Three video reviews!
Sep. 11th, 2003 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserI'm not sure if folks will be interested in this sort of thing, but I watched three very different DVDs tonight, so I'm going to write a bit up about them.
My very first fandom, a good 20 years ago, was GI Joe. While I was at least as big of a fangirl of it as I am of HP, back then computers weren't common, and there was no Internet (there was MILNET and ARPANET, but they're nothing like the net as we know it now). It was hard being a fan. But through snailmail to people whose addresses were listed in letters to the editor in the comic books (yep, they did print street/mailing addresses back then), I found/created a small network of people who were into it. I remained a fan for many years, though eventually got into other things. However, I never lost my enjoyment of GI Joe, no matter how bad I know it is now.
So I was very excited when they released a new cartoon: A 44 minute DVD free when you bought two "dolls" (large action figures). Having no room or use for giant action figures, I just downloaded the movie instead.
GI Joe: Spy Troops
* Animation: Saturday morning cartoon level CGI -- which is to say, okay at best, but painfully bad at worst.
* Voices, and at times characterization, were totally different than the original. Example: Beachhead was not a surfer dude, he had been overly serious. I twitched seeing him in this new movie.
* Music was good/enjoyable -- very videogame-ish.
Though it doesn't seem possible, Cobra Commander (the leader of the bad guys) was even more stupid than he was in the original cartoon:
Baroness, speaking of a new technology: We won't have to risk losing our best pilots ever again!
CC: Who cares? We've got more!
The ninja fight (Storm Shadow vs Snake Eyes), which was supposed to be the selling point (literally, it was with these two action figures that this DVD was being offered) sadly sucked ass. Basically the characters just hung in the air most of the time, but occasionally there was a "motion blur", but no figure seen within it.
(You can't see it well in this screenshot, but there's the figure of the other ninja reflected in the sword.)
Some things about the movie rocked:
* Heavyduty -- Had a great New Orleans accent, and he was pretty hot to boot! Mmmm.
* Scarlett -- She was one of the ones with a really different character than the original series, but it totally worked. She was cute! And I liked her voice, too.
* Wild Bill -- They seemed to have changed his character as well, but I liked it.
Though there were quite a few problems with Spy Troops, I loved it dearly. It was "bad", but so was the original cartoon (plotholes you could drive tanks through). It had all the fun of the original though, and I'm totally planning on watching it again soon. Like tomorrow night! While the voices were different, they quickly grew on me... and man, a lot of the Joes were pretty darned hot in this new version! I even picked up on some slash vibes!
I've mentioned a couple times that I like reality shows. I enjoy watching people be stupid and ruin their reputations for money. Blind Date is one of the worst of the reality shows -- at least for the people appearing on them. For the viewer though, it's a howling good time.
Unfortunately, about the only thing different between Uncensored and the broadcasted show was that in Uncensored they didn't bleep out the curses. They showed one guy vomiting (many times), which really wasn't something I wanted to see. But still, even without much new material, I really enjoyed watching this. How people can be so awful to each other when they *know* it's going to be on TV boggles me! If the price had been cheap ($10 or so), I wouldn't have minded paying for it.
Last: I've only recently started getting into anime. I'm not a big fan or anything, but there are some things I've watched, and a few I've enjoyed. I was told Grave of the Fireflies was one of the best movies ever, so I thought I'd watch it.
Lots of odd stuff comes out of Japan. I'm well aware they have a very different culture than ours. However, I really, really did not get the point of this movie. Here's how the plot went:
There's a war going on.
A mother is killed.
The brother and sister are now orphaned.
They (and we!) see the mother's bloody, fly-covered body. In realistic detail.
The siblings go to their aunt's house.
She abuses them. She basically kicks them out.
War continues. Air raids. Fire. Death all around them.
No food. Sister slowly starves to death.
Brother watches her die. Sleeps with her dead body. (Not in a pervy way, just sleeps.)
