Blather, rinse, repeat

I went to see Karate Kung Fu Kid with Sije Lady Chrysanthemum and Lao Shir today. I always get nervous when I really want to like something, and I don't want to be disappointed. I often dislike when Hollywood takes something that's dear to me and turns it into The Next Big Thing. I feel protective of what I love. However, I always say that I will see Jackie Chan in anything, so off we went to see it.

A little background info on me first: Jackie Chan is a hero of mine. I've got all his oldest movies, read his book, and have been inspired and entertained by him for years. I know there are a lot of new martial arts action stars these days, and some of them are pretty great. But, Jackie's always been it for me.*

I also have fond memories of the first Karate Kid movie. I'm a child of the 80's, who among us doesn't have those memories? Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san, wax on, wax off – these were a part of our culture growing up. So a few years ago, when I first started hearing rumors of a remake, I was like, "Why? Why does everything need to be remade?" When I found out that Jackie Chan was aboard, that made the prospect sound better.

Now, to the movie itself.

It was gorgeous. Vast, deep, and brave. China looked beautiful (and it made me feel very sad that I never got to take that trip to China. Maybe someday.) The Kung Fu was actually amazing. Every kid in the movie was brilliant; you could tell that they had all trained insanely for this. I admit, I wasn't ready to like Jaden Smith, because it's very easy to think "spoiled Hollywood brat" and write him off. But he was actually quite fantastic. He trained very hard, and it showed in every move. But that's just the Kung Fu aspects of the movie.

The acting was a revelation, too. The entire cast was great, and each performance was totally brave. I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it, but rather the emotional. The kids who were supposed to be brutal carried it off beautifully. They, and their teacher, were so much darker and more menacing than the bad guys in the original Karate Kid. It must be hard for young people to have to act like such awful people--to be willing to be villains, and have people cheer their downfall--but they didn't shy away from it. It takes a brave kid to play the brutalized victim, too. Smith wasn't afraid to do it, and I applaud that.

But, oh my god, Jackie Chan. You know, like I've said, I've seen almost everything he's ever done, and no one can deny that he's been fearless on camera – physically. All those broken bones, all those falls, his insane stunts. He's always been able to laugh at himself. Yes, "fearless" is the word.

In this movie, he was brave. Jackie had no big stunts, nothing that looked daring or breathtaking, nothing that made you have to hide your eyes and hope that he lived. He acted. Superbly. Anyone who's seen Karate Kid knows that the original Mr. Miyagi was a widower, and one night a year he'd get wasted drunk and mourn his wife, right? So, no spoilers there? Jackie Chan as Mr. Han went there, but they took it about ten steps farther. The story was so much darker, and so was his performance: this quiet, stern teacher flipping out, destroying the car with a sledgehammer, crying hysterically on the steering wheel. Jackie Chan. Rumble In The Bronx. Rush Hour. Shanghai Noon. Drunken Master. Fearless Hyena. And, okay, yeah, I saw him in "Who Am I," "The Prisoner," "Gorgeous," "Supercop" and some of his other dramatic roles. But he never went here before and it was so surprising.

But it was really the parts with all the training that were my favorites. Obviously, "wax on, wax off" has become "jacket on, hang it up," which is good, because you can't copy what's already been done. And the part where they went to, as Lao Shir called it, "Fantasyland for Kung Fu," was beautiful. The Kung Fu looked so fluid and powerful. I loved the thing with the bamboo staffs and the ropes. :)

My training brother Snarklit asked Sifu the other day if "that stupid crane kick thing from the original" was in this one. Sifu was like, "Well... not really. Kind of." They obviously had to have a similar moment to the first one. In this, it was the Snake form. Xiao Dre starts doing Snake form, and it would have been a little silly given the circumstances, but Jackie Chan lampshaded it beautifully with a perfect "Are you kidding me?!" look. And besides, the crane kick was lame. Snake form is awesome. :D

Each of us walked out of the theater dying to train. Chrysanthemum and I just can't wait to get to Kung Fu class tomorrow night. Focus! Empty your mind. Do it again and again!

(Of course it's a different story when you're on your hundredth kick and the movie was yesterday and you're thinking, "GAH, I'M TOO TIRED! Movies are fiction! ENOUGH!" Haha.)

But we came back to my house, talked a lot, and then after they left I went for my run. Every day I'm thankful that I can run a mile, and if I ever had to, heavens forbid, run for my life, I could. And more thankful that if I ever had to fight someone for my life, I'd probably be able to do that, too. That is all because of Kung Fu, and so THANK YOU, JACKIE CHAN.

And thank you to everyone who has ever trained me and helped me get better along the way, too.

I'd say, everyone should see The Karate Kung Fu Kid, whether you're a martial artist or not, because it's simply a great movie. But if you are a martial artist, you'll know what I'm talking about.










*My Dad was a martial artist, a boxer, and when I was a teeny wee lass, he would always teach me the basics of defense. I always wanted to do it, but as a child was very timid and afraid. In part, it was the character of Tifa Lockhart that made me get up and finally do it. I'd always wanted to, but wanting to and having the impetus to get the hell out there and try it are two different things. FFVII made me take the plunge. And because Jackie Chan has always been my hero, the choice of style was clear from the beginning. See icon: What Would Jackie Do? Kung Fu, obviously. :D So when Advent Children came out and it was clear that Tifa Lockhart also did Kung Fu, how gratified was I? Very. :D

Tonight I watched Wolfman which I probably would have skipped if Benicio hadn't been in it. Honestly it was like a two hour version of Ozzy's video for Bark At The Moon. I don't necessarily say that in a bad way, because that's one of my alltime favorite videos.

It was basically atmosphere/scenery porn. If you like the whole "foggy London, moonlit pines, ominous manors, eerie taverns and horse-drawn carriages" thing then it's an easy sell. I happen to always have been into that particular brand of goth lore so I'm not ashamed to say that that aspect worked for me.

I could not, a single time, resist the urge to tack the word "Clarice" onto the end of Anthony Hopkins's lines, and "MissssterrrrrAnnnnnderson" to the end of Hugo Weaving's. (By the way, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Benicio Del Toro? Estrogen Brigade WIN.) Two lines of dialogue went something like, "Silver bullets, do you hunt monsters?" "Sometimes the monster hunts you," and all I could think (and admittedly say aloud, to my own amusement,) was, "In Soviet Russia, MONSTER HUNTS YOU." And of course any scene with a German-accented authority figure giving a presentation on local legend makes me say, "Vee had better make DAMN SURE zet he is not vollowing in his grandfazzer's FOOTSCHTOPPS."

