Netflix is a wonderful thing.

Wrothken and I have been watching Scrubs for awhile. I can't believe I missed so many episodes! And I saw other ones so many times I thought some characters were in the show way, way longer than they actually were. Its a cute show, though I get sad whenever someone dies.

And I finally got to finish watching Teeth. It is officially my new favorite movie, just behind Hard Candy. I feel so bad for the poor girl when she first discovers her... um... gift. And some parts make me cringe for her.... but the "punishment" is generally deserved. Doctors make some funny comments while they attempt to fix what she does to the men. And the last mutilation was done in such a hilarious manner. Of course, Wrothken refused to watch it with me.

Today in the theatre: Sucker Punch.

This film is very aptly named, let me tell you. It invites you in with the promise of fetish and hot women killing monsters in increasingly unbelievable ways, takes all that preconception, and wallops you in the gut with it.

This was an extremely intense movie; a far cry from a summer blockbuster. The overarching theme of the film is escapism, and what some people do to cope with the world when it all turns bad.



Great ending, by the way; very unexpected twist.

This is NOT A movie about pandering to fetishism, this is a movie that takes everything you know about them and physically assaults with them. If you want a clear message of girl power presented in a crisp, burlesque package, I heartily recommend this one.

I saw Driven the other day. It was better than I expected it to be. Plus, the end was set in Detroit I really enjoyed the very tangled web of relationships between the characters. It did not really have cut-and-dried villains except perhaps for Burt Reynolds, who turns in a solid performance as the ruthless boss. They characters were competitors, but many of them managed to either remain or become friends through it all. Basically, they were just people with their own agendas. Stallone was good, and perhaps more importantly he had a good character. A man who had it all and lost it, and has been humbled by the experience. On the downside, the movie seemed unsure of what character to focus on: Stallone's, or the new kid he's been brought back to mentor. Because of that it often seems to wander.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 1 2011, 11:31 PM

I finished watching Claymore today. This is probably my fourth time watching the series. Again, I just loved it. It is packed with gore and ultra-violence, which I know draws in the young male crowd. But that is not what it is really about, which is why they get all flustered with the ending, which I loved.

It is set in a fantasy world where monsters called Yoma roam the land, eating people's innards. Making it worse, they can take human form to hide amongst people, and pretty well above and beyond anything a human can fight in an even battle. In come the Claymores, who are women infused with Yoma energy, making them powerful enough to fight the Yoma and win. They are tough chicks with big swords (hence the name).

However, the more Yoma energy (or yoki), they expend, the more like monsters the Claymores become. If they expend too much, they literally become monsters, and cannot go back to being human. The series revolves around this fight within each Claymore to retain their humanity in an incredibly violent and horrific world. The goriness and violence of the series is meant to underscore this. It is a nasty world these Claymores live in. Going from one battle to another, most have nothing else to live for but killing Yoma. They have no families, no friends, even the people they are sworn to protect fear and hate them because they are half-monsters. Their lives are simply one battle after another, and can only end one of two ways. They either get killed in a fight, or they Awaken and become a monster.

Enter Clare, who like many of them became a Claymore to get revenge on the Awakened Being that killed someone she loved- Teresa of the Faint Smile. Teresa had been the greatest fighter of her era, and took Clare in. In the process Teresa learned to live again. At least until she died (which I will not go into). Clare herself meets someone who changes her life - Raki - and the show revolves around the two polar opposite forces in her life. One hand there is her lust for vengeance that can only end in self-destruction - even if she achieves it. Then you have her love for Raki, which gives her a reason to live for the first time since Teresa. Seeing how it all plays out is just marvelous.

Now that is over though, I have that familiar post-series letdown. Whenever I watch a good series, I get so used to it, that when it is over it is a bit depressing. Now I have to decide what to watch next. I am thinking of maybe going back to my Horatio Hornblowers. Or maybe staying with anime and doing Twelve Kingdoms again, or Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars I & II. Maybe even Gunslinger Girl, in spite of how depressing it gets at the end.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Apr 4 2011, 03:39 AM

"The Importance of Being Earnest" - with Colin Firth - WOO HOO !!!! A very well done Oscar Wilde.

Just saw The Lincoln Lawyer.

Read the book, liked it, saw the film was doing well enough on Rotten Tomatoes to justify seeing it, was actually impressed by some of the performances.

Especially Matthew McConaughey, who managed to act just a little differently this time around, but was still himself enough to pull off the Mickey Haller role.

The other actors turn in solid performances, and as a legal thriller it avoids the cliches by "solving the case" halfway in, while the rest of the film focuses on the legal jousting without trying to make it into a metaphor for something its not. It's the good parts of Law & Order with enough time to develop the characters and tell a story.

The Crucible - the actors did an awesome job with this, there was no point that I lost immersion because of bad timing or acting whatsoever, the story was powerful and riveting, it was extremely well directed - worth the time to watch this one !!

I am watching Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars, and Banner of the Stars 2. All three are 12 episode anime series' starring the same two characters. Each is a separate story, at a different time in their lives. Like Claymore, the traditional gender roles are reversed, with the girl being the strong, silent, warrior type, and the boy being the more supportive type.

