DVD logging
May. 20th, 2008 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAmelie - Sweet. I'm not sure any other word quite fits as a summary. The voiceover narration threw me off a bit, but it seemed to support the actors rather than rob them of story. The lead actress impressed me. I did have a few moments when I had to look away due to anxiety over the embarrassment of the comedy, but mostly it was gentler and so easier for me to handle.
Angelic Layer 1-4 - Fun. Fairly fluffy (and Delia safe!). Sadly, Netflix is missing the third DVD, making the episodes available via the internet for those who use a different type of computer than I do. Icchan is creepier in the anime than in the manga, not because he behaves differently but because he's moving. I can't skim over him the way I did in reading.
Batman the Animated Series 1.1-1.2 - We got bored with this and gave up after two episodes. The crime of the week thing just wasn't enough to hold our attention. It wasn't bad. There just wasn't much there. In terms of visual style, I kept getting distracted by the feeling that things in the background that ought to be there simply weren't. I assume that some of that was deliberate choice, but it left me feeling off balance.
Chevalier D'Eon 21-24 - I expected a bloodbath and got one. Some of those characters had 'dead' written on them from their first appearances. I'd definitely call the history here 'vaguely resembling' rather than accurate. The secret at the root of the series makes sense. Though I must confess to boggling a little at the extent to which people were going to keep it. Quite a bit of trouble would have been saved if a couple of people had bothered coming up with plausible lies instead of trying to smash anything that might hint at the secret. I did find Robin's character arc satisfying, and it made a couple of other things make sense.
I'm still not sure, however, just what the Psalms are or how they work. Anybody know?
Condor Hero 6-10 - I still long for obvious episode breaks. Once I put the DVD in, I have to keep it in the player or lose my place. These episodes introduced a couple dozen more characters, and I haven't been able to sort out who all of them are or how they relate to each other. It's still pretty.
I think our hero is pretending to be a lot less competent than he is in order to exact some sort of revenge on people who bullied him when they were all kids. I'm not sure what sort of revenge or how pretending to be incompetent furthers it. Or what he's trying to do with his... um... I think they're his foster parents. Maybe? Anyway, another plot thread I'm only sort of following.
I'm still confused about how this series relates to the other similarly titled series. Having seen some screencaps on someone else's LJ, I'm suspecting that this may actually be Return of the Condor Heroes and that Netflix (or the releasing company) has renamed it for some odd reason. I'm not sure the dates match, though, and my visual memory is poor enough that I might be looking at the screencaps and just thinking that I see the same actors in them as I remember seeing on the DVD. I'll have to check when I get the next volume.
Curse of the Golden Flower - This movie reminds me a bit of The Lion In Winter, assuming the playwright had not been constrained by history to let all the named characters survive. This isn't The Lion in Winter, though, and the plot only has the vaguest resemblance. The similarity is in having a royal family with three sons and difficulties between the father and mother.
Fortunately, we knew going in that it was going to be a tragedy. We therefore weren't devastated when characters we liked died (and they did). We watched it dubbed rather than subbed and so lost some of the subtleties but were better able to fold laundry and deal with interruptions by Delia. The physical acting was generally excellent (not surprising given the cast). The visuals were impressive, both the colors used on the sets and costumes and the choreography of crowd scenes. The armies were nicely color coded (even if I couldn't always remember which huge group was working for whom).
I did keep wondering if I was supposed to recognize the story or have historical context for the characters, so I visited Wikipedia to see if it had anything. If the article there is correct, the family and incidents are utterly fictitious. The context I was missing wasn't historical but cultural.
Definitely not something to watch as a feel-good movie. Well, unless seeing almost everybody dead or miserable makes you feel good.
Eloise at the Plaza - I grabbed this at the library, thinking that it would make a good family evening movie. I was right. Delia didn't quite understand what was going on with the various romances, but she enjoyed the main character quite a lot. I think she liked the idea of a little girl who had that much power. Scott and I enjoyed the supporting cast and the knowledge that nothing tragic or vulgar or violent was going to happen.
Scott had some complaints about story threads introduced and never followed up. My assumption is that those were things from the books that would have taken too much time to work through properly and that people familiar with the books didn't need to have explained further.
Fantastic Children 1-10 - I'm torn on this one. The library has it, so I can watch it easily, but... The plot is interesting in theory, but in practice I'm finding it tedious. It's one of those series with a dozen separate threads that will eventually come together but that, in the meantime, detract from each other. I do love the music from the closing credits, though.