It was typical Wolfman fare and seemed very loyal to the original IIRC, but was actually quite mediocre when you consider the talent that was on board. It was a fun B-Movie complete with angry, torch-and-pitchfork wielding mobs but I think it could have been something actually spectacular with better direction.

Also, it had magic pants. Unless, you know, not everything transformed.

"He vould haff an enormous Schwanzstucker WOOF."









P.S. I used this particular icon 'cause Link is a wolfman in Twilight Princess. If you think about it. Umm.

SPOILERS

Okay, first I have to say that I might in part have enjoyed this movie because I saw it with my Mom, my best friend, and another good friend, on a really fun night out. Delicious pizza, smuggling ice cream and snacks in huge bags into the movie theater, getting excited over the trailers, and generally having a fun time. Those things all really kind of add onto the movie experience for me.

Onward to this actual pretentious "review" of mine.

I loved Iron Man with the kind of fannish ridiculousness I reserve only for superfly, fun movies with a main character so engaging as to be blazingly hot and push all my fangirl buttons. Iron Man 1 was such damn good fun, hot and snarky, and Tony Stark definitely hit nearly every single fangirl button I own: snarky, tragic, vulnerable, flawed, but essentially brave with a huge character arc. Like some of my most beloved characters, he went from being one thing, to an entirely another while keeping his/her core characterization (see: Cloud Strife, Jack Sparrow, Han Solo, Spike, and countless literary examples – I'd be here all night.)

For me, usually the second installment in a series of three ruins something for me. See, where they messed up with Jack Sparrow in the second POTC was that by the end of the first one, Jack had become A Good Man. He was someone who did the right thing, the brave thing, even at personal cost. And then in two, he was back to being a selfish jerk, almost a villain. I love a good villain, but damn it, don't undo what you already established!

And at first, I felt like that's what they were doing to Tony Stark in this one. There were a great many scenes in the first movie which specified that Stark had found his path: He knew in his heart that he had to help people in need. He found his calling. He could still be a total snark-bitch, and he'd be this hero who hadn't lost his teeth.

My favorite scene in the whole movie was when Obadiah Stane steals the arc reactor straight on up out of him. The lit major in me was hyper-aware of every single scene that featured the arc reactor, because of the oooobbbbvious symbolism. (My second favorite scene was always when Stane asks if he can see the arc reactor and Tony Stark shows it to him:


It's little things that make a story for me.)

Anyway, so in the first one, Stane finally steals it by taking it from him (ripping his heart out) and then tells him, "It's beautiful. It's your legacy."

So that was what the English major in me took away from Iron Man: That the hero had a good heart, one which he made himself IN A CAVE! WITH SCRAPS! during a crisis, under great duress, which duh, is when most hearts are made.

So then we come to Iron Man 2, and immediately Tony Stark is douching it up, acting like a total jerkass and glorying in his "hero" role and being all "OH THE WONDER OF ME!" And for the first few minutes, I felt like, Oh man, they just undid all the symbolism they worked so hard to build in the first! Another Jack Sparrow. Sigh.

BUT. I also love it when a story tempts me to dislike the hero, but something redeems him and I just can't. Tony Stark is easy to redeem because even when he's lost his way, he's not technically a bad person, doing evil things. He's just a little prick (which, I was so satisfied when another character said the exact same thing.) And he's so lost, you kind of have to still love him anyway.

No one could pull this off like RDJ. I felt like so much of of this mirrored his own life, and he's always been so talented, and everyone always wanted him to succeed, so that even at his lowest when people were shaking their heads and going, "Tch! Loser!" you still just felt so bad for him.

Then I started reading even deeper into the story, and here's where the MASSIVE SPOILERS come in, seriously, please don't read it if you haven't seen the movie!

( SPOILERS )
Once I thought of it like that, I got it. Oh wow, his character didn't regress – it makes perfect sense.

What did NOT make perfect sense? Tony Stark building a GODDAMN ( SPOILER ) Yes, that's right! What took ( SPOILER ) over twenty years, Tony Stark did in a few hours IN A CAVE! WITH SCRAPS! in his basement. And even more WTF, what ( SPOILER ) could not accomplish, Tony Stark did, just by the sheer force of his hotness. ( SPOILER ) Screw the periodic table right in the facehole! What law of conservation of mass and energy? HOTMANIUM.

But then, yeah, I know. Superhero movie. It's cool. I can get on with it. But the physics geek in me was like, SERIOUSLY?

What I missed from the first one? The sense of danger. See, in all of these you know that Tony Stark can't die, because he's got to be in all three movies. But in part one, I felt the tension, and I felt like a terrible thing could happen to the hero at any time. For some reason, in this one, I wasn't getting the feeling of danger as much. Even when Tony Stark is going out of control, even when he's obviously ( SPOILER ) only once, briefly, did I get the sense of "OH NO, THE HERO!" And it was when ( SPOILER )

Oh, wait, I tell a lie: Also when Vanko first attacks him; that scene they show in all the trailers with the arc whip thingies. God those were cool. That fight was awesome and, not gonna lie, I flipped my crap when the Iron Man suit transformed out of that little box, OMG. I wasn't the only one in the theater going, "yeah, YEAH, YEAH!" in that scene, either. That whole fight was mad hot. And the whole car scene with Pepper, Jon Favreau etc. in the car just before that got some laughs.

Stuff I loved: Tony Stark's one-liners. RDJ delivers them with such bastard timing, you just have to love him for it.

Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. What an unrepentant weasel! From smug, to violent, to unctuous, thoroughly unlikable in every way. What a fantastic job he did being hateful and repugnant, and I have to give props.

Mickey Rourke was also pretty fabulous, looking totally vile and acting really creepy.

I also kind of loved Pepper Potts in this one, until the very end, when it seems that she ( SPOILER ) Effing seriously? But I thought Gweneth Paltrow was pretty awesome; her timing was great, and in every bickering scene, they have such great chemistry and it seems very natural, and funny. I enjoyed her.

