Christmas Movies
Dec. 29th, 2010 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedI watched two family-friendly dog movies and a Focus on the Family-approved fantasy movie with my cousins over the break.
Hachi: A Dog's Tale
This is a SAD movie. It needs to come with a warning. I'm not kidding. Spoilers hidden, because the makers of this movie go out of their way to trick you into thinking that nothing very bad is going to happen: This is based on the true story of Hachi, a Japanese dog that was born in 1923 and died in 1934. If you do the math on Hachi, you will discover that he spent two years living happily with his master, and NINE years waiting at the train station for his master to return, before finally dying of old age, still waiting. If I had known in advance that this was based on a Japanese folk story, I might have been more prepared for the valorization of futile, though admittedly touching, loyalty.
More on how this movie tricks you: Hachi and the Professor (Richard Gere) live in the kind of idealized town where you can walk to the train station with your dog, the conductor will hold the train while you say goodbye, and the dog can walk home alone, stopping to get treats from the butcher and the hot dog vendor. Everyone knows each other and everyone is kind to each other. The Professor teaches piano and his wife works at a museum and the movie is rated G. I was so totally not prepared for (spoiler again) the second half of this movie to be sad, and for Hachi's death to be the happy ending.
******
Marley and Me
Not as sad as I expected! Perhaps it is just the contrast with Hachi that makes this seem like a light-hearted comedy... but no, it actually is a romcom about a married couple with a dog and (later) some kids. Incidentally, that is a really nice house outside of Philadelphia they are able to afford on a single columnist/reporter's salary. Either this happened while working for the Philadelphia Inquirer was still lucrative, or they were living on easy credit. They even had horses!
The reason I mistakenly thought Marley and Me was going to be a sad movie was... actually I am going to skip this story, it's embarrassing. ^^ I'll just say that I heard it was a movie about a dog that constantly causes huge problems for everyone, but his family love him anyway, unlike SOME people, who just leave you alone to die in the street, etc etc. So based on this description, I was expecting something very different from what the movie turned out to be.
(Which was: a heartwarming movie for urbanites who are too sophisticated to watch heartwarming movies.)
******
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I enjoyed this one a lot. The Narnia movies have been getting better each time, perhaps because the profits from the previous movies are being rolled into the budgets of the next ones, perhaps because the original four Pensieve children are gradually being phased out and replaced by characters (Prince Caspian and Eustace) who are played by better actors. The movie is exciting and moves at a good pace, with no dead spots and lots of cool visuals.
(Racial politics of this series are still horrible, though. British kids have fun and consequence-free adventures in exotic land, peace comes when Italian-looking Prince conquers Middle Eastern-looking people, etc etc. But leaving that aside for the moment.)
I've come around on the overt religiosity of these movies. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I was bothered, not because it is not in books (of course it is), but because it was handled very clumsily, lots of symbolism that is only emotionally affecting if you have been brought up in a certain way. There is nothing inherently moving about a lion sacrifing himself for you sins, you know. Also, the swordfighting in that movie was terrible.
But in this movie, the Christian subtext works well as an integrated theme, since the characters are basically rushing off with no plan, sailing literally towards what they believe to be the edge of the earth, because that is how heroes conduct themselves, and because they have faith that Aslan will protect them - and he does does! Hooray! This movie would not make sense without religion. With religion, it makes perfect sense.
Also, I love Eustace. In the BBC miniseries, (and in the books), he is really annoying. But his eccentricities are so pronounced in this movie that I found I was fond of him - and also he has some of the best lines. He was slimmed down a bit in the movie, as well, which I thought was a good move - keep the focus on his weaknesses of character, including his greed for gold and oranges and sweets, but don't tie it to his girth as if that is a character flaw in itself.
I am guessing that they will skip the two side story books - Magician's Nephew and Horse and His Boy - and go straight to The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. Eustace is set to star in the next movie all on his own. It's almost as if C.S. Lewis, writing in the 1940s, anticipated the difficulties of 21st century serialized epic productions which must cast child actors who will age visibly between movies.
P.S. I saw this in 3D - the kind that is fully integrated into the movie, not the kind that is added as an afterthought. It's funny, but until I got used to the effect, the actors all kind of looked like the computer generated people who'd been in half the trailers, only with really realistic skins added to the 3D models. Then I got used to the glasses and the feeling passed.
Hachi: A Dog's Tale
This is a SAD movie. It needs to come with a warning. I'm not kidding. Spoilers hidden, because the makers of this movie go out of their way to trick you into thinking that nothing very bad is going to happen: This is based on the true story of Hachi, a Japanese dog that was born in 1923 and died in 1934. If you do the math on Hachi, you will discover that he spent two years living happily with his master, and NINE years waiting at the train station for his master to return, before finally dying of old age, still waiting. If I had known in advance that this was based on a Japanese folk story, I might have been more prepared for the valorization of futile, though admittedly touching, loyalty.
More on how this movie tricks you: Hachi and the Professor (Richard Gere) live in the kind of idealized town where you can walk to the train station with your dog, the conductor will hold the train while you say goodbye, and the dog can walk home alone, stopping to get treats from the butcher and the hot dog vendor. Everyone knows each other and everyone is kind to each other. The Professor teaches piano and his wife works at a museum and the movie is rated G. I was so totally not prepared for (spoiler again) the second half of this movie to be sad, and for Hachi's death to be the happy ending.
