch. I wish I could have kinder, more positive things to say, but I can’t and I don’t. I don’t even want to go into more details, sigh.
Wow. Just wow. I am pretty wow’ed at the moment. But let me explain, because it does take a bit of explaining, especially with how I’m going to describe things in the following paragraph.
The Book, a fully fledged beautiful woman in flowing period gown. She swishes, she glides, she sits, she pours your tea with aplomb and brings a glow to every room she enters. The 2008 TV Miniseries is a painting of that woman. Beautiful and wonderful and as it hangs on your wall, it brings back wonderful memories of the woman herself. This 1995 Movie is a skilled impersonator. You know it isn’t the Lady herself, but she looks like her, acts like her and carries off her manner and attitudes so that from across a room you could fool yourself into thinking it is her.
Now I realize that might sound like a slur, but in reality, it is the highest complement I can give. This movie has the very bones of Austen’s novel. It has the heart and soul of it. Most of the changes were excisions and I was fine with all of the changes. Why I was ok with the changes in this movie I do not know, but it worked, and it worked very well.
I am sure that some of my comfort with this movie was the amount of actors that not only did I recognize but recognize as very good actors. Kate Winslet was perfect as Marianne. I’m sure part of that was her actual youth (she was a mere 19 at the time) but she also simply brought a very real energy to the role. And yet she didn’t steal the movie. There were too many other wonderful actors. Emma Thompson as Elinor. Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars. Oh, Hugh carried off the “awkward and stilted” Edward to a t. It was like he had a pebble in his boot and a thistle in his britches. It was exactly as I imagined Edward to be. Then we come to Alan Rickman, playing Colonel Brandon. What an understated performance. In this version, I’d like to mention one of the side characters. Hugh Laurie plays Mr Palmer, a very minor character even in the book. He was a cold, self-centered man and he starts out that way in the movie. He has a silly wife and is either silent or speaking very cutting remarks. But as Marianne’s sickness progresses, Laurie manages to convey a deep well of sympathy and humanity in just a scene of 30 seconds. I just had to nod my head in admiration.
I have to say, I enjoyed this way more than the miniseries. It felt like a perfect movie and it swept me along. I’m extremely happy to have watched this. Now I have to live with myself knowing I’ve got two more movies to watch and neither of them are this one. Mercy on my soul….
I am working backwards in time with these various S&S screen adaptations. First up is this 2008 tv miniseries adaptation by the BBC. It is 3 episodes long and is 2hrs and 50’ish minutes long. Round it to 3hrs.
The first thing I’d like to address is that lascivious cover. Marianne does not go around with her bosom showing off like that at all. That was a concern of mine that was thankfully never realized. That being said, the director starts off the show with the seduction of Colonel Brandon’s young ward. It is not graphic but is very frank about what is going on. Sensual is the word. That does continue for this miniseries. The music, the period clothing, it all is very sensual.
The characters, I was pretty pleased with their portrayal over all. Elinor was calm, cool headed and very practical. Yet she also was able to show her distress with her face and her eyes in the scenes requiring it. Marianne, while not being at all silly, was VERY emotionally driven. The actress did an excellent job of showing a smart young woman who wasn’t stupid but had her faults, mostly of age. Colonel Brandon was serious, mature and yet not shy or withdrawn. He came across as fully self-assured and confident. Edward Ferrars. Now, I always pronounced his last name Fair-Ars. In the movie, they pronounced Fair-iss. In the book his actions and manner were always halting and awkward. There was none of that here. While he was no voluble gentleman of ease, there was nothing that made you think he was in any way uncomfortable. Thankfully, he plays such a small part on screen that it wasn’t a big problem. All of the minor characters didn’t stand out, which is how it should be. On a purely personal note, I was thankful that this BBC production didn’t use the regular crew of ugly people like a lot of BBC productions do. Call me shallow, but I want to see good looking people on the screen. And I got that here.