I guess I also liked Don Cheadle. I liked Terrence Howard better by a mile (he's gorgeous with his soulful eyes,) but I mean, it's Don Cheadle.

I loved the exploding stuff. I liked the fights between the mobile dolls and the gundams Vanko's robot suits and Iron Man + War Machine.

I also loved that the sense of fun was still there.

All in all, it wasn't bad for a part two. I was afraid I was going to be wildly disappointed, but I wasn't. I guess it kind of sucks that for most part-twos, you have to say, "Well I expect this to suck quite badly, and really actually mess up the first one. It didn't, so much, so it was good!" If you lower your expectations and never expect the second movie to be as good as the first, then the second movie can be quite good if you let it. I guess you could say it was satisfying in a way. First installments are always the best. They are fresh, new, and there's something about how they're made IN A CAVE! WITH SCRAPS! with a smaller budget and following, that makes them somehow pure.

Still, I think I might re-watch Iron Man 1 when I have the time. :D

I also might go and see this one again, to catch the things that I missed and to re-live the cool scenes.

I wonder if the third one is going to full-on rock? I hope so.

I decided to email the resident editor who chose my chapter for this month's workshop, and thank her. She's got a few books out and one of them looks really awesome, like something I'd just love, so I ordered it. Anyway, I told her how much she had helped me, and inspired me to get better. She wrote back and said that she had no doubt that if I kept plugging away, I'd get this baby published. She said she was pleased to have found such a good story.

INSERT MADLY HAPPY EXCLAMATION HERE.

Today I spent the day—yes, most of the day—trying to edit one lousy chapter to upload to the workshop. It took me a few hours. The rest of my time get 'et up by effing stupidass Tripod and their lame goddamn useless page editor. Three hours to make measly line edits using their stupid uploader.

And then I did my homework, too.

Last week I realized that I had never seen The Pillow Book in its entirety. I'd only ever seen bits and pieces of it back when I had movie channels, years ago. But never had I seen the whole thing. I mean, wtf, my two favorite things? The Pillow Book and Ewan McGregor naked? So I ordered it, and last night I finally sat down and watched it from beginning to end.

W.

T.

F.

No seriously, I mean, Ewan McGregor's penis aside, WTF even was this movie? Vivian Wu was awful, her voice sounded so stilted and forced. The sound blew, I had to ride the volume. And the translations were, I don't even know, like a bad fansub sometimes.

And then, ( spoiler ) But, it was just trippy and some parts of it were pointless and filmed in a really odd way. I hated the "this is also happening" insets, especially when the insets were depicting, like, the same exact goddamn thing that was on the regular screen except from a different view, or whatever.

At least 1/3 of the movie was comprised of Ewan McGregor's penis. I feel like I know it from every single angle. I seriously know what it looks like upside down, from behind, everything. Which is awesome, I'm glad I know what it looks like from every conceivable viewpoint, I won't deny that. I just feel like the movie had less to do with Sei Shonagon and the original Pillow Book than it had to do with Ewan McGregor's penis, Vivian Wu narrating in a dead voice, and some french chick wailing about banging an angel or something. (My French is a little rusty.)

Well. Speaking of hot guys in movies:



Just, YES, DO WANT and all of that. I'm sure bummed that T-Ho got ousted as Rhodes because I thought he was perfect for it. And I really, really, really don't want this movie to suck. I want to love it at least a little bit. At least a fraction of the amount I loved the first one. I know that's so rare with sequels, but I'm going to try really hard to love it.

By the way, I hate when people say "Sequelitis." Inflammation of the sequel? Really, your sequel is swollen? I also hate when people tag "-itis" onto the end of any word when they don't really mean -itis. Huge pet peeve of mine.

Do-dee-doo.

Last night I showed up at Kung Fu only to find the doors of the kwon locked. THANKS FOR TELLING ME, PEOPLE. I called the Dragon and left a message saying, "Don't know if you're aware—probably not—but school is closed." Then, Military Man showed up, and he's got a set of keys. (I keep neglecting to get mine. :/ ) I called the Dragon back and left another message saying, "Well, school is officially closed but we are opening the kwon. So, hope to see you."

We started warming up, and Dragon showed up all dressed up and looking fly, totally not having planned on coming to work out. He explained that he was at his brother's house, bringing a chocolate bunny to his beloved nephew. Then he proceeded to give Military Man and me an awesome private lesson in staff form. (I know staff pretty well, but every Spring I need to tweak it and fix the little problems that creep in over the winter.)

It didn't occur to me till later that he totally did not have to come down and help us. He knew school was closed (Sifu had called him – Dragon thought Sifu had called all of us,) and he was doing something else, but he totally came by anyway to teach us. That was pretty swell.

So, we had a great lesson outside in the parking lot.

And now I am done babbling about staffs of the Kung Fu nature and of the Ewan McGregor nature. I have tons of emails to answer, and still more homework, and some critiques to do. But instead, I'm going to: Do my homework in school tomorrow, answer emails tomorrow after school, and do critiques on my next day off, which is Friday. And I'm going to eat a Skinny Cow ice cream (which I shouldn't, because I've packed on a few pounds and a half,) and play a video game. Then watch an anime, have a glass of wine and, I don't know, go to bed or something.

Early day tomorrow.

Oh, also: Ewan McGregor's penis.

So, long-time Kenshin fangirl here. Like, nine years long time, and recently I started watching the old anime again. The first time I watched it, it was because an old pal of mine, "Lisa S", had sent me some VHS copies of the Shadow of the Wolf arc. This was right before 9/11. After I came home from a family trip a few weeks later, I ordered some DVRs on ebay. They were crappy, and you could only watch them on the computer, but the subtitles were brilliant and completely undiluted by TV networks. ( Ridiculous otaku Old purists tend to love fansubs. This purist is no exception.) Kenshin is hard to translate, and even the best translations often miss the mark because of his specific dialogue quirk and how it signifies what's going on in his head: Helpful wanderer, or murder-hungry assassin? The first distinction is in the grammar the character uses, and the honorifics. A rudimentary understanding of Japanese honorifics and sentence structure is essential for watching this series, and I actually learned a lot of language, and a lot of Japanese history from it.

