Rich and Strange Aeons

Lion King (the first one, and for the first time). Honest Trailers kind of ruined the songs for me. Not as good as Frozen.

Captain Marvel -- pretty fun.

Your Name -- good, but man, this is the *happy* ending?

Merchants of Doubt -- interesting and depressing.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold -- cute and silly.

Eleven hour flights are really long. And the cabin was dark, making book reading hard. United's entertainment system turned out to have things I wanted to re-watch: Frozen, Clueless, and Moana. Plus a couple episodes of Game of Thrones (actually all of season 7, I think, but I saw most of two eps.)

I'd never re-watched Frozen or Moana, or seen Clueless for many years; all held up well. (Clueless is on the very very short list of movies I bought to own.)

Frozen: there's been debate over Hans's face-heel turn, and why he didn't kill Elsa earlier if he was being a villain who'd planned to kill her later. One idea is that he didn't know if killing her would end the winter; another is that he wanted to keep her handy until he recovered Anna. Personally I thought that his plan was plausibly to pretend to be a good guy, as much as possible. Yeah, he didn't love Anna, but doing all the 'right' things is pretty practical. Including keeping the queen alive. Only when Anna presented him with a challenge he couldn't live up to -- a magical kiss of true love -- did he get derailed.

Why not kill *Anna*? Worry about later investigation, perhaps. Better if she freezes than someone later ask why she looks smothered. It's not a great plan, but at that point I'm not sure there were any great plans possible.


Clueless: still awesomely fun, and cute. I like how Cher is ditzy but kind of lazily (and socially) smart, not emptyheaded; her Valley girl debates are surprisingly deep in essence, especially the immigration one. There's popular girl sniping but not deathly so, on either side. Her dad's a rich attack lawyer but "we divorce wives, not children" is a nice sentiment. I hadn't noticed before (thanks Tropes) that Cher, Dionne, and Elton are all singer first names, the first two providing cover for Elton which comes from Emma.

I was greatly amused to realize that the climax is basically a college student with his own apartment French kissing his 16 year old (ex-)stepsister. With her father's implicit approval (there's a very telling grin earlier). And I would bet against their waiting all that long for sex, so post-movie statutory rape (in California, with 18 age of consent), too. I don't see anything wrong, but dang.

Less amused to notice nothing really happens to Elton for assaulting Cher and then leaving her stranded.

There were some subtle production touches. Tropes mentioned musical ones I wouldn't get, but when Tai meets Travis "skater pothead" Birkenstock, they're both wearing plaids.

The ending credits were way shorter than those of the other two.


Moana: nothing much to say, just fun. Both it and Frozen started with mouth music, and had alternate versions of their songs playing during the credits.


On the TV front: I've followed GoT secondhand, so get plot gist but miss details. I was surprised to learn that people actually did talk about the Frey death somewhat: soldiers going up to keep the peace, Jaime going "whoever killed House Frey has no love for us".

I also sampled Gilmore Girls A Year In the Life, but it seemed to be some post-series sequel, and I stopped after a bit.

As mentioned, I saw it last Sunday. It was pretty fun. I actually saw it 1.4 times: the projector died after an hour, but we got into another showing almost right after.

Previews:
Late night
Fast and furious, no color, testosterone poisoning
Dark Phoenix
Missing link
Spider man far from home
Shazam
Frozen ii, no words
Avengers endgame. One scene of green trees. Alternate versions?

The color notes are because I look out for the whole teal and orange thing. Though I forgot partway through Marvel. It started out that way, was greener on Earth, and then I stopped paying attention to that.

I usually see one movie a year that's not while visiting my friend for Christmas, guess I got it out of the way early this year. (Last year was Black Panther, a showing in my office building.)

( Shipping, so vague spoilers )

As usual when visiting S, I get exposed to movies.

* Moonlight. Emotionally powerful, but kind of unpleasant for me. Would probably not watch again.

* Castle in the Sky: I've seen this at least three times, 2007, 2014, and now. I keep liking the movie, but checking my notes, I keep forgetting what I observe about it, like how its a visual melange of motifs from other Ghibli movies, or the fact that the dubbed cast includes Rogue and Dawson Leery. (That it includes Luke Skywalker I do remember.) Has a good dub... I'm not 100% sure if I've actually watched it in Japanese, though I probably did in 2007.

* The Tale of Princess Kaguya: I've wanted to see this for a while, and finally did! Beautiful and sad. Different visual style from the usual Ghibli. Decent dub.