Brother burns his sister's body.
Brother goes into city. Starves to death in a train station.
The end!
That's *it*. That's all there is to the movie. Not one single bright spot. *Nothing* but death and suffering. I was happy to finally finish watching the darned thing just so I could delete it off my harddrive!
And so I killed an evening, as well as got some things off my to-do list. Bedtime!
My very first fandom, a good 20 years ago, was GI Joe. While I was at least as big of a fangirl of it as I am of HP, back then computers weren't common, and there was no Internet (there was MILNET and ARPANET, but they're nothing like the net as we know it now). It was hard being a fan. But through snailmail to people whose addresses were listed in letters to the editor in the comic books (yep, they did print street/mailing addresses back then), I found/created a small network of people who were into it. I remained a fan for many years, though eventually got into other things. However, I never lost my enjoyment of GI Joe, no matter how bad I know it is now.
So I was very excited when they released a new cartoon: A 44 minute DVD free when you bought two "dolls" (large action figures). Having no room or use for giant action figures, I just downloaded the movie instead.
GI Joe: Spy Troops
* Animation: Saturday morning cartoon level CGI -- which is to say, okay at best, but painfully bad at worst.
* Voices, and at times characterization, were totally different than the original. Example: Beachhead was not a surfer dude, he had been overly serious. I twitched seeing him in this new movie.
* Music was good/enjoyable -- very videogame-ish.
Though it doesn't seem possible, Cobra Commander (the leader of the bad guys) was even more stupid than he was in the original cartoon:
Baroness, speaking of a new technology: We won't have to risk losing our best pilots ever again!
CC: Who cares? We've got more!
The ninja fight (Storm Shadow vs Snake Eyes), which was supposed to be the selling point (literally, it was with these two action figures that this DVD was being offered) sadly sucked ass. Basically the characters just hung in the air most of the time, but occasionally there was a "motion blur", but no figure seen within it.
(You can't see it well in this screenshot, but there's the figure of the other ninja reflected in the sword.)
Some things about the movie rocked:
* Heavyduty -- Had a great New Orleans accent, and he was pretty hot to boot! Mmmm.
* Scarlett -- She was one of the ones with a really different character than the original series, but it totally worked. She was cute! And I liked her voice, too.
* Wild Bill -- They seemed to have changed his character as well, but I liked it.
Though there were quite a few problems with Spy Troops, I loved it dearly. It was "bad", but so was the original cartoon (plotholes you could drive tanks through). It had all the fun of the original though, and I'm totally planning on watching it again soon. Like tomorrow night! While the voices were different, they quickly grew on me... and man, a lot of the Joes were pretty darned hot in this new version! I even picked up on some slash vibes!
I've mentioned a couple times that I like reality shows. I enjoy watching people be stupid and ruin their reputations for money. Blind Date is one of the worst of the reality shows -- at least for the people appearing on them. For the viewer though, it's a howling good time.
Unfortunately, about the only thing different between Uncensored and the broadcasted show was that in Uncensored they didn't bleep out the curses. They showed one guy vomiting (many times), which really wasn't something I wanted to see. But still, even without much new material, I really enjoyed watching this. How people can be so awful to each other when they *know* it's going to be on TV boggles me! If the price had been cheap ($10 or so), I wouldn't have minded paying for it.
Last: I've only recently started getting into anime. I'm not a big fan or anything, but there are some things I've watched, and a few I've enjoyed. I was told Grave of the Fireflies was one of the best movies ever, so I thought I'd watch it.
Lots of odd stuff comes out of Japan. I'm well aware they have a very different culture than ours. However, I really, really did not get the point of this movie. Here's how the plot went:
There's a war going on.
A mother is killed.
The brother and sister are now orphaned.
They (and we!) see the mother's bloody, fly-covered body. In realistic detail.
The siblings go to their aunt's house.
She abuses them. She basically kicks them out.
War continues. Air raids. Fire. Death all around them.
