This is ridiculous!
Jul. 2nd, 2007 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedComing down with performance anxiety in the case of school papers was bad enough, why am I worrying about the literary value of livejournal posts?! Note to self, knock it off.
I'm in New Jersey right now trying to iron things out with Rutgers University. If all goes well, I'll finish up my degree here in the Fall. (Latest Status of Degree: After this semester I'll be two credits short. Two natural science credits. Arrrrrrggggggh!)
Books read: Nine. More on this later.
Movies seen: Two (Daywatch, Ratatouille) so far with another (Transformers) coming up on Wednesday. Looking forward to finally meeting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asprosdrakos in person!
Daywatch: The second movie in an epic fantasy trilogy and I wonder whether not having seen Nightwatch actually made this movie better. The basic plot is that there are two kinds of supernatural beings living in our world, one side (the "Dark" ones) is made up of Vampires and Witches and the like while the other side (the "Light" ones) is made up mostly of Psychics, Seers, etc. The two sides were at war many, many years ago, but sometime around the Middle Ages they struck a truce, and have been uneasily at peace ever since.
Under the terms of the truce, Dark ones have to apply for bureaucratic permission to suck blood or whatever. There's a group, called the Night Watch, charged with making sure that no Dark One engages in nefarious activity without a license, and there's another group, the Day Watch, whose job is to make sure the Night Watch doesn't abuse its authority. All this is fairly generic but what really makes the movie, for me, is the fact that it is RUSSIAN movie set in MODERN-DAY MOSCOW and basically a giant METAPHOR for ORGANIZED CRIME.
Seriously, when you see Zavulon's awesome digs on the top floor of this super luxury hotel, you'll understand. Anyway, the budget is amazing -- I think these are the most expensive Russian movies ever made -- and whoever timed the English subtitles had way too much fun...in a good way. ^^; When the head of the Night Watch is calls out the names of the officers who'll be pulled aside for a special investigation, and he suspensefully saves the name of the main character for last, it's nice to see those names appear on screen one by one.
There are a ton of highlights to this movie, including a hilarious lesbian shower scene (when Svetlana and main character Anton Gorodesky, temporarily inhabiting a female body, embrace, they enter METAPHOR SPACE) and a side romance between a hot young vampire and the middle-aged devil-lady whothinks he's hot loves him. Unfortunately the main character, Anton, is kind of a tool -- I don't think he had a single good moment in the entire movie, except maybe at the very end -- and the two characters who compete for his attention (his estranged son and super-powered ward) aren't exactly endearing either. But, well, he's the main character: you identify with him, he's your tool.
I actually saw the books at Borders. (Acclaimed international bestseller! Translated into English and brought to you by Miramax.) Unsurprisingly, they're written in the first person from Anton's point of view. Somewhat surprisingly, they're not very good books -- every other sentence is characters talking Light One, Dark One, Other, Great Other jargon at each other. Maybe Night Watch was better. (I skimmed through Twilight Watch, the third book in the trilogy.)
In conclusion, Daywatch-the-movie is awesome and I totally recommend it.
Ratatouille: I talked to Julie before I saw this and she assured me that it didn't do the "because you are a human, it's all right for you to profit from the hard work of a lowly rat" thing. And boy was she right. ^^; Ratatouille really doesn't do that at all. I thought it was cute and that the characters were endearing and that the rats were well-animated, and I loved the ending, even if it would never work outside of a family movie.
Theater report: the kids all loved the rats and the adults all loved Anton Ego, the food critic. ^^; He was hilarious. His room looked like a coffin from above.
***
And manga! You could do mathematical study of the maximum amount of trauma that can be inflicted on a single character and still not approach the level of angst brought to bear on Fai D. Flowright in the last few chapters. o_O Holy cow. (Does that mean he's CLAMP's favorite character? Note to self, avoid status of CLAMP favorite.)