Castle notes over the years:

2007:
It's Gort! Who attacks Gort? Oh, secret heirs... visual melange of
Cagliostro and Nausicaa in one scene.
Behind the Microphone: James van der Beek (Dawson) as Pazu. Mark Hamill
(Luke) as Muska. Anna Paquin as Lucita. Now to compare Laputa and
X-Men directly and see if her voice changes.

2014:
movie: Castle in the Sky (re) big hit. scary for M.
I noted it's kind of a theme or motif mashup of Nausicaa, Cagliostro,
and Spirited Away. The princess and evil relative from Cagliostro, the
nature and God Monsters of Nausicaa, the engineer guy from Spirited Away...
her pigtails get shot off, making Sheeta look more like the standard heroine
not just Mark Hamill. Anna Paquin as Sheeta(!), James Van Der Beek as
Pazu, Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya as Louis?). I don't known Cloris
Leachman as Dola, but others do, and long career

2017:
M got excited and squirmy a lot.
engineer in Castle reminds me of stoker in Spirited.
Ponzu dad's drawing looked like long haired Mushka.
crystal scene like spirits in Mononoke
pink skull pirates.
pink pants
I wondered if they wear the same clothes, she actually changes a lot. four outfits.
flooded city like Cagliostro
inscription like cuneiform
squirrel things like Nausicaa
Egyptian art style on Laputa
700 years gap
robot like god warrior.
sodom, Indra's arrow.
progress, can't stay hidden
shoots her pigtails off

I. Headphones
I keep buying cheap earbuds and they keep breaking mysteriously. I'm not sure this is avoidable, even if you spend lots of money. Well, there is some alleged "Rugged" model out there. I figure as long as they're cheap enough it's okay, but I searched anyway, and found good reviews for the Panasonic Ergo-fit TPM 125. Also some others. Not necessarily for ruggedness, but for sounding good and fitting well at a $10 price point. And Panasonic has a good reputation with me, I've liked all few of their products I've owned (a walkman tape player, a VCR) compared to alternatives. And Consumer Reports rated them very highly for reliability a while back.

OTOH I also like instant gratification, and when I popped into a Dollar Tree the other day, I found earbuds there (despite what the two employees I asked thought) for, yes, a dollar. I bought three different ones.

One is technically over ear -- not like a muff, just hooks that go over your fleshy bit. Sounds okay but not that comfortable, and pops out when I try to wear my actual noise muffs over them. The second one sounded okay but smelled of plastic so strongly that I got paranoid about cheap Chinese products and put it in my spare room to air out. The third one I opened too and left to air as well.

Then I decided to go by Panasonic. Never seen them in a store so away! to Amazon! Next day wasn't that much more compared to basic shipping, so I indulged, and they came tonight. Sound fine and fit well, yes; nothing's going on for me to judge their noise isolation properties. And they don't smell toxic.

Keep in mind I'm no connoisseur, so feel free to be skeptical about my ideas about "sounds fine."

II. Bikes and pedestrians
So when I'm a pedestrian, I hate it when a bike zips by me at speed. "What if I'd stepped to the side for some reason?" I wonder. So when I sidewalk -- which I do a lot, because cars are scary -- I try to pass peds considerately, with enough space that I'd miss them even after a big sudden step sideways. If I can't I slow down a lot; if they look particularly fragile or unpredictable (senior, child, dog) I slow down even more, to pushing with my feet if need be.

OTOH I admit that from the other side, sometimes you can model the ped so that they seem predictable and you don't have to be that chary. Today I had an example: I was taking my safety-cut (I'm not sure it's a short-cut) across Harvard's extended campus, and a woman was crossing from left to right. Totally unaware of me, but given the paths and visibility, it totally made sense that I could zip by her on the left with little risk.

III. The Martian
I read the book a while back and liked it. I've heard the movie is good and sort of thought I should see it. When I realized it had left the Somerville theater (which is nice and walkable) I realized it was starting to fade and I should go see it Now. Happily I got two friends to come with me to the Alewife/Apple Cinmea. It was pretty good. They cut out at least two crises from the book, and may have jazzed up the final intercept a bit, I'm not sure. I'm still skeptical that Martian storms are at all like that. But good. I cried. I was disappointed they cut Mark's boobies emoticon/leet after they told him he was live.

As for the theater, I miss Somerville. Or Kendall. We had to buy tickets from the concession stand, waiting for her to finish getting food for other people. While there's a certain labor efficiency, it's also inefficient for people not planning to buy stuff. And she refused to give me a cup of water. I don't know if they'd have let me bring in a backpack with a water bottle inside. Oddly, there seemed to be lots of other employees standing around doing nothing.

