(no subject)

[oyceter]

Spent most of yesterday with yuneicorn, which was quite fun. I made her watch Spirited Away with me, because I just got the DVD (the American one... the Taiwan one is at home, but I wanted the American one because the Taiwan one doesn't have English subtitles, which means I can't sic it on tons of people). I continue to adore the movie, which is my favorite Miyazaki (that's saying a lot, considering how much I adore Miyazaki). I think on rewatching, one of the reasons why it might be my favorite is the whimsical fairy tale nature of the movie; none of the rules quite make sense, and yet, they make a perfect sort of nonsensical sense. And so many of the things just feel fairy-tale-like -- the need to work, the dangers of eating foreign foods, the importance of names, how little actions of kindness spiral away to larger things. It has fairy tale logic, and I love that. Also, I just love all the little details that are in the animation -- Chihiro holding her hair thing in her mouth (something I always do), her bumping her head when trying to stand up, the scene where she's stuffing onigiri in her mouth and crying. I swear, I don't know what it is about that scene, but it's so perfect that I can actually feel the lump you get in your throat while crying and how eating the onigiri is in a sense trying to swallow that. And I love the rain scenes and how I can somehow tell it is still a muggy summer day, despite the rain, and how I know intimately how that feels.

One of my favorite sequences is that long, surreal train ride over an ocean.

Also watched Kill Vill 2, which I did not like so much. I suppose this is not at all surprising, given that I thought the first one was horribly boring and fell asleep during the big fight scene (I was tired!) Spoilers for the end here:

So, apparently I watch everything with that little voice in my head looking at gender roles, because I was quite irked at how in the end, this grand story of vengeance turns out to be a thwarted romance and sparked by a mother's love for her child. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but why do I always feel like a female character's anger can always be boiled down to either spurned love or spurned mother-ness? I dunno. Anyhow, I suspect yhlee would have been rather sporky about this, but she wasn't here, so I was sporky on her behalf, if that makes any sort of sense. It was just... well, here was this deadly assassin person, supposedly the most dangerous woman in the world (what about the men? Is she more dangerous than them? Why not just say the most dangerous person in the world?), and by the end of the movie, instead of being an assassin, she was instead identified as a lover and mother, defined by the other people in her life as opposed to her skills or her mission. Wargh.

One of the things that I liked the most about Mr. and Mrs. Smith was that they never did that to the Angelina Jolie character. Well, at least I felt like she got to stay nifty assassin person, and that her non-emotional involvement rivalled her husband's.

Am quite excited about seeing Batman tomorrow! Joy joy!