Storywise, this stuck to the plot rather closely. I’m always a fan of that. Shows the director doesn’t get above himself (looking at YOU, Wheel of Time director, who I hate with the dull red hatred of a fired spoon). There were scenes expanded upon, but they were mentioned in the book and so I didn’t have a real problem with their expansion. If Austen couldn’t/wouldn’t expand, then whatever the director decided was a-ok by me. The scene between Marianne and Willoughby in London was excellently done. The heartbreak was palpable and I liked the addition of Colonel Brandon stepping in to catch her as she fell, it was tone perfect. I’m a sucker for Damsels in Distress and Protectors.
I enjoyed this but it felt a tad too long. I know it had to be that way because of the story but I was ready for it to end. This was a great start to this month of Sense and Sensibility. I just hope the movies, with their abbreviated length, won’t be too abbreviated.
Instead of just watching X-Men: Origins: Wolverine (my goodness, what idiot thought that mashed potato filled title was a good idea?) like I intended, I ended up watching all three of the Wolverine movies. They are:
(all titles above link to the Wikipedia pages. I’m not going to waste time putting up synopses for these) I am glad to have gotten them all out of the way. After Logan, I was left gnashing my teeth, almost foaming at the mouth and fully decided to watch no more X-Men movies.
Origins, as the title declares, is the origin story of Wolverine. It’s not canon, it’s not even inline with the previous X-Men films, but I enjoyed this a lot. It was a comic book super hero movie and it leaned into that unabashedly. From stupid, face-palming one liners to scenarios so outrageous that your brain has to stop, this was fun from top to bottom.
The Wolverine was a bit darker, had Famke Jannsen as Jean Grey haunting Wolverine’s mind and ended up with a battle between Wolverine and a giant Mecha made out of adamantium. That Wolverine destroys with a heated adamantium super sword. Yakuza, kidnappings, corruption, like I said, darker. But at the same time, it felt like it was trying to be more serious than Origins but it was just as comic book’y. But it was trying to play it straight. It almost worked, but whereas I found myself just accepting stuff in Origins, for this movie I kept thinking “That’s stupid. That doesn’t make sense. How would that EVEN work?” Those are not questions I should be asking if I want to enjoy a movie.
Then we come to Logan. An old Wolverine is taking care of an insane and incontinent Professor X and there’s some new breed of Mutant X warriors, blah, blah, blah. This was rated R (where the previous two were pg-13) and boy did they run with that rating. Logan AND Professor X swear worse than sailors, the hopelessness of everything just oozes off the screen and in a move that I found rather despicable, Logan spends five minutes screaming at the little girl (X23?) about how comic books are lies and not real and should be ignored. That is when I decided to mentally check out. Comic books have never claimed to be real or “like the real world”. The whole flipping point is to give some kids an escape for a couple of minutes and to show them something good. There is a reason they used to be about Super HEROES, and not just about super powered individuals. Hope, comic books offered hope to kids in a form they could understand. And this movie took that hope, mind raped it, gouged its eyeballs out, cut its legs off and then sat back and smugly said “So, where is your hope now, puny human?” I was sickened, disgusted and totally put off by the message.
So I’m done with the X-Franchise. To be perfectly honest, Logan affected me enough that I’m considering not reviewing another movie until after new years.
The last of the original X-Men trilogy. Sadly, Brian Singer did not direct this, as he had gone on to do that horrible Superman Returns movie. So it is hard to judge if this movie was really as bad as it was because of him leaving or if it was just a bad movie all on its own.
While I didn’t hate it, it was a chore to watch the whole thing. The biggest problem was that whoever the writers were, they simply tried to pack in way too much into the one movie. You have a very poorly done Dark Phoenix arc (Jean Grey is the most powerful mutant EVAH but kept it under control with Professor X’s help and she goes bad), you have a story about Magneto declaring war on humanity and assembling a massive army of mutants, you have a “cure” for mutantism that causes schisms amongst mutankind, you have some of the major mutants being killed off and you have a whole new crop of Team X-Men and evil Mutants being introduced.
