Lots of Movies Lately

Well, my computer is finally back in my possession and running smoothly.  Spending a month-and-a-half laptop-less was fantastic for my crochet time (but that's another post, I suppose), and since I tend to either watch movies or listen to audio books while I work, I got a lot of movies watched.  Here's the list, and my thoughts on them.

 
When in Rome and Simply Irresistible
I actually watched When in Rome before my laptop went on the fritz, but I had been planning to post about it after watching Simply Irresistable, since I'd heard they were essentially the same movie.  Now, that's not really entirely true, but they do share a "supernatural elements in the city" plot point.  In the first, the main character steals coins from a fountain in Rome, making the people who originally threw them (including Jon Heder and Danny Devito) fall in love with her, and in the second, a girl is given a crab by some strange guy, and suddenly her feelings are turning up in the food she makes, and a tycoon falls for her because of this.  Both were pretty cute and fluffy, but I just want to point out that When in Rome's cover is absolutely terrible.  For one, the main character never actually looks like that, hairwise, and for another, that whole finger-biting thing is just plain stupid.  And Simply Irresistible's last act felt a little over-the-top, IMO.


Zack and Miri Make a Porno
I had been watching this one in bits and pieces before losing my laptop.  In the end, it was okay, but I can't really remember why I put it in my queue in the first place.


The Ice Harvest
This one I had put in my queue purely for John Cusack, plus the trailer made it look funnier than it actually was.  I liked the dock scene, though.  Again, I had watched bits and pieces before finally settling myself down to actually watch the whole thing, and it takes forever to get going.  I didn't even want to watch the audio commentary, which really tells you something.  Seriously, I love audio commentaries, and I'll watch them for almost any movie, even ones I was only 'meh' about.


Adaptation
I'd been meaning to watch this one for a while, but had just never gotten around to putting it in my queue or catching it on TV.  I didn't particularly like it, but I had watched Being John Malkovich, which I liked better but still not that much, so it seemed like the thing to do.


The Triplets of Belleville
This is another one I'd been meaning to watch for years.  When it first came out, I was in college aand I was all over the trailer and that song, but I don't think it came out in theaters where I was at the time (the midwest), or if it did and I just couldn't get to wherever it was playing due to lack of transportation (I didn't know very many people with a car, and it wouldn't be until the next year that my boyfriend would get to bring his car to school).  But I finally got to see it now, years later, and let me say, the actual movie is like ten times crazier than I thought.  I mean, going into this, I knew the basic plot (grandma tries to rescue her kidnapped grandson from the French mafia with the help of her dog and the titular triplets) and that it was nearly dialogueless, but I had no idea just how strange it would all turn out to be.  Not just the way the story twists and turns, but the animation itself, though technically beautiful, is very, very odd at nearly every opportunity.  Seriously, watch this movie for yourself, and then you'll know.


Death at a Funeral
My husband wanted to see this one when it was in theaters, though that didn't happen.  And when I found out that it was a remake of a 2007 British film directed by Frank Oz (who also directed Little Shop of Horrors, you may recall), I had to check out the original.  Which was pretty good, and not as inaccessible as some make it seem.  Anyway, since the US version had just come out, I put it at the top of my queue and it came without too much delay.  While the plot was close enough to the original, it didn't have quite the same charm.  Interestingly, the person who "dies" is played by the same person in both versions, Peter Dinklage.

Anime:  I continued on with Soul Eater and finally got volume one of Digi Charat Nyo! to show up.  I also had both discs of Sgt. Frog, part one of season two, which I had to hold onto annoyingly because I wanted to take screenshots.  I might have watched more movies if I hadn't had two of my three discs in stasis.

Thanks to the CPT movies, I finally succumbed to Netflix, and I used this computer-free time to finally see movies that were in my Blockbuster queue for ages but were always "Very Long Wait" or even "Unavailable."


Party Girl
This one is a library-related movie, though just barely.  And it was so boring, I probably wouldn't have watched the whole thing if it hadn't been in my queue for years.  I did like that the main character's apparent salvation was library school, but I just didn't feel like it was worth waiting for.


Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
A documentary about They Might Be Giants, which was very informative for me, a relatively recent fan.  Also very entertaining, though that's probably not unexpected.


Show Business - The Road to Broadway
This one chronicles the 2003-2004 Broadway season, with a focus on Wicked, Avenue Q, Taboo, and Caroline, or Change.  Since Wicked and Avenue Q are two musicals I'm quite fond of (their cast albums, anyway), I definitely enjoyed this one.  It also had an audio commentary, which surprised me, this being a documentary and all.


Foul Play
A sort-of mystery featuring Gilbert and Sullivan and Barry Manilow?  Kind of forgettable overall (I zoned out about halfway through), but it was fun while I was watching it.


Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
I'd seen this when it first debuted online, (and I probably could have gotten it from Blockbuster, but hadn't thought of it yet) but I wanted to see the musical commentary, which did not disappoint.  Here's an AMV that someone made of one of the songs, which comes late in the show:



RiffTrax: Little Shop of Horrors
This is the original movie, not the movie based on the musical.  I'm a minor fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I guess it was kind of inevitable that I would check this out.  I also ended up seeing MST3K's take on Space Mutiny a number of times after getting it out from the library for my husband (I like watching things once, maybe twice for a commentary, but he likes to watch stuff over and over and over and over @_@).