The shows are space operas, being set in a future where the galaxy is divided among 5 main factions. 4 of them are formed together in a treaty against the final one: The Abh Empire. The Abh are basically elves in space. But not magical fantasy elves. They are the result of genetic engineering, having been created to serve as slaves to work in space in the distant past. They rebelled and destroyed their creators. But they still continue the practice of genetic engineering, with all births being artificially done. The Abh's home is space, and they really have no interest in the planets they conquer as part of their empire. They really only want to control the space around them. So they tend to be very hands off in their rulership of regular humans (or "Landers") living on the worlds. Still, they are hated and feared by Landers, because they look different, and of course because it makes good propaganda for the other 4 nations.

I liked how the tackled the obligatory issue of FTL travel. It is done by using gateways called Sords that allow access into and out of Plane Space. Plane Space is another dimension laying beneath our own. As the name implies, it is only two dimensional, lacking the dimension of depth. To survive there, ships need to have a special engine that can create a Space-Time bubble around them in three dimensions. If a ship's space time engine goes out, it will be immediately crushed down into two dimensions, and everyone on board instantly killed. Combat in Plane Space is interesting, because it can only take place between ships whose Space-Time bubbles have merged. So it is by necessity at relatively close range. Because ships cannot jump into or out of Plane Space on their own, all movement through it is controlled by the Sords. So unlike in Star Wars, you cannot just hit your hyperdrive and be on the other side of the galaxy a minute later. You have to go from one Sord to another. So controlling the Sords means total control of space travel. So in peacetime this means regular trade routes through the Sords, and in war it means attacks can only come through those same routes.

One thing I like about the shows is that each is quite different in its plotting and feel. The first is your standard boy meets girl and they have space adventure kind of story. With the backdrop being the beginning of an all-out war between the Landers and Abh. The second series is your basic war story, with our boy and girl now years older and serving on a ship in the Abh fleet. The third is more about diplomacy, with our pair now acting as ambassadors to a planet conquered by the Abh, and trying to sort out is a very chaotic and violent revolution going on on the surface.

In addition to the two main characters, we also see a lot of the various Abh admirals and their staff chiefs during the shows, which keeps us up to breast on what is happening overall in the war. They do a good job of making all them unique and interesting, and very distinctly elfin/Abh in outlook. Some of them are just hilarious, like the Bebaus twins, one who is the admiral, the other the chief of staff of the same fleet. Both come from a family known for "Spectacular Insanity". Admiral Bebaus does not disappoint on this score either...

All in all, they are good anime shows, well worth the watch. All of them are based on a series of novels, and I hope that they make the final two into animes.

My husband and I just bought Roots, and we've been watching it one episode at a time. I read the book in high school and couldn't put it down. So far, I love it.

I'm watching The Confession on Hulu. Starts off with "A hitman walks into a confessional to talk to a priest." From there, it gets...good.

I can't explain it. What I can say is that you should definitely watch it. Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt are at top notch levels with this. For all the shots of two guys sitting in a congessional booth, the amount of struggle is truly impressive.

Currently viewing Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster on MST3K.



Incredible dialogue like this can only be dreamed up by the best, eh?

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: May 3 2011, 09:06 PM

Sweeny Todd, with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, anyone?



This post has been edited by Lady Syl: May 4 2011, 03:10 PM

I have that in my Netflix queue. I just have not gotten to watching it yet!

I am currently watching Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and outstanding anime from the 80s (Miyazaki, 'nuff said). Set a thousand years after an apocalypse, only scattered groups of humanity remain. If that were not bad enough a toxic jungle (the spores of whose plants will kill humans in minutes) is slowly covering the world, and is guarded by hordes of giant insects.

Nausicaä is the princess of a little farming community out in the middle of nowhere. She reminds me a lot of Teresa, as she has a way of charming the insects of the toxic jungle, and all other animals for that matter. She also has this really neat powered glider flying wing thing that she flies around on. She really is a very adorable character. Her world is turned upside down however, when a giant aircraft from a distant land crashes in the Valley of the Wind. Soon after come more planes, from a rival nation, after the cargo of the first.

It is a Giant Warrior, one of the weapons that destroyed the world a thousand years before. Most turned to stone after the apocalypse, and their shells can still be seen littering the landscape. This one was still in an egg though. Naturally, the other nations wanted to to control it, and the Valley of the Wind is caught in between them, and the insects of the toxic jungle.

Unlike most anime, when this one was slated fora U.S. release, they did not go cheap on the voice acting (most of the English dubbing in anime is so atrocious that I would sooner gargle razor blades than listen to it). Instead they brought in a pile of major actors. Patrick Stewart, Edward James Olmos, Chris Sarandon, Uma Thurman, and Mark Hamiil are the biggest names.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 3 2011, 10:50 PM

OMG, those are some big names! Many of those actors you listen are among my favorites!

That's on my queue as well. I'd like to point out something about the voice actors they've got.

They managed to get Captain Jean-Luc Picard/Professor X/EMPEROR URIEL SEPTIM VII of TAMRIEL!! (Patrick Stewart), Luke Skywalker/Batman TAS's The JOKER!!!/Fire Lord Ozai (Mark Hamill), and Rear Admiral Adama/Jaime Escalante/Lt. Castillo (Edward James Olmos) in one series.