I speak like a fangirl, too, I know. Go on with your "OMG, it's just a cartoon, stop acting like it's some mature work of art!" But it is a mature work of art, and I learned more from it than I did from, say, reading the epic Shogun by James Clavell, which, by the way, WOW. Was an awesome read. I'm not defending myself here—I am a fanpoodle for the things I love and I fully own that—I'm defending the art. Animation and valid storytelling are not mutually exclusive. When are people going to get that? HOW MANY MORE INNOCENTS HAVE TO DIE What does it take for people to understand that not all cartoons are for kids?

Tangentially, it always irked the hell out of me that the American translation of the titles was "Samurai X." Kenshin was never a samurai and the use of a word that Americans would understand was just a cheap marketing ploy. Samurai were born into samurai families; it's an inherited title. Kenshin was a slave who learned ken-do and became an assassin for the revolution. The title "ronin" doesn't even apply, since that implies a masterless samurai. Which is why the writer invented the word "Rurouni" or, you know, for the geeks purists, "ruro ni" or "Ruro-ken" – "wandering sword."

So I loved the hell out of the series, which ping-ponged from goofy, super-deformed physical humor and light-hearted jokes, to torment and murder, without missing a stroke. The anime was pretty, pastel and soft, even during the most violent scenes.


^Kenshin and Sanosuke, after whom, yeah, yeah, I named my dog. I told you, I've loved this series for a longass time.

It managed to be shonen (for boys,) shojo (for girls) and jo-sei (for adult women.) Really, there aren't a lot of animated features that can pull that off.

The original movie was a totally different animal. Samurai X – Trust and Betrayal" told Kenshin's backstory. The murder of the slaves he was traveling with, his rescue by kendoka Hiko Seijuro, his life as a merciless assassin during the bakumatsu—revolution--and the story of how he ended up falling in love with the woman, Tomoe, who was assigned to spy on, and eventually betray him. She fell in love with him as well, they married and were happy, and then he accidentally killed her during a fight with the man who came to kill him. It was super-violent, disturbing, and a really awesome tragedy. Me, I love an awesome tragedy.



However, it was a HUGE departure from the more light-hearted, much more pastel and fast-paced series. The series really followed Kenshin's redemption and ultimate happiness. At the end of Trust and Betrayal, he promises to finish his time as an assassin, finish out the revolution, and then never kill again. Occasionally during the series, he starts to revert back to his murderous ways (evident mostly by a change in speech, but for those not subtle enough to get that, also by a cliché change in eye-color and the tvtropes' slipknot ponytail. I know that when I get pissed off, my hair magically falls out of my scrunchy. (Rurouni Kenshin list of tropes.)

But the idea of it was his redemption, the fact that he managed to shut away the hitokiri battousai, find friendship, community, help his companions, find peace, and eventually love again.

Soooo when I watched Samurai X – Reflection last night, I felt completely cheated. I know, I know, I'm a few years late on this. I seriously put off watching this because I heard a lot about it; that it wasn't a satisfying end to the series and such. Dude, until recently though, I had no idea that Kenshin dies horribly, useless and in agony from leprosy, after leaving Kaoru and enduring a life of misery.

Okay, so first, cool things: The animation in the movie was gorgeous, there's no denying that. It went far beyond the pretty pastels of the series and gave the characters the look they deserved all along. I'm a sucker for beautiful animation. They animated the jinchuu arc—where Tomoe's brother Enishi comes for revenge on Kenshin—which never made it into the series (the manga writers couldn't keep up with the show writers. This is eventually what got the series canceled.) They also re-animated some of my favorite scenes.

But they re-animated them wrong. They just went back and retrofitted, and, not to get all Annie Wilkes on you all here, but they cheated like dirty birdies. I watched the anime, I know how things went down. Man, what the hell? I don't even mind that he dies young. Like I said, tragedy and all of that; I eat that stuff right up. What I didn't like was how they went back and changed key scenes in order to make the movie what it was. They took away all of Kenshin's and Kaoru's joy. Sure, I mean yeah, awesome, we finally get to see them kiss,



which was very satisfying, and then there was a carefully but vividly implied nookie scene. Gorgeous animation for the most part, but marred by the fact that Kaoru is, you know, asking Kenshin if he can share his awful wasting disease with her through sex, so that she can die, too. And all throughout his "no, no you mustn't" and her "onegai Kenshin, please give me your disfiguring and lethal disease" and the (admittedly very eloquently implied) bonking scene, a distracting green firefly keeps going around on the screen like "Hey guys, are you doing it? Hey because you know, he's got that gross skin disease and all. So you guys remember me from the scene right before the Kyoto arc? Yeah same firefly! What are the chances!"

So they go back and re-animate the series scenes to make it so that all the times we thought that Kenshin had won his battle and was happy, and loved, and at peace, in reality he is really so miserable that all of his smiles are forced and he loathes himself. Then, he knocks Kaoru up and she has a totally irrelevant child named Kenji who tries to follow his father's path and trains with Hiko to absolutely no logical or meaningful end. Kenshin is so miserable and full of self-hate that he cries frequently and finally leaves Kaoru and Kenji to go out into the world to help other suffering people (screw his family,) and ends up getting leprosy or MRSA or Geostigma or some-such thing like that.

Actually, parts of this were so similar to Advent Children that I'm tempted to think Advent Children copied some of this. At one point Kenshin uses a line that Cloud says to Tifa, in exactly the same angsty tone that Kenshin says it to Kaoru. "Blah blah blah I'm not worthy to protect anyone, I just want to be forgiven..." Also, at one point, sick and dying Kenshin watches Sanosuke walk away and reaches his hand out to him in exactly the same way that sick and dying Cloud reaches out to Zack as he walks away. Hmm.

OMG, Sano. For some reason he is living in China and utterly unrecognizable. Kenshin is in China too (WUT?) and he meets Sano there, but doesn't recognize him, and in fact doesn't seem to have any memory of, well, pretty much anything. Sano gets the honor of caring for Kenshin as he begins his gruesome, protracted death scene, not Kaoru.



He tells him he's going to go get help and leaves him in his hut. He comes back a few scenes later with absolutely nothing. WTH? Then he goes back out again and randomly kills a tiger to give its liver to Kenshin. Umm, wow, thanks, Sano. Really.