Justice League Unlimited 2.1-2.13 - The Legion of Doom. We enjoyed the season quite a bit. The episode with Flash and Lex Luthor getting body swapped sticks in my mind, particularly. With this series, I keep looking that the IMDB and being surprised to recognize so many of the voice actors.
Kurau Phantom Memory 17-24 - I didn't feel like the end of this series had any real surprises, but it also didn't leave me with major questions. There wasn't any romance in this series. It's also notable that there's a supporting character with a physical disability that's not explained and that isn't pertinent to the plot. The Rynax remained ciphers, but they didn't really need to be anything else.
I do recommend the series for those who like SF.
Monk 5.1-5.10 - I'm always surprised by how much I like this series. It ought to make me cringe and flee-- The combination of Monk's disability with the show being both a mystery series and a comedy ought to put it beyond my tolerance range, but somehow, I still love it. There's always at least one scene that makes me look away and cover my ears due to my embarrassment squick, but....
Some of it is that the show always seems to have compassion for Monk's anxiety, phobias, OCD and so on. He's crazy, and he very hard to deal with, but he's human and has no real malice. The fact that he needs a personal aide in order to function also helps. His disability is real. It's not on again off again as plot convenient.
I know some of Monk's anxiety problems from the inside. Mine aren't as severe, generally speaking, and I'm not a genius, but there's always a certain echo for me that says, yes, real people with those problems react that way. Sometimes, I can see the jokes coming a long way off because the response is inevitable.
I've not seen any meta on Monk and portrayals of disability. Anybody know of any? I'm not interested enough to google and wade through what I might find, but I'm curious as to whether other people with psychiatric disabilities react as I do and what people who feel differently than I do might have to say about it.
My-HiME 5-8 - Sadly dull. I'm not sure I manage to track the various characters (which almost certainly means that I didn't), and I'm not sure who I'm supposed to care about. I think something important happened in the last episode on the DVD, but I looked away at the wrong time and am not sure who was involved anyway. It's possible that I'd have enjoyed this more at a different time, but it's also possible that it's just dull. The premise looked promising. The premise still looks promising. I just don't think it's being delivered on in a way that I'll enjoy.
Angelic Layer 1-4 - Fun. Fairly fluffy (and Delia safe!). Sadly, Netflix is missing the third DVD, making the episodes available via the internet for those who use a different type of computer than I do. Icchan is creepier in the anime than in the manga, not because he behaves differently but because he's moving. I can't skim over him the way I did in reading.
Batman the Animated Series 1.1-1.2 - We got bored with this and gave up after two episodes. The crime of the week thing just wasn't enough to hold our attention. It wasn't bad. There just wasn't much there. In terms of visual style, I kept getting distracted by the feeling that things in the background that ought to be there simply weren't. I assume that some of that was deliberate choice, but it left me feeling off balance.
Chevalier D'Eon 21-24 - I expected a bloodbath and got one. Some of those characters had 'dead' written on them from their first appearances. I'd definitely call the history here 'vaguely resembling' rather than accurate. The secret at the root of the series makes sense. Though I must confess to boggling a little at the extent to which people were going to keep it. Quite a bit of trouble would have been saved if a couple of people had bothered coming up with plausible lies instead of trying to smash anything that might hint at the secret. I did find Robin's character arc satisfying, and it made a couple of other things make sense.
I'm still not sure, however, just what the Psalms are or how they work. Anybody know?
Condor Hero 6-10 - I still long for obvious episode breaks. Once I put the DVD in, I have to keep it in the player or lose my place. These episodes introduced a couple dozen more characters, and I haven't been able to sort out who all of them are or how they relate to each other. It's still pretty.
I think our hero is pretending to be a lot less competent than he is in order to exact some sort of revenge on people who bullied him when they were all kids. I'm not sure what sort of revenge or how pretending to be incompetent furthers it. Or what he's trying to do with his... um... I think they're his foster parents. Maybe? Anyway, another plot thread I'm only sort of following.
I'm still confused about how this series relates to the other similarly titled series. Having seen some screencaps on someone else's LJ, I'm suspecting that this may actually be Return of the Condor Heroes and that Netflix (or the releasing company) has renamed it for some odd reason. I'm not sure the dates match, though, and my visual memory is poor enough that I might be looking at the screencaps and just thinking that I see the same actors in them as I remember seeing on the DVD. I'll have to check when I get the next volume.