That the universe is still here, after enduring such a concentration of Awesome, speaks to the existence of God, who probably has also put this on His Netflix queue.

OMG, you're right! And I'm going to have to check this one out myself! (Also, don't forget Black Mamba/Emma Peel/Poison Ivy/G-Girl (Uma Thurman)!!)

I think it's time I get back into anime--I haven't watched a lot of it since high school, and I've been missing out... With kids, most of what I see on my tv anymore is Disney cartoons and Curious George (which is fine, but...).

Be careful, as a lot of anime is definitely not for children. If you want something kid-friendly, try Card Captor Sakura. It is very sweet and cute and even the antagonists are not really bad, just misunderstood. Even though it is definitely a kid show, it is still one of my all-time favorites. Plus, Sakura is just incredibly adorable!

For grown-up anime, it depends on what you are most interested in. I mentioned Claymore a while back, which has a lot of violence, but a very strong theme of humanity underneath it all. Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars, Banner of the Stars 2 are also very good. Look back to see my post on them too.

Twelve Kindgoms has a goodly amount of action, especially at the start, but is seriously into character development. In fact, the three main characters are not too particularly likeable at first. But the more you see them grow as the story goes on, the more you cheer for them, precisely because they are becoming better people. It is basically an otherworld fantasy story, with sword fighting and magical creatures.

In spite of its silly name, Gunslinger Girl is excellent. Set in modern Europe, it is basically a spy thriller with sci-fi cyberware. Again it is primarily a character piece, and is rather dark and depressing, when you learn what has been done to the main characters. They are all girls, who have been brainwashed and cybered up to become assassins.

Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex was decent, although the plot gets a bit fuzzy at times. It is a futuristic sci-fi show, with robots, cloaking devices, cyberbrains, and lots of hacking. It is mostly action, but does make as stab at what the meaning of existence and individuality really is. Why the Major is walking around in lingere all the time is beyond me though. Oh wait, teenage fanboys , that's why...

The Good Witch of the West was a neat little series. It is a fantasy story, swords, knights, princesses, and creepy magicians. Mainly a political intrigue/mystery story with a bit of character development. It is the only time I have seen actual slash fiction about anime characters in the anime itself (which was quite hilarious!)

Witchhunter Robin was a good one. Set in the modern world, it is about people with psychic powers, not witches. A bit predictable, but with good characters, action, and intrigue.

Scrapped Princess was also decent. It is a mix of action/characterization. While it starts out strong, it kind of loses steam later in the show when you figure out what is really going on. They mixed genres a bit too much I think. Going from what seemed a straight fantasy story to a science fiction one.

Vision of Escaflowne was also good. Pretty much your basic girl travels from earth to a sci-fi world with mecha, meets a boy, and they have a grand adventure story. Lots of action, some romance and character work. The very ending was just blah though. Still, it is worth the ride to get there.

Fate/Stay Night is a magical story, but set in the modern world. The premise is that every decade there is a magical tournament, and the winner gets a wish. The losers die. Each magician can summon a servant, who are heroes from past ages, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Alexander the Great, etc... Has some neat turns to it, and is a fun ride.

All of these above feature female characters in either the lead role, or at least in strong roles. So if you like seeing girls drive the story and be more than just the protagonist's girlfriend, any of these will work for you. I believe Netflix has them all as well.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 4 2011, 05:09 PM

I do indeed prefer to see females as more than just the playtoys of men!

I think all of them sound interesting, and I'm the kind of person who will usually give anything a chance--I never make assumptions about movies without seeing them myself first, no matter what the critics say, that sort of thing.

My husband and I have watched some more kid-friendly anime like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sailor Moon, Hello Kitty, and Ponyo--definitely kid-calibur stuff. We've barely even scratched the surface of anime as a whole, and would like to see more. I'll likely give all your recommendations a try, and I'll let you know what we thought, if you'd like!

This post has been edited by Lady Syl: May 4 2011, 08:18 PM

I would love to hear what you think of the anime's you watch. I recommend watching them with Japanese audio and English subtitles, as the English voice actors almost all of them use are just atrocious.

There are two more I can throw in as well.

Serial Experiments Lain is a mind-bendingly freaky series about a girl who just might be a god, or something else. But she is certainly not human. It goes very deeply into the philosophy of what makes people people, and what is reality and not.

Blood+ is an excellent anime about vampires, without it seeming like they are vampires at all because they are so non-traditional. It's about a girl who finds out that she isn't at all normal, and cannot really recall what happened to her before the preceding year. She finds her family beset by monsters, that only she can kill because her blood is poison to them. Then there is the creepy guy following her around, who won't tell her who he is, but seems to be her servant. A very cool series with action and character development.

Theres barely any anime available over here, so ive been searching the internets to find some, unsucessfully. The closest thing I got was final fantasy VII: Advent children.

Still a great movie, and square enix always amaze me with their unbelievable graphics and detail. Brilliant story as well, but you wont understand at all if you've never played the game.