Their scenes together are more romantic than most of the Kenshin/Kaoru scenes.





Seriously? Thought they were finally going to kiss and that UST was going to become RST.

Honestly the worst part of the whole thing is Sano watching him struggle to even speak, and remembering what he was like the first time they met, when Kenshin wiped the floor with his ass, and anyone's ass who got in his way. Man, why did you writers decide to take that away? Damn you lot.

Then Sano puts Kenshin on a ship to Japan and doesn't go along with him for completely unspecified reasons, never mind that he could die alone at sea with no memory of who he is or why he's on this moving wooden structure atop a big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in. Kenshin somehow finds his way home to Kaoru and she meets him at the Sakura festival where he falls down and dies while she yammers to him about how she wants to watch the cherry blossoms fall with him next year. His awesome scar (the symbol of his betrayal) disappears the moment he dies, Kaoru gets all "finally you're at peace" and cries hysterically AND THAT IS THE END, WTMFF.

I seriously do not mind when writers kill off the hero. Truly I don't. I love a decent tragedy, and I am not all for the cheerful ending with everyone happyassing around like everything is peachy. I don't require that at all; in fact sometimes that's a copout. I even really like a good esoteric happy ending. But this? Downer ending through and through. Not only does the hero die, but he dies alone. In the rain. without having ever known peace or joy, community, friendship or love. Which, hey fine, go ahead and be that way. But don't go retrofitting to undo the beloved series! Even the frigging manga, the canon, doesn't end that way. Jesus.

I mentioned earlier that my worst part was Sano mourning what has become of Kenshin, but now that I think of it, the worst part is the interview with Mayo Suzukaze—Kenshin's voice--at the end.

(Hey, apparently they animated Kenshin to look exactly like her in this motion picture, and she's dyed her hair red to resemble him:
For those who might not know, it's typical in Japan to use a female actress to voice a male character if he's supposed to be gentle, small or effeminate. Kenshin was supposed to fluctuate between murderously cold and gentle, and was also supposed to be small and pretty.)

Anyway, she's doing this interview and she seems unhappy to see the series end, especially on such a downer. Her eyes fill up and she insists that Kenshin always lives on in her, and that if anyone ever asks her to be his voice again, even random people who just come up to her in the street, she'll become him again. O_o And she asks that the audience please watch the movie in with the original Japanese cast, and YES, THANK YOU. I'm a ridiculous otaku huge fan of watching foreign films in the original language, with subtitles.

So in brief: beautifully animated movie which gives the characters the look they deserve, great soundtrack, and wonderful use of mono no aware which is one of my favorite Japanese sensibilities (Trust and Betrayal did a better job of it, though.) But complete retraction of canon in order to turn the ending nihilistic was just an unmitigated bummer. I'm not necessarily sorry that I finally watched it, but I'm glad I watched it before I finished re-watching the series, because I'm just now up to my favorite arc, so I get some of the old joy and fun out of it. (And blood and guts and violence. Yeah, I love that stuff.)

If you're a collector, see it. But be prepared to want to punch your TV in the throat.

So, a Sunday, work is done for the week, Kung Fu is closed tomorrow, and I'm off Tuesday. That leaves me plenty of time to write, query, clean the house, watch Dexter, water my plants and other such fun things that I actually really enjoy.

Last night My Wonderful Glassworker Friend came over. She brought the movie K-PAX which I had never seen before. It was funny how we each saw that movie from a different angle. She commented, “One thing I don't understand was how he knew all of that unheard-of and totally unpublished space information, and where the other woman went.” And my angle was, “Well, because he was from K-PAX.” I said that it all depended on if you looked at the movie as a heart-warming “Wise Crazy People” movie (in which the crazy person helps the psychiatrist more than the other way around and is maybe not so crazy after all, see: Don Juan De Marco,) or a mystery, or sci-fi. I saw it as sci-fi. If it was going for Wise Crazy People, Don Juan De Marco blew it out of the damn water. But, I love Kevin Spacey.

I also ate raw cookie dough, which I'd been so looking forward to for weeks, but when I finally started nomming it, it wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped. Because it was Tollhouse and not Pillsbury. For future reference, Tollhouse is kind of nasty raw. It has a tang that I don't like. Also, it made my heart go all skippity in an entirely unpleasant way for the rest of the night.

And then we watched another episode of Dexter. Yay.

Last night I had yet more of those “Dad is still here” dreams, interrupted twice by Sano licking himself—or rather, his sweater—so much that it was soaked through by 4 AM. Gah. And each time I'd go back to sleep I'd go back to that same dream. I actually hate those dreams because when I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember. As I think I've mentioned.

Today at work I found out that the really nice dude who works the competition brand in the store is leaving for CA next week. Auwe! That sucks. Who's going to keep me company?

Le sigh. I'm going to send a query to the really cool agent tonight after 9:10 PM. Don't ask. I'm neurotic. I know this will eventually work. I know it's a longass road.

Oh! My brother called today and he had this great idea. He wants us to write a story together. His idea is a one-on-one conversation with Death. Death changes forms throughout and answers questions, and accusations that s/he is a coward, or someone to be feared and hated. He thinks it's a really cool idea (and I agree) and that we can both shake off a lot of garbage if we has it out with Death fictionally. I'd love to work with my brother! We'd be like the Morgans, except without the murder and stuff. I guess.

Tonight I'll go to Mom's where we'll watch the Golden Globes and eat walnuts and drink tea. Should be fun.

This icon because I'm in one of the mirror-hating phases.

Tomorrow I want to clean out that fish tank and set it up. I want angels, gouramis and shiny silver catfish.

I know I titled another movie review with that header before, but it makes me giggle so I'm using it again. Otherwise I would have titled this “Sherlock Holmes, Steampunk, Random Kung Fu and That Character Who's Not Bad For A Girl.”