Curse of the Golden Flower - This movie reminds me a bit of The Lion In Winter, assuming the playwright had not been constrained by history to let all the named characters survive. This isn't The Lion in Winter, though, and the plot only has the vaguest resemblance. The similarity is in having a royal family with three sons and difficulties between the father and mother.
Fortunately, we knew going in that it was going to be a tragedy. We therefore weren't devastated when characters we liked died (and they did). We watched it dubbed rather than subbed and so lost some of the subtleties but were better able to fold laundry and deal with interruptions by Delia. The physical acting was generally excellent (not surprising given the cast). The visuals were impressive, both the colors used on the sets and costumes and the choreography of crowd scenes. The armies were nicely color coded (even if I couldn't always remember which huge group was working for whom).
I did keep wondering if I was supposed to recognize the story or have historical context for the characters, so I visited Wikipedia to see if it had anything. If the article there is correct, the family and incidents are utterly fictitious. The context I was missing wasn't historical but cultural.
Definitely not something to watch as a feel-good movie. Well, unless seeing almost everybody dead or miserable makes you feel good.
Eloise at the Plaza - I grabbed this at the library, thinking that it would make a good family evening movie. I was right. Delia didn't quite understand what was going on with the various romances, but she enjoyed the main character quite a lot. I think she liked the idea of a little girl who had that much power. Scott and I enjoyed the supporting cast and the knowledge that nothing tragic or vulgar or violent was going to happen.
Scott had some complaints about story threads introduced and never followed up. My assumption is that those were things from the books that would have taken too much time to work through properly and that people familiar with the books didn't need to have explained further.
Fantastic Children 1-10 - I'm torn on this one. The library has it, so I can watch it easily, but... The plot is interesting in theory, but in practice I'm finding it tedious. It's one of those series with a dozen separate threads that will eventually come together but that, in the meantime, detract from each other. I do love the music from the closing credits, though.
Justice League Unlimited 2.1-2.13 - The Legion of Doom. We enjoyed the season quite a bit. The episode with Flash and Lex Luthor getting body swapped sticks in my mind, particularly. With this series, I keep looking that the IMDB and being surprised to recognize so many of the voice actors.
Kurau Phantom Memory 17-24 - I didn't feel like the end of this series had any real surprises, but it also didn't leave me with major questions. There wasn't any romance in this series. It's also notable that there's a supporting character with a physical disability that's not explained and that isn't pertinent to the plot. The Rynax remained ciphers, but they didn't really need to be anything else.
I do recommend the series for those who like SF.
Monk 5.1-5.10 - I'm always surprised by how much I like this series. It ought to make me cringe and flee-- The combination of Monk's disability with the show being both a mystery series and a comedy ought to put it beyond my tolerance range, but somehow, I still love it. There's always at least one scene that makes me look away and cover my ears due to my embarrassment squick, but....
Some of it is that the show always seems to have compassion for Monk's anxiety, phobias, OCD and so on. He's crazy, and he very hard to deal with, but he's human and has no real malice. The fact that he needs a personal aide in order to function also helps. His disability is real. It's not on again off again as plot convenient.
I know some of Monk's anxiety problems from the inside. Mine aren't as severe, generally speaking, and I'm not a genius, but there's always a certain echo for me that says, yes, real people with those problems react that way. Sometimes, I can see the jokes coming a long way off because the response is inevitable.
I've not seen any meta on Monk and portrayals of disability. Anybody know of any? I'm not interested enough to google and wade through what I might find, but I'm curious as to whether other people with psychiatric disabilities react as I do and what people who feel differently than I do might have to say about it.
My-HiME 5-8 - Sadly dull. I'm not sure I manage to track the various characters (which almost certainly means that I didn't), and I'm not sure who I'm supposed to care about. I think something important happened in the last episode on the DVD, but I looked away at the wrong time and am not sure who was involved anyway. It's possible that I'd have enjoyed this more at a different time, but it's also possible that it's just dull. The premise looked promising. The premise still looks promising. I just don't think it's being delivered on in a way that I'll enjoy.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 08:38 pm (UTC)Glad you all enjoyed Eloise. Has D. read the books yet?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 08:54 pm (UTC)D. has not read Eloise. I never did, so it didn't occur to me to look for them. I'll have to do that now.