When all the stuff with Syaoran and "Syaoran" went down I thought it was just some lame thing CLAMP came up with three chapters in advance, but now I wonder. Was it planned all along? Now that we know the "secret" backgrounds of all four main characters, I kind of want to re-read the series from the beginning and see if there are signs that it was planned. Especially I want to see how much knowing the truth about Fai changes things. XD; Who's with me?!
I'm in New Jersey right now trying to iron things out with Rutgers University. If all goes well, I'll finish up my degree here in the Fall. (Latest Status of Degree: After this semester I'll be two credits short. Two natural science credits. Arrrrrrggggggh!)
Books read: Nine. More on this later.
Movies seen: Two (Daywatch, Ratatouille) so far with another (Transformers) coming up on Wednesday. Looking forward to finally meeting
asprosdrakos in person! Daywatch: The second movie in an epic fantasy trilogy and I wonder whether not having seen Nightwatch actually made this movie better. The basic plot is that there are two kinds of supernatural beings living in our world, one side (the "Dark" ones) is made up of Vampires and Witches and the like while the other side (the "Light" ones) is made up mostly of Psychics, Seers, etc. The two sides were at war many, many years ago, but sometime around the Middle Ages they struck a truce, and have been uneasily at peace ever since.
Under the terms of the truce, Dark ones have to apply for bureaucratic permission to suck blood or whatever. There's a group, called the Night Watch, charged with making sure that no Dark One engages in nefarious activity without a license, and there's another group, the Day Watch, whose job is to make sure the Night Watch doesn't abuse its authority. All this is fairly generic but what really makes the movie, for me, is the fact that it is RUSSIAN movie set in MODERN-DAY MOSCOW and basically a giant METAPHOR for ORGANIZED CRIME.
Seriously, when you see Zavulon's awesome digs on the top floor of this super luxury hotel, you'll understand. Anyway, the budget is amazing -- I think these are the most expensive Russian movies ever made -- and whoever timed the English subtitles had way too much fun...in a good way. ^^; When the head of the Night Watch is calls out the names of the officers who'll be pulled aside for a special investigation, and he suspensefully saves the name of the main character for last, it's nice to see those names appear on screen one by one.
There are a ton of highlights to this movie, including a hilarious lesbian shower scene (when Svetlana and main character Anton Gorodesky, temporarily inhabiting a female body, embrace, they enter METAPHOR SPACE) and a side romance between a hot young vampire and the middle-aged devil-lady who
I actually saw the books at Borders. (Acclaimed international bestseller! Translated into English and brought to you by Miramax.) Unsurprisingly, they're written in the first person from Anton's point of view. Somewhat surprisingly, they're not very good books -- every other sentence is characters talking Light One, Dark One, Other, Great Other jargon at each other. Maybe Night Watch was better. (I skimmed through Twilight Watch, the third book in the trilogy.)
In conclusion, Daywatch-the-movie is awesome and I totally recommend it.
Ratatouille: I talked to Julie before I saw this and she assured me that it didn't do the "because you are a human, it's all right for you to profit from the hard work of a lowly rat" thing. And boy was she right. ^^; Ratatouille really doesn't do that at all. I thought it was cute and that the characters were endearing and that the rats were well-animated, and I loved the ending, even if it would never work outside of a family movie.
Theater report: the kids all loved the rats and the adults all loved Anton Ego, the food critic. ^^; He was hilarious. His room looked like a coffin from above.
***
And manga! You could do mathematical study of the maximum amount of trauma that can be inflicted on a single character and still not approach the level of angst brought to bear on Fai D. Flowright in the last few chapters. o_O Holy cow. (Does that mean he's CLAMP's favorite character? Note to self, avoid status of CLAMP favorite.)
When all the stuff with Syaoran and "Syaoran" went down I thought it was just some lame thing CLAMP came up with three chapters in advance, but now I wonder. Was it planned all along? Now that we know the "secret" backgrounds of all four main characters, I kind of want to re-read the series from the beginning and see if there are signs that it was planned. Especially I want to see how much knowing the truth about Fai changes things. XD; Who's with me?!