So that's actually the first thing I want to get out of the way, this thing I'm going to call the “For A Girl” element. It's that unspoken quantification that seems to follow around these spunky female characters that are tacked on to the plot of Guy Movies. Now by the way, I happen to love Guy Movies. I love these Bromance stories, Dude-bonding, and plots that involve two men going on adventures together. I like that kind of stuff! I fail to understand why society deems it necessary to tack on a romantic female character where one is not necessary to the plot, and then give her all of these supposedly admirable qualities so that she fits in with the Dudes. She's always different from the other female characters, if there are any. The rest of the women in the movie are “typical” - wives, fiances, moms, or extras. Then you get the Tacked On Female and she can fire a gun, take care of herself, figure stuff out. All in all she's pretty smart and tough. For A Girl. And they always seem to show her outwitting and besting some Bad Guy – not the MAIN bad guy of course, but some lesser bad guy. You know, the kind that girls can handle. And I always feel like the writers and director are going, “Look, we put a girl in here for you! And check this out, she can even do things! Don't you gals just love that? Aren't you, like, so appeased? We're throwing you a bone, here!”

Okay maybe I'm just really sensitive to this, being a girl myself who fights with boys (and I'm evenly matched with some, better than one or two, and would get killed by the rest, none of which has anything to do with the fact that I have a vagina.) But I sense this in a lot of damn movies! Like the POTC movies, for instance, of which, by the way, I am a huge fan. But Elizabeth really rubbed me the wrong way because she was written in that For A Girl way, too.

I'm trying to think of some female characters who weren't tacked on and who weren't given that quantification just in order for the movie to seem hip and forward thinking. I'm coming up with Agent Scully and Clarice Starling. Hermione Granger never seemed tacked on, either. Hmm. And Tifa Lockhart, believe it or not. (Even in the movie, she's a better fighter than Cloud, even though at the end it is his battle with the cells inside him that he has to face – it is his battle to win and not hers, but she still overall kicks much more ass than he does.)

ANYway, Sherlock Holmes. I mean, it was tons of fun, I loved the setting, what-with the whole foggy London, cobbled street, gaslight, copper tubs, dawn of industry and, whoop whoop, steam-power feel. I love RDJ and his quirky face, thick wavy hair and ridiculously hot build. The Kung Fu scene was completely unnecessary to: the plot, his character, or the overall setting, and I went into the movie thinking that they would have found a way to make it logically essential, but they did NOT. There was no logic to it at all, it was entirely gratuitous. Now hey, I mean this is me, and gratuitous, sweaty, bare-chested Kung Fu for no other reason than “just 'cause we could” doesn't give me any problems, but gosh, it was just so damn obvious. I'm glad RDJ knows Kung Fu. I'm glad he's in such great shape and can kick so much ass after all that he's been through. I'm always happy to see him get half-nakie. But this is Sherlock Holmes and I think they forgot about that for a while.

I used to find Jude Law wildly appealing, and he's still got that attractive face and all, but he kinda doesn't do it for me anymore. I liked his Watson though, and I thought he was right for it. One thing that kept bugging me was how they used him to explain all of the jokes. For instance, there's this part where he shoots his gun and Holmes tells him, “Save your bullets, Watson.” Then Holmes gets startled and empties his gun at a wall. I thought that was pretty funny and I totally laughed at the goofiness. And then they had Watson say, “What was that about saving bullets?” Yes, WE GOT IT, THANKS. We don't need that nudge to the ribs with the writer going, “GEDDIT? Cute, huh?” He did that in a few instances and I just think that's part of dumbing down movies so that “regular folk” can get it. Well guess what, Hollywood, we're not all goddamn imbeciles.

Moving on, I was also tempted to say, “I liked this movie back when it was called 'Young Sherlock Holmes.'” If you've seen that old 80's flick, you've seen quite a bit of this one, too. Except that in that one, the romance was part of the actual plot as opposed to tacked on, was dripping with syrup, and ended in tragedy. In this one, they just updated the relationship to “snarky” and updated the female to “Tough For A Girl.” But it had the same feel and the same theme, which was science and technology vs. superstition and arcane power, and I'm sorry if this is any kind of spoiler—you're kind of silly if it is—but in both movies, the “arcane power” actually is veiled science and technology and so science wins the day. This is a theme that is close to my frontal lobe and therefore treasured so I'm not complaining about it. It's just that I felt as if I'd seen this movie already, except this was minus the “Young” part.

And of course there can really be no spoilers in Sherlock Holmes, right? I mean, even if you haven't read the series (which I haven't; I think I read one as a child,) even if you've just been, you know, alive in the last hundred or so years, you already know who the bad guy is and how he does it. And that is also not a complaint, I mean if they'd all of a sudden busted out some random, unheard of Big Bad I would be like, “What the hell!”

Oh, the explosion in the slaughterhouse was a really cool scene. Actually the whole thing was filmed really beautifully. When did visuals become a main character? I guess back in the 90's. But I'm a sucker for a well-filmed scene, so.

Don't get me wrong, I actually did enjoy the film and I would totally see it again and even buy it on DVD. I do enjoy movies, you know? I can get irked by things and still appreciate the better points, and this movie's better point was fun, and it was actually lots of fun.

That's what I thought of Sherlock Holmes but honestly my mind kept going back to this trailer I saw before it came on, for a movie called “Inception” where, apparently some dude has the power to change reality, including time and space, with his mind. SERIOUSLY, DOUCHEBAGS? Come on, not now, please! Not when I'm trying to sell that same story! PLEASE! Man, now I have to go and look it up and see if it's the exact same goddamn thing I just spent years writing. Dicks.

Goddamn, Haku had three seizures today, 28 days from when he had the last one. The first was at 7:30 this morning. The second was at 7:30 this evening and the third was at 10:30. That's a damn lot. Usually he'll have three but over three days, not all in one night. I really need something around the house to stop these from kindling because they're really clusters, I think.

Strangely, my wonderful friend Kim bought me a Kindle and gave it to me last night. It's like a big iPod for books. I already downloaded The Brain That Changes Itself which was recommended by my neurology teacher. I wonder if there will be something in there that would give me some tips about Haku.

Also we went out last night and saw The Men Who Stare At Goats. It was brilliant and hilarious. Ewan McGregor was of course fantastic, and this was really one of his better movies. I felt like Kim and I were the only ones in the audience cracking up every time he had to talk about the Jedi way. But he delivered every line to perfection and totally dead-pan. George Clooney just gets more and more appealing to me. Weirdly enough, he could have been John Cleese in this film; he reminded me so much of him.