******
Marley and Me
Not as sad as I expected! Perhaps it is just the contrast with Hachi that makes this seem like a light-hearted comedy... but no, it actually is a romcom about a married couple with a dog and (later) some kids. Incidentally, that is a really nice house outside of Philadelphia they are able to afford on a single columnist/reporter's salary. Either this happened while working for the Philadelphia Inquirer was still lucrative, or they were living on easy credit. They even had horses!
The reason I mistakenly thought Marley and Me was going to be a sad movie was... actually I am going to skip this story, it's embarrassing. ^^ I'll just say that I heard it was a movie about a dog that constantly causes huge problems for everyone, but his family love him anyway, unlike SOME people, who just leave you alone to die in the street, etc etc. So based on this description, I was expecting something very different from what the movie turned out to be.
(Which was: a heartwarming movie for urbanites who are too sophisticated to watch heartwarming movies.)
******
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I enjoyed this one a lot. The Narnia movies have been getting better each time, perhaps because the profits from the previous movies are being rolled into the budgets of the next ones, perhaps because the original four Pensieve children are gradually being phased out and replaced by characters (Prince Caspian and Eustace) who are played by better actors. The movie is exciting and moves at a good pace, with no dead spots and lots of cool visuals.
(Racial politics of this series are still horrible, though. British kids have fun and consequence-free adventures in exotic land, peace comes when Italian-looking Prince conquers Middle Eastern-looking people, etc etc. But leaving that aside for the moment.)
I've come around on the overt religiosity of these movies. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I was bothered, not because it is not in books (of course it is), but because it was handled very clumsily, lots of symbolism that is only emotionally affecting if you have been brought up in a certain way. There is nothing inherently moving about a lion sacrifing himself for you sins, you know. Also, the swordfighting in that movie was terrible.
But in this movie, the Christian subtext works well as an integrated theme, since the characters are basically rushing off with no plan, sailing literally towards what they believe to be the edge of the earth, because that is how heroes conduct themselves, and because they have faith that Aslan will protect them - and he does does! Hooray! This movie would not make sense without religion. With religion, it makes perfect sense.
Also, I love Eustace. In the BBC miniseries, (and in the books), he is really annoying. But his eccentricities are so pronounced in this movie that I found I was fond of him - and also he has some of the best lines. He was slimmed down a bit in the movie, as well, which I thought was a good move - keep the focus on his weaknesses of character, including his greed for gold and oranges and sweets, but don't tie it to his girth as if that is a character flaw in itself.
I am guessing that they will skip the two side story books - Magician's Nephew and Horse and His Boy - and go straight to The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. Eustace is set to star in the next movie all on his own. It's almost as if C.S. Lewis, writing in the 1940s, anticipated the difficulties of 21st century serialized epic productions which must cast child actors who will age visibly between movies.
P.S. I saw this in 3D - the kind that is fully integrated into the movie, not the kind that is added as an afterthought. It's funny, but until I got used to the effect, the actors all kind of looked like the computer generated people who'd been in half the trailers, only with really realistic skins added to the 3D models. Then I got used to the glasses and the feeling passed.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-30 05:01 am (UTC)(Because actually, TLTWATW drives the guilt aspect home, because there's personal betrayal on the part of one of the kid protagonists. Whereas in the NT it's all very third person if you try to read it as a novel, bawling, and I felt more for Pontius Pilate than anyone else, a la Master and Margarita.)
I honestly think they wouldn't be able to get away with The Horse and his Boy nowadays. I don't even want them to be able to get away with it (although it's one of those cases where I can't stop loving something I loved as a child XD; I would say it's about as bad as The Merchant of Venice).
Eustace gets quite likeable once he gets over himself. The Narnia kids who've gone through more of a process are more interesting, actually.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-30 06:00 am (UTC)Edmund was my favorite character in the books, but in the movies, he's kind of reducing to being the dark-haired lesser jock, and I think Lucy is the best actress and most interesting character (of the four Pensieve children).
About religion, maybe it's just a question of managing expectations. I wasn't expecting the first movie to hammer home the religious message quite so hard (as a Jewish kid reading the books, I didn't really get it until The Last Battle), whereas with this movie, I was totally prepared to hear about how Aslan has another name in our world, and he hopes we will learn to know him by it. XD Also the swordfighting improves a lot after the first movie.
The Horse and His Boy would be really questionable today, yeah. Today I read it and The Arabian Nights and think: you admired this enough to copy it, but you had to make the culture that produced it evil at the same time? As a kid I ranked it third, after The Dawn Treader (Voyages of Sinbad) and Prince Caspian (so I guess it's all downhill from here for me, haha).
Now that I think about it, TLTWATW and The Last Battle were my least favorite Narnia bookss. Too much religious moralizing. I wonder if they will include Susan in The Last Battle. They slimmed Eustace, so maybe?
Now that Focus on the Family has latched on to these movies, I am confident that they will continue to make them. No Golden Compass-style disasters. So that's good, at least.