It was just too many story threads and instead of being woven seamlessly together, they were all raggedly cut off to make room for the other threads.
Then you have the characters. They do not act like how they did in the previous 2 movies. Especially Professor X. Instead of taking time to explain anything, to anyone, he just starts roaring about how he knows best and everybody needs to listen to him. Perfect example of a megalomaniac in fact, and he’s supposed to be the good guy. Rogue decides to get the vaccine so she can have a relationship with Iceman, who is in the midst of his own little triangle with Shadowcat, ie, Kitty Pryde.
It was messy, uncoordinated and not a well executed film. Not one I’ll ever be rewatching. I’d say it’s only for those who want to watch the entire X-Franchise instead of good films.
The second X-Men movie, subtitled X-Men United, follows right in the footsteps of the first movie. This time around Senator Striker is manipulating mutants with the end goal of taking over Cerebro and using its powers to kill all the mutants in the world. Nice guy right? At the same time Wolverine is on the hunt for his past and lost memories. Plus, there are a lot of little rabbit trails that are like crack to comic book fans of the time.
In this movie, the human/mutant interaction is really ramped up, the looming war seemingly right on the horizon and the threat to mutantkind almost realized. We also get a bunch more mutants but each one has very little screen time and almost no character development. Nightcrawler is the perfect example. He’s brought on board to the X-team but beyond being blue and able to teleport, he’s nothing.
I think Wolverine’s storyline was more interesting than the main one about Striker trying to kill all the mutants. While the “kill all the mutants” might be interesting to a 14 year old, with the promise of world wide chaos, I liked the more personal touch here. Probably explains why I enjoyed Origins so much. This just extremely busy. It’s one of the reasons I am not a big fan of Team Superheroes. I like the focus to be on one person.
I think Singer does a good job here. Not an excellent job, but a good job. I enjoyed watching this again but unlike the first movie, I’m not sure I’ll ever bother re-watching. This is definitely a comic book movie but not in the bestest way the first movie was.
The twist at the end where Xavier is set to kill all regular humans instead of mutants was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head. But whatever, it fit with the comic book motif perfectly.
On a weird note, the actor who plays Striker is the same man who plays Boris the Russian diplomat in the RED duology. Hearing him speak with a slight southern drawl was very disconcerting as I’m used to him being all “Dah, Comrade” and whatnot. It was one thing I could not get past.
Overall, this was a good fun re-watch on a Sunday afternoon but not one I’d unreservedly recommend.
X-Men, directed by Brian Singer, was one of the first really well done Super Hero movies. The first Spiderman movie hadn’t come out yet, but neither had such flops like Ghostrider, Elektra or the Fantastic Four duology. A brand new cinematic world was opening up to us.
And it was glorious!
I was rather hesitant to re-watch this, as I had such good memories and did NOT want to sully them; Marvel has done that well enough on its own. But my goodness, I had so much FUN watching this.
It definitely helped that much of the storyline was familiar to me from the 90’s X-Men comics. But it was a comic book and it just reveled in it. I mean, Magneto has a massive mutant making machine already installed in the torch of the Statue of Liberty? Come on, that’s ridiculous. And it worked perfectly because it is exactly how badguys always operate in the comics. This was not a Zack Snyder grimfest or deconstructionist dystopia. Singer has a love of the goodguys kicking butt, overcoming great odds and looking good doing it 🙂 It also wasn’t 3hrs long. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
While I have enjoyed the Infinity War story arc that the MCU took us on, by the end I was ready for it to be done. I was ready for standalone movies with standalone stories. Kind of like this movie in fact. Which might explain just why I enjoyed it so much. While there are 2 sequels, this could easily be watched as a standalone. That really appeals to me.
So if you are a comic book fan and you want to watch a superhero film that is just plain fun and gives you a good time, watch X-Men.