I definitely want to see it again and I hope I can take my Mom to see it. I told her about that today, suggesting that maybe we could go this week. It's like Haku heard us talking about leaving him alone for the first time since his first seizure and decided to have three of them. O_o (Obviously the poor thing can't decide; I mean they are so exhausting for him. And admittedly for me because once that wakes you up in the morning, there's no getting back to sleep.)

Yesterday work sucked and I didn't sell a lot. Today however, for some reason I was on fire. Hmm, I wonder.

Welp, I'm pretty much todmude so I'm going to STFU because I'll bet you anything I'm not making a great deal of sense right now. I'm gonna chill out in bed reading Pet Shop and pretending that there's some bishonen animal demi-god who can actually help.

So I saw three movies this weekend and I need to comment on all of them, duh!

First, Big Talking Robots And Bimbo In Short Shorts or, “Transformers 2.” ( Spoiler ) In between those two events is lots of explosions, a few lame jokes--most of which are built around stereotypes--and some phenomenally bad acting by some chick in tight clothes, the geek wish-fulfillment actor Shia LeBeouf, and a couple of doofy character actors. The voice acting was pretty bad too. The only cool part was that big machine that sucked everything in. In short, and I totally say this as someone who's been known to wet her pants over huge transforming mecha: "yawn," and I'm glad I saw this one for free.

Last night I watched The Secret Life Of Bees. I didn't know what it was going to be about, only that Paul Bettany was in it and I was feeling kind of cheap and uninspired and I wanted to see something with a hot guy in it. ( Spoiler ) I typically don't like movies that have purposefully emotionally charged montages to indie songs, but the acting really saved the day in this movie. I actually quite liked it. Although I did have a few issues with it, however. I don't know dude, it just seems like Hollywood has such a weird relationship with race. I guess because Hollywood really is white. It seems like they try hard to do right by people of all different colors and races, but at the end of the day still somehow manage to marginalize them anyway. "Black people sure are great when they are helping white people, aren't they?" That's nice, but I've rarely seen a movie that deals with race in any way other than "this is their effect on white people." No matter how good the intentions, it still comes across as being from white people's point of view. Obviously I am not black so maybe I can't even make that judgment call, and like I said, it was a really sweet movie with a really sweet, and I believe heartfelt, message. Queen Latifah is pretty great and Alicia Keys, OMG I had no idea that was her, she is so gorge. The acting was really great all around but she really stood out. But I don't know dude, it just seems like every movie with people of any color other than white in it has to have some kind of message about how those people are in relation to white people.

And the movie that really confronted this, brilliantly I think, was Tropic Thunder.

But I'm getting off the topic. Paul Bettany, dude I know he was so bad and nasty and evil and abusive, but goddamn he is so hot and I felt really bad while I was watching how nasty and terrible he was and thinking, "oh yeah, I'd hit that." One other thing the movie did was ask you to consider the feelings of this terrible and abusive bastard. And then, like it or not, you kind of do consider them. Which feels a little unnatural and taboo. I mean, he beat on his wife and little daughter. People who do this are like demons and you're rarely asked to see them as anything other than that. But this movie went there.

Then today I went to the movies and saw Your Mom's A Horcrux a.k.a. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. But before I saw it, I saw some trailers! For example, I saw the trailer for the new Twatlight movie, something about a ridiculously white and sparkly Cedric Diggory freaking out on some Mary Sue because she got a paper cut, and then some black dude with red eyes threatens her and then Remus Lupin turns into a wolf and they have a battle or something, I don't know, Stephanie Meyers is a toolbox.

I also saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes, which looks at once both retarded and really awesome. Umm, why is Sherlock Holmes doing Wing Chun Kung Fu, and I'm pretty sure a little CLF long-arm? Surely not because Robert Downy Jr. can do Wing Chun Kung Fu. Surely not. There was some tough-love bromance and a girl without much clothes on just to make sure that no one got any funny ideas about Holmes and Watson, although I like to think that RDJ is probably partial to "funny ideas" and probably wouldn't mind. Either way, I'll go and see it in the movie theater.

Anyway, onto Harry Potter: ( Spoiler ). Well, first I should say that this bitch is really long. Like as in, I finished my ice cream before anything really started to happen, and then I also had to get up and pee before the movie was over. Also my ass was a little numb. That kind of long.

Umm, I don't know, it was Harry Potter. The kids have come a long way. I know they're not Oscar material but to be fair, neither are most of the people who've won Oscars. I like them though. They really fell into the characters, even if Hermione's huffiness and tears seem a little forced, and Ron's goofiness a little overdone, and Harry's earnestness like really EARNEST, LIKE THIS, IN ALL CAPS. I thought the kid who played Draco did a great job with this one. What is he like about 6'7" by now or something? Anyway, weirdly enough he was the most believable of all the kids in this one. The girl who played Lavender was way too over the top, even though she was supposed to be. I still didn't like her. Alan Rickman, umm, you could ask him to play a pet rock or a piece of fungus and you'd walk out of the theater going, "I've never enjoyed watching a pet rock or a piece of fungus so much." Homeboy knows how to work the long black coat.

Another one I really liked was Luna Lovegood. I think she does a smashing job; her timing is right on, and she's just so likable too.

One of the best performances in the whole movie was also one of the briefest. Frank Dillane, who played 16 year old Tom Riddle, had like ten lines in the whole thing but he was the most convincing one in the film. He was so oily and so creepy and really believable. I immediately and self-indulgently thought he's make the perfect young Sahrek, you know, when I'm the next JKR and they're making my books into movies.

I began to miss the older movies, and the old characters. There just wasn't enough time to get everyone in there, and I get that, but I missed them. They used to round out the whole experience and give the HP world a sense of being populated. Seamus Finnegan, Hagrid, the rest of the Weasleys, all the other teachers. They just got crowded out of this film. The plot ran a little bit like "this happens and that happens and then this" and sometimes it seemed like one thing did totally not lead to the other.

In the book, the "half blood prince" and his potions book were a lot more meaningful. Hence, you know, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince. However in the movie it was like, "Oh look, here's a book which has all the answers, wonder who it belongs to, oh here's a good spell, yikes that's kind of mean. Okay let's hide this book and give it one line of significance towards the end. Look! Hormonal teenagers!"