I also saw a number of episodes of MXC thanks to my husband, and rewatched Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc., not to mention various random episodes of TV shows here and there.

Answers from The Zany Bishojo Evalana

Max Jordan asks "We know about your like of My Little Pony, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake and Sushi Pack. What are some other cartoons you like?"
 I do tend to watch more shows than I blog about, cartoon or not.  I'm really not a regular viewer of any particular series right now, but I do always try to catch Adventure Time, Phineas and Ferb, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, and WordGirl when I see they're on.  There was a time (i.e. two years ago) when I was kinda into Wow Wow Wubzy, and I almost made a blog post about it, but my interest in it passed.  The main thing I wanted to point out about it was that Walden's voice actor also did Rocko of Rocko's Modern Life, back in the day.  And about a year ago I found out that he was the voice of Bobbi Fabulous in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together."
Generally, when I get into a cartoon, it's due to good voice acting, good writing, or both.  I don't care as much about what it looks like, though that must play a little bit of a part, because that's why I've had such a love-hate relationship with the 2003 SSC cartoon, which not only had neither good writing nor good voice acting, but had animation that looked enough off from the official art to make me feel ripped off (even though I was only renting the DVDs).  Granted, as the series went on, all three factors managed to improve, but still.  What I'm really trying to say is that for me, good writing can make up for lackluster voice work and vice versa.  But the shows that keep me coming generally have both.

Fanon Meme

I saw this floating around and thought I'd give it a shot:
Give me a character from any of my fandoms, and I will give you ten things from my own personal canon about them.
Granted, I may not have exactly ten things, but I'll definitely list everything I have.  And feel free to ask about characters from fandoms I may not have explicitly mentioned around here, and if I have anything, I'll mention it.

Random Summer Memory

As I am still essentially laptop-less (which of course happens when Gaia's summer event is essentially the Oregon Trail. *sigh*), posts will continue to be a little light.  But I was reading X-Entertainment's review of Kool-Aid Bursts and suddenly remembered how my mom used to put Kool-Aid juice boxes in the freezer and then cut off the top of box to make a kind of Kool-Aid italian ice for me and my sisters.  It had a interesting texture, from what I recall (and I can only actually remember the Bluedini flavor, come to think of it), that would kind of flake.  It wasn't just a big ice cube, is what I'm trying to say. Part of me wants to try and recreate it.  But I am thwarted by the fact that Kool-Aid no longer makes juice boxes, although they do make Capri-Sun-like pouches.  Maybe that would work?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Birthday Meme

Here's one to commemorate my half-birthday.

Type your birthday date (minus the year) in the Wikipedia search engine. List 5 events that occurred on that day. List 5 births, 5 deaths, 5 holidays and events.


On February 19th:


Five Events:

197 – Roman Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
1847 – The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party.
1945 – World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima – about 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.
2002 – NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.


Five Births:
1473 – Nicolaus Copernicus, mathematician and astronomer
1855 – Nishinoumi Kajirō I, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 16th Yokozuna
1924 – Lee Marvin, American actor
1940 – Smokey Robinson, American singer
1962 – John Laroche, American orchid poacher


Five Deaths:
1670 – King Frederick III of Denmark
1837 – Thomas Burgess, English author, philosopher, Bishop of Saint David's and Bishop of Salisbury
1927 – Robert Fuchs, Austrian composer
1988 – André Frédéric Cournand, French-born physician, Nobel laureate
2008 – Lydia Shum, Hong Kong comedian and actress



Five Holidays and Events:
Chaoflux (Discordianism)
Christian Feast Day: Barbatus of Benevento
Christian Feast Day: Conrad of Piacenza
Christian Feast Day: February 19 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Flag Day, the birthday of the President Saparmurat Niyazov, established in 1997 (Turkmenistan)

The Hub Updates

Just the other day, The Hub updated its teaser site.  It's still pretty much a teaser, but now it has some actual content, in the form of summaries of upcoming series, plus a preview video.  Here are some relevant screenshots:

The video has clips from more shows than are listed on the site, since to go along with the channel's 10/10/10 opening date, there are ten show synopsizes posted.  (Click the images below to read the whole thing, or just go to the official site.)

 Not sure how I feel about Pound Puppies joining the ranks of Updated 80's Property, but I'll give the show a shot.

Update:  A new image and slightly different synopsis for My Little Pony has been put up:

Those eyes are most definitely bigger, but props for the first look at Princess Celestia in cartoon form.

The Zany Bishojo Answers You 2010

Sad to say, folks, but the lack of posts around here are not due to a shortage of ideas, but computer issues. Suffice to say, I can't use my laptop and won't be able to for the foreseeable future. So in the meantime, I'm opening up this post to questions, as I seem to do every year. Anything you want to know my thoughts on, feel free to ask in the comments.