When Joseph Susanka noted on his blog that the latest from Studio Ghibli, Up On Poppy Hill, was now available in this country on DVD I went forthwith to Amazon and ordered it sight unseen. Tonight we all sat down to watch it, and I can say that it was money well spent.

I’ve been a Hayao Miyazaki fan since I first saw Spirited Away a little over ten years ago—a life time in blog-years. Poppy Hill isn’t precisely a Miyazaki film; or, rather, it is: Hayao Miyazaki worked on the screenplay, but the film was directed by his son Goro Miyazaki film. And I have to say, I can see three significant differences between Poppy Hill and previous Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen.

First, there are no fantastic elements. It’s a tale of young love in a high school in post-war Japan. The couple meet, there’s a snag, you know the drill. Meanwhile, there’s a beloved high school building that’s going to be torn down, and a bunch of hard volunteer labor cleaning it up. There’s a certain amount of goofiness, and fair amount of sweetness, and on the whole I enjoyed the heck out of it. All four of my kids, from the sixteen year-old down to the nine-year-old, were very much engaged, and my older girl’s first words after it ended were, “I want to see that again.”

So it’s a different kind of story than Studio Ghibli usually tells, but it was well done.

Second, the characters in Miyazaki’s movies usually look Caucasian, even when the movie is clearly set in Japan. The characters in Poppy Hill are definitely from the Miyazaki playbook (Umi, the female lead, looks more or less like Nausicca/Kiki with pigtails) but the skintone is different, and the Japanese setting is emphasized.

Third, Miyazaki’s movies are known for being visually stunning. When I sit down to see one for the first time, I know I’ve got a visual treat in store. Poppy Hill, however, sets a new standard for awesome.

It’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s beautiful. Take a look.

So my eldest and I went to see Monsters University last night (Jane and the younger kids saw it on Monday). Not bad; not one of Pixar’s best, but competently done. I thought it was a little heavy on message (i.e., more like a typical Disney movie than a Pixar flick), but on the other hand the message is one that I agree with 100%: you can succeed if you’re willing to work hard…and you’re realistic about your strengths and weaknesses.

This is a refreshing change from the typical kid’s movie, which is usually about following your dreams: if you want something bad enough, you’ll get it. That sounds like Nietzsche’s triumph of the will, to me. In reality, reality always wins; and you do much better to work with it rather than against it.

Rose Davis, daughter of my long-time blogfriend Julie, recently moved to Los Angeles.  She’s a film-lover, and has discovered that while L.A. is a movie town, it’s not so much a film town: 

It’s certainly a movie town but in the most superficial way. People talk about movies and television shows here as a commodity to buy and sell rather than an art form to savor and appreciate. It’s not an attitude I resent or look down on but it makes it difficult to have a philosophical conversation about character and theme when it keeps being diverted to box office totals and filming trivia. So here’s a blog about what I’m watching, films I own and films I like. And trust me, I watch a lot of films.

Her new blog is called “Double Exposure.” 

Just saw Brave. Liked it. It’s not Up or The Incredibles, but there was much about it to like.

I’m told you shouldn’t read the reviews; some of them give away a plot point you won’t want spoiled. If you like Pixar, or if you like things Scottish, and especially if you know who the Nac Mac Feegle are, you should go see it.

So last night, in a most atypical move for me, I signed up for the one-month free trial of Netflix; and then, just to try it out, I watched the recent Johnny Depp version of Alice in Wonderland. Friends of ours had told me that they weren’t surprised that it had tanked, but that it was really quite interesting.

A precis for those of you who haven’t seen it. Alice grows up in England, remember her adventures in Wonderland only as a scary recurring nightmare. Then she returns to Wonderland as a young woman, where the Red Queen’s reign of terror has driven the inhabitants to the edge of revolution. They need Alice to slay the Jabberwocky, just returning the White Queen to power and saving the day.

It’s not uninteresting, the visuals are good, I was mildly entertained.

Now for the blood letting.

Let me say a few things up front.

I’m a much harsher movie reviewer than I am a book reviewer, and I’m especially picky about movies made from books. However, I understand that the movie way of telling a story is different than the book way of telling a story. I’m OK with that. I understand that you usually have to elide the plot and merge characters in order to whittle a book down to movie length. And of course, in this case the story they are telling is a sequel of sorts to Carroll’s book, so they can make the story whatever they like. Fine.

What kills me, then, in most book to movie conversions, is not the necessary changes; it’s the unnecessary changes. And especially the wholly stupid, ridiculous, absurd changes that could have been avoided given two minutes thought, no additional cost, and no change to the story the filmmakers have decided to tell.

For example, the monster that Alice must slay is called the “Jabberwocky.” It makes me want to scream. “Jabberwocky” is the name of the poem. The creature in the poem is called the “Jabberwock”: “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!” “…the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame…” “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock!” Why do they call it the “Jabberwocky”? It’s wrong, it’s just plain wrong, and there’s no earthly reason for it except that someone felt superior to the source material.

Gah.

Do they do this on purpose?

