Bride and Prejudice

Bride and Prejudice

I rented Bride and Prejudice for two reasons. First because I loved Bend it Like Beckham, the director's biggest hit, and two because I've got this new love of Bollywood and Bhangra music.

I wouldn't say that it was a waste of time, but I would say it's a time waster. You would think that pulling from such a classic as Pride and Prejudice, that the story would be one of the best out there, but it really is almost boring. You can see very early on how most of it will work out (and without the benefit of knowing the story, since I wasn't familiar with it beforehand).

I do think that this was the only way to modernize Pride and Prejudice, because the mother's character is completely unbelievable. She got almost painful to watch, but that's because I'm like that, I hate to watch people embarrass themselves constantly.

I think that part of the problem is that the movie seems really inconsistent about when and where the characters break out into song. While some of the musical pieces were interesting, others were odd and seemed out of place. At one point we suddenly have a large choir on risers...on the beach.

It's a decent movie, but I can't really say I loved it or would recommend it. It's more like if you have a chance to watch it, go for it. But don't go out of your way.

Rent Bend it Like Beckham instead, that is a phenomenal film.

I'm slowly recovering my blog from switching back to Blogger after a failed experiment with the program Writer's Block. For the record, there's something about Writer's Block that attracts spammers, and I can't reccomend it. Anyway, after they ate my bandwidth it seemed like a good idea to just go back to what works. I'll try to post more entries more often, we'll see.

Originally posted November 25, 2006 at 18:19.
Crossposted from another journal:

I'm really dissapointed.

As in severly so. If you've watched this space, you'll know that I've been looking forward to Happy Feet for MONTHS. It's been ages since I saw that first teaser trailer and declared that I wanted that movie to be out now.

See, I like penguins. I think they're very cool. I like good CGI. I like dancing animals. Tapdancing penguins? Go for it!

But what I was instead treated to was a movie that alternated between Moulin Rouge on Ice and a PETA commercial. That's exaggerating only slightly.

Basically, I don't think there was a single original song on the entire soundtrack, which bothers me. I like pop songs, I listen to them often. They picked some good songs, and they did okay by them (and I think they did much better at this task than Moulin Rouge, to be honest) but the fact remains that I think it's sad that Hollywood and television are not giving us new original music anymore. Even if I agree that the opening to Enterprise was gorgeous and well done, and the music well chosen, it still means that they didn't write anything NEW.

We just recycle old rock hits and move on. I don't like this trend.

Anyway, I was forewarned about the humans encroaching on the habitat plot. I remember one of my friends said it came out of nowhere, so I knew it would probably toss itself out there when I was least suspecting it.

It wasn't that it came out of nowhere, it was that it was poorly done and poorly intergrated into the story of Mumble. I know it's a kids movie but the fact is that kids movies can be BRILLIANT and deal with very adult subjects in really great ways. Kids books do this even better, but movies are often fantastic.

This one seems like they got halfway through and said "Oh, wait, this whole 'it's hard to be different' thing is too easy. We can't go with that, we need villains. What, you mean penguins have a naturally hard life and have lots of predators? No, I'm sorry. This doesn't really work too well. We're gonna go with...HUMANS!"

Ever single mention of humans seemed to be designed to make adults feel guilty. I liked that they referred to the humans as aliens, that actually amused me. But the rest of it just...it was too much, it was too heavy handed and it didn't work.

It wasn't realistic, it wasn't neccesary, and it just didn't work.

Overall: Meiran is very saddened because she wanted to badly to really really enjoy this film, but she can't say she'll ever really watch it again. And that's depressing. Maybe if I can take it and clip out all the "alien" stuff and just have cute penguins being cute penguins.

There's a place on this earth for environmental films, and for movies that make us think. This one could have been it, but it was at the same time half-hearted and too much. I have no idea how they managed that, but they did.

Originally posted October 4, 2006 at 18:53.

Today, I was shelving and saw that we had gotten in Dramacon v.2. I've been rabidly waiting for this volume since I read the last one, which was probably about a year ago. I understand how hard it is to put out graphic novels and I'll try not to complain but dangit, if it's a year between this and the next volume I might become rabid.

The first volume has a lot of highs, much like a con weekend. It's almost frantic, and it ends on a good note. It's a LOT like going to your first big convention.

The second volume is NOT like that. In fact, it's a little more like going to conventions after you start to grow up and become a bit more adult. Yeah, you're still silly and you still geek out. But you also budget your money a little better, and you think a little more about things, and the emotions aren't quite on the same roller coaster.

This is not to say I didn't love it and reread my favorite parts right after I finished it. I like that more grown-up sensibility, the fact that the characters are actually dealing with some difficult issues for kids their age, and doing so without falling into typical cliches. Bethany, one of the new main characters, has a speech that really floored me and was very unexpected.

There is one fault I can find with this graphic novel, and that's the cutesy little name-dropping. I know, it's about fandom. I know, it's about an anime convention. But we're treated to "Narilyn Nanson," "Fruity Basket," "Half-Metal Alchemist," "Pawky," and of course, the big American manga publisher: MangaPop. Oh, I'm not sure at all what she's referring to.

We'll end on a good note though. I wasn't sure at first how I felt about a main subplot being the arguments of fans over what is and isn't manga. The characters are American's doing a Japanese-style comic. Some people call that manga, but they have people come buy going "that's not manga!" These are the people I always want to stab and remind that manga literally just means comic. It has no shiney specialness in Japan. THEY call Disney animation anime. THEY call X-Men manga.

Anyway, I have a new perfect retort. A character replies that if you apply the logic that only Japanese manga can be called Manga because it's a Japanese art form, then you can't call it pizza unless it's made by Italians.

The same character also says "We can call it fried cheese if we want, it's a free country."

Thank you, and so's your muffin.