As I said to my friend skitty_kitty who, weirdly enough saw the movie THE SAME TIME I SAW IT and did her own review: The thing about these films is that they are made for people who've read the books. When you try to show them to people who've never even cracked the book they are invariably like, "WTMFF? How the hell did this come to be?" Then you sit there going, "Err, well, in the book she went into much more detail and, yeah..."

There were, however, incredible and jaw-dropping special effects. (Bellatrix LeStrange had one of the best entrances I've ever seen!) Visually, the movie is a total experience. I think people should really see this on the big screen. It made me wonder how movies are going to possibly top themselves ten, fifteen, thirty years down the road. God, what will they look like then? I can't even imagine it! And oh my god, the money they must have spent to realize this vision!

When in fact, acting itself is free. I think people lose sight of that.

OTOH, when I'm the next JKR* and they're making my books into movies, will my movies get a huge big budget and lots of neato special effects? Will my characters have their own theme song that will creep up on you during the specially-designed opening logo? Will people watch my characters grow and evolve through nine movies, and will some chick with too much time on her hands one weekend sit there and pick it apart on livejournal?

One can only hope. ^_^

Anyway, seeing the trailer for Twatlight before seeing Harry Potter--however flawed the HP movie might have been--really makes you realize the difference between some mediocre hack who purposely appeals to the most base and underdeveloped emotions of teens (which teens have every right to have; I had them too!) and someone like JK Rowling, who, in fact, can write a novel.

All of this makes me sincerely, sincerely, sincerely hope that I am no SMeyers and that I can, you know, write a novel.

And those were my three movies!




*GOOD HEAVENS allow me one more edit. Anyone who knows me can hear by inflection how completely tongue-in-cheek I am being when I call myself "the next JKR." It's a joke, yo. Because seriously.

Let me preface this by saying that I wouldn't have gone out to watch this movie if Ewan McGregor hadn't been in it, and therefore my entire review will be colored by the fact that Ewan McGregor was in it. If I may expand on that idea a little so you know what you're getting into: I love Ewan McGregor. I would pay to watch him clean the toilet. I wish science would clone him. I would go through his garbage. I would lick his used cutlery. I SAT THROUGH "THE ISLAND."

I should also say, I read both Dan Brown novels and I know it's trendy to be like "Oh, he sucks as a novelist" but I'm not so sure. Yeah, he's not writing great literature or anything like that, but he can pace a novel like nobody's bidness and that's just something I can't do. I mean, it's not like it's Twilight or anything for godsakes. So, even if the novels were silly, plot-holey, far-fetched etc. I have to give him props because each time I read his books I found myself whipping through them. Sometimes I don't want to be challenged. Sometimes I just want to be entertained.

The movie The Da Vinci Code wasn't really inspiring. I thought it was kinda dull, but I did like how incendiary both the novel and the movie were. Anything that pisses off the church kinda gets my vote. ;D But I'm a bitch like that. One thing that bugged me about The Da Vinci Code was that here you have this code-breaker (the chick, Sophie I think her name was) who was basically raised by this secret society and who was supposed to be all smart and whatnot, but it takes the heroic Robert Langdon to tell her that the Grail was Mary Magdelaine. Hello, if even I knew that by the time I got out of high school, don't you think that this chick who was mad-genius and the granddaughter of the head of the society for the protection of the grail might have had a clue?

But! I digress. Angels and Demons, right. Well, after I had finished the book I made a huge deal out of writing about it and I had mentally cast Joaquin Phoenix as Carlo Ventresca, the Camerlengo. (THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THAT ENTRY.) And it seemed to me that even Dan Brown had cast Joaquin Phoenix as the camerlengo, because a few of the lines were eerily close to lines int he original script for "Quills." So I loved loved loved the camerlengo and I had always hoped for Joaquin to do a fake Italian accent and play him.

But instead, Ewan McGregor not bothering with a fake accent (thank god!) and the camerlengo was no longer Carlo Ventresca but rather, umm, Patrick McKenna. YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT.

Actually that wasn't the only thing that didn't match up with the book. TONS of stuff was different, (especially two very important familial relations, wtf!) but I don't feel like listing them all out. I was keen to see how they were going to make the fifth ambigram, but they didn't bother. That bugged me a little. I realize that they can't fit every little detail into the movie, but they left out a lot of things from the book that I felt were kind of redeeming to the overall plot. Oh well.

EWAN MCGREGOR.

I can't even tell you how perfect he was for this role. He plays eveyr single role with that glint in his eye. A Jedi, a snarky reporter bastard, a junkie, a clone, a hapless kidnapper, a bisexual rock star, a bisexual writer, a priest... it doesn't matter which role he takes; he has mischief in his veins and his eyes sparkle and he is really really really shiny. I would watch a whole movie about Carlo Ventresca's Patrick McKenna's entire story arc because Ewan could carry that entire character, seriously. He would make it worth it.

Here's a weird thing, and I need to cut this because it is a spoiler and even though I wasn't going to get into spoilers, this is so "me" that I'm going to do it anyway. ( Cut for spoilers. )

GOD I have issues, and they really do come out in the movies.

Well, that's how I felt about Angels and Demons, which tells you nothing of the story (fairly simplistic and predictable even if you haven't read the book,) the dialog (sort of flat, but to the point,) the acting in general (Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks,) the cinematography (pretty,) and the soundtrack (FRIGGING COOL.) Really all it says is "I really like Ewan McGregor" but hey, that's pretty much why I went to see the damned thing.

Don't I just love that "type?" The Trickster?

Right now I'm making some tea and I'm going to put some liver-cleaning stuff, because I sat there and ate a pint of Unconditional Chocolate during the movie (EWAN MCGREGOR WAS BETTER THAN MY ICE CREAM) and now I have a pint of frigging Pomegranate Chocolate Chip and I had just better eat them both in one day this way my body can just deal with it and flush it all out. Umm, yes, that is my logic. It's not so bad to eat two pints of ice cream in one day as long as I don't do it all the time. I'm young and healthy, I can deal with it. I won't get fat or feel sick. I take really good care of myself. And I'm going to marry a Ewan clone.

We tell ourselves such monstrous lies! ^_^


ETA for TRIVIA which means nothing to anyone but me: My character Leander from my silly novels has always been based on Ewan McGregor. ^_^ In fact Shallow Grave + this photoshoot:



pretty much invented Leander.

I care, okay! ^_^