One last thing. (Feel free to stop reading if you don’t like spoilers.) There’s a framing story in which Alice is expected to get married to an upper-class twit with a battleaxe of a mother. He’s a lord, she’d be provided for, she’s nearly twenty, her pretty face won’t last forever, blah, blah. Of course, naturally, (what other narrative have the movies been peddling for decades) at the end of the movie she opts for independence instead, and in a most unlikely turn goes into business with one of her late father’s old business associates. Her father was a merchant who traded in the East Indies. Alice impresses her father’s associate by suggesting that her father didn’t go far enough; they should push all the way through to China! Hurrah, China! No one’s ever traded there, before. We can use Hong Kong as a base, and trade in China!

It’s a throwaway line at the end of the movie, designed to show that Alice has been paying attention to her father’s business and has bold ideas of her own. Fine. But everything about it is wrong.

It’s not clear just when Alice in Wonderland is set; but Carroll first began the story in 1862, and allowing for Alice’s growth to adulthood (13 years, according to the movie), let’s say it’s 1875. England fought the Opium Wars with China from 1839 to 1860, entirely over the issue of open trade. Hong Kong was founded for the purpose of trade with China. The Portuguese had been trading with China via Macau for centuries.

Whatever grown-up, independent Alice is going to be, it isn’t the first English person to trade with China.

Again, do they do this on purpose?

(Deep sigh.)

Yeah, I know, it’s just a movie.

So we went and saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader this past weekend. I had low expectations—see my review of the movie erroneously called Prince Caspian to see how low—and so I guess I have to say I was pleased. It was frequently stupid, and often absurd, but it wasn’t evil.

First, the Good. Reepicheep was a delight. The Dawn Treader itself was gorgeous. Eustace was well-done. The Dufflepuds were funny. The closing credits, with Pauline Baynes-inspired drawings, were fabulous. The Dark Island was particularly well-rendered; I’d always wondered just what it would look like, and now I know. The visuals were stunning throughout. They sort of followed the plot of the book, a little. They changed a lot of stuff, but many of the changes make sense.

So much for that; now for the Stupid and the Absurd. (If you’ve not seen it, you might want to stop reading.)

• There was far too much “You just have to BE-L-E-E-E-E-E-VE and everything will be all right.” It ain’t so, no how, no matter how many times Hollywood says it is.
• The direction was frequently odd. Shouldn’t Lucy and Caspian have been a little more surprised to find each other in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from anywhere?
• OK, so Lord Drinian comes in and explains that they have two weeks rations left, and that they need to turn back immediately if they are to make it back to their previous landfall. Well, yes—but he gives this advice in the middle of a storm when the ship is racing along before the wind with reefed sails. In this situation, turning back is Not An Option. Not unless you like drowning.
• An island of “pure evil”? There’s no such thing as pure evil; evil is necessarily parasitic on good.
• It was less a movie than a video game, and not a very interesting one: enter the world, explore a little, receive a quest, hunt down the seven swords one by one, fight the big boss using the power of the seven swords, game over. (It would have been nice if the power of the seven swords made any sense.)
• Not to mention that the big boss is the Staypuft Marshmallow Serpent—a name I wish I had made up, but I confess read it somewhere.
• They left out one of the best lines in the entire series. Eustace apologies for being an ass, and Edmund says, “You were just an ass; I was a traitor.”

I could go on; but on the whole I’m grateful that they got as much right as they did.

So we went to see Toy Story 3 this evening, the whole kit’n’kaboodle of us. Was it good? Of course. Did I get all sentimental and teary-eyed at the end? I always do. Was it better than Toy Story 2? Not so much.

In fact, there’s a lot about Toy Story 3 that reminds me of its predecessor. I won’t go into details, as some of you won’t have seen it yet, but I think this is the first Pixar outing that repeats a successful formula.

Nevertheless I enjoyed it, and it had its moments. I especially enjoyed the stuffed totoro.

So Jane and I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night. My first thought, when the credits started to roll, was, “Waddaya mean there won’t be another episode next week? I have to wait at least a year?” And the second, as the names of the actors started to go by was, “Winona Ryder? Really?”

Anyway, I liked it.

So Jane bought the DVD of Prince Caspian at Costco the other day, and we watched it this evening.

What an unmitigated load of rubbish. Spectacle everywhere, sense nowhere; complete disrpect for the source material; personalities savaged; Peter acting like a tomfool instead of the High King of Narnia; Reepicheep being rude; Lucy sitting on the Stone Table, for goodness sake, for all the world like Mary Magdalene having a bit of a sit-down on the True Cross.

I don’t think so.

What an out-and-out utter travesty. I have never, in my entire life, been so disappointed by a movie. My expectations were low to begin with (or I’d have seen it ages ago in the theater), but I am still flabbergasted. I had problems with Peter Jackson’s version of The Lord of the Rings, and particularly with The Return of the King…but the people behind this piece of awfulness make even Ralph Bakshi look good. If they couldn’t tell Lewis’s story, at least they could have told a story that made sense. I simply don’t have words for how gruesomely, grotesquely, stupidly bad this crock of sh*t is.

I don’t usually write hatchet jobs, and I’ll no doubt regret this one in the morning…but nearly as much as I regret this film.

Sigh.

No doubt C.S. Lewis himself finds all of this terribly funny, but I don’t yet have his perspective.

I recently ran across the trailers for two interesting new movies. One looks scary but interesting; the other appears to be a heartwarming family film. I’ll let you figure out which is which.