No food. Sister slowly starves to death.
Brother watches her die. Sleeps with her dead body. (Not in a pervy way, just sleeps.)
Brother burns his sister's body.
Brother goes into city. Starves to death in a train station.
The end!
That's *it*. That's all there is to the movie. Not one single bright spot. *Nothing* but death and suffering. I was happy to finally finish watching the darned thing just so I could delete it off my harddrive!
And so I killed an evening, as well as got some things off my to-do list. Bedtime!
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 11:23 pm (UTC)Grave of the Fireflies
Date: 2003-09-11 11:39 pm (UTC)I watched _Grave of the Fireflies_ once, and once was all I could take and it is seared into my memory. It's not a happy movie and it's not supposed to be. It's a movie about the horrors of war and the suffering of children. The hero wants more than anything to protect his sister, and he *almost* does, but he simply lacks the maturity to understand how. That is his tragedy and it becomes hers.
I'd disagree that there are *no* "bright spot[s]", but those that are there simply enhance the overall darkness of the storyline. Seita loves Setsuko. He gives her a bath and they laugh together. They ooh and ah at fireflies in a mosquito net (but note how their associations and images are different). The strength of their sibling bond is both a strength and weakness. It keeps them alive (barely), but when one of them is gone, the other has no will to live.
One of the most striking images for me was the very end--the city rebuilds as the children watch from the hill, it becomes the present day, and the kids are still there, still watching and unchanged.
_Grave of the Fireflies_ was actually based on a semi-autobiographical novel--"semi", because the author actually lived to write his story. He was in the Kobe bombings as a child, and his sister died. He's felt guilty all his life because she died of malnutrition. Seita is his somewhat more successful alter-ego--unsuccessful because the sister still dies, but more successful because Seita loves and nurtures her as well as he can under the circumstances.
Believe it or not, but this movie actually showed in Japanese theatres as a double feature...with _My Neighbor Totoro_! I can see the parallels, but I can't imagine a more traumatic contrast.
Re: Grave of the Fireflies
Date: 2003-09-12 12:53 pm (UTC)I guess I agree that those were somewhat bright spots, but in my opinion, they weren't enough. I'm fine with sad movies and not-happy endings, but for me this movie was just too much: It just beat me over the head with 'war is bad, people dying is sad, war is bad, war is bad, war is bad'. I knew that coming into this movie, I really didn't need it shoved in my face for the two hours or so that the movie ran.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 11:14 am (UTC)Ah, 'Grave of the Fireflies'. To me, this is indeed one of the best animes ever, but for someone who's not really into anime, or who wants to start, I wouldn't immediately rec this anime, or if I did, I would spend a *long* time warning the person I recced it to.
I *loved* that anime, as difficult as it was to watch, and as sad as it was. I love it because it told a tale, a very very sad tale, but a beautiful tale nonetheless, to me I mean. It wasn't meant to be funny or easy to watch, and boy did they succeed, but after all, it deals with war and death, and I loved the way it was told, through two children's eyes. I also found beautiful how Seita and Setsuko were reunited after all, even if it's in death *tearing eyes*
Anyway, for someone who would want to start watching animes, I think I would have recced stuff like 'My neighbor Totoro', 'Princess Mononoke', 'Spirited Away' (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) or 'Porco Rosso'.
Anime may seem really weird for someone who's not used to it, but there're definitely easier movies to try the first times than 'Grave of the Fireflies' *g*
no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 12:48 pm (UTC)I don't mind depressing movies or movies that don't have happy endings, but for me this movie was just too over the top. Yes, war is bad. Yes, people died. Yes, things were sad. But man, *nothing* good happened to these two kids, and while that may have been true, what kind of a movie is it? Not one for me, I guess. I'm glad you (and others) have liked it though! Makes sense that not everyone likes the same movies.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 01:25 am (UTC)You bet, it would become boring quite fast if we did, right? lol