I'm fairly sure that Kendall gave me a cup of water when I asked, and I don't remember grievances against it or Somerville, so probably either got cups or brought my backpack in.

The three of us stood in the lobby talking about it for a bit; right after the other two split off a woman asked me what we'd just seen. I guess we sounded animated and excited, I'm skeptical she was randomly hitting on me.

I just saw this tonight, spontaneously with fanw, as if we're friends living near each other. Shocking! The movie... I'm not going to try to describe in any detail. It's humorous, I'd say a blend of surrealism, silliness, and genre-bending; it reminds me of my very dim memories of "O Brother Where Art Thou". I rather doubt it'll become one of the great memories of my life in its own right, but it was entertaining.

It soooo does not pass the Bechdel test.
It has somewhat more gore and violence then I expected from a humorous movie about a quaint old hotel.
Fanw's German is rusty but she had some comments on the German in the movie, which I didn't catch. Lutz is probably fake but she asked about Lodz, and playing Eurorails with G&S taught me that Lodz is in Poland, FWIW, and that suggests to me me that the imaginary Ruritania of the movie could well be a fake Poland. Before, I would have placed it more to the SE, in the Balkans or Bulgaria. Not that it matters. At all.
If you stay for the ending credits, as I was raised to do, then they're not too long, you get to see lots of exotic German or Slavic names, and there's really catchy Eastern European music which I sort of danced to in the back of the theatre. Near the end there's even an animated dancing guy in traditional Slavic costume. I did not try to imitate his headstands.

This was in the Davis Square Somerville "we sell beer and wine" Theatre which I hadn't been to before, so afterwards fanw showed me the Museum of Bad Art in the basement. I just realized I have no memory of how we got there, or out, as I simply did my usual following-a-friend thing with minimal attention to the route. Like old times. Anyway, the museum has various paintings, allegedly meant to be serious paintings by adults, and snarky commentary in the identifying placards. It, too, was amusing. I guess you have to have a movie ticket to get to it. Or, checking the inevitable website, go to one of the other locations...

Wow, that makes five movies I've seen this year, not counting the Christmas vacation ones (seeing DVDs with the family I'm staying with is traditional) and it's only mid-April. Three of them in theatres! My recent average has been under one a year.

The queen was able to read her mail. I assume these pseudo-Scots use scribes to actually write, since it would have been a much different movie had a bear been able to carve words into the turf. Not that we see any hints of any other written matter anywhere in the movie.

Still, it was emotionally effective, and I enjoyed watching it. Something in the air, I was tearing up for some reason near the end, and I didn't even cook with onions today!

Most of my Linux media programs choked on the DVD, only totem came through, and it needed some patience and thwacking to get to the Bonus Shorts. Yes, it turns out you can thwack a piece of software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dykes_to_Watch_Out_For#The_Bechdel_test

Or am I forgetting something? I guess Uhura and her nameless Orion roommate talked very briefly about Uhura's work, so maybe a partial pass.

There's a blog but it went on hiatus before the movie came out.

Just saw it. Liked it. Noted lots of differences from the original. Think I prefer the original, especially as a fairy tale -- this was more like "Stardust as an action movie plus extra luv, and much less bittersweet." The ending was a nice alternate, though I don't think was even possible in the original -- candletravel didn't work that way.

"It's Julio Scoundrel and the training montage!"

So, good movie, but Yvaine as the immortal regent of Stormhold will be the 'real' Stardust for me.

Just watched Laputa. Pretty good. Thoughts:

It's Gort!
Who attacks places that can make Gort? (This is later answered.)
It looks like Cagliostro! And now Nausicaa!
Gee, even when his heroines look different, they end up looking alike.
Oh no!
Oh, okay.

Then I checked the "Behind the Microphone" special, which taught me that:
the English dubs still make me cringe
the English dubs sound like they had a different translator than the subtitles
James van der Beek aka Dawson of the eponymous Creek is Pazu and doesn't sound too bad, unlike who ever did Lucita.
Mark Hamill aka Luke Skywalker plays Muska

IMDB tells me Hamill's done a lot of TV and voice actor work. (Including in Nausicaa.) I guess his performance as Luke didn't launch him onto a great acting career.
IMDB also tell me Lucita was Anna Paquin. Wait, I like Anna Paquin! She's Rogue! Now I need to listen to Laputa and X-Men together and see if I'm right that dubbing is meant to sound horrible.