Sakura of DOOM

Wreck-It Ralph

Really loved this. Love all the gender stuff and how quietly and matter-of-factly the movie codes gaming as a gender-neutral or sometimes leaning-toward-female thing, LOVE Jane Lynch's character, adored the Sarah Silverman character, and was very impressed by how Dreamworks managed to make a pop-culture-inspired movie that feels so much bigger than just a string of pop-culture jokes. Also had thoughts about Ralph kinda sorta representing male gamer privilege when he's so medal focused. CB didn't quite think so, though. What do people think?

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva

So weird to not be solving puzzles by myself for the whole movie! Alas, the series continues to have saintly, largely inactive girls and women, though at least this one features Emmy for a bit. There are also a lot of Laputa influences. Mostly it makes me want to play the newest Layton, which I have discovered is now out but only available for the 3DS. ARGH. Want to play but don't want to buy a 3DS just to play a single game!

The Hobbit

I've never been a fan of the book (read it once in sixth grade, never mustered up enough interest to ever finish a reread), so mostly I had fun with the movie. Was happy just to be back in cinematic Middle Earth, especially once the Shire theme started to play. Mostly the movie is notable in that a) now I can at least remember one or two of the dwarves' names (me watching FotR Moria scene: "Who the heck is Balin?"), b) Thranduil's doofy-looking "I am not emotional" expression, c) the hunger-inducing first scenes in Bilbo's house, and d) RABBIT SLED.

Fellowship of the Ring rewatch

Wow, I can't believe it's been ten years. The special effects hold up amazingly well, I'm guessing because they did a lot of things with stunt doubles and forced perspective and miniatures. And though I'm now largely uninterested in mainly-male medieval Europe-ish quest epic fantasies, this one has so much nostalgia attached, both for the books and for the movies, that I don't care and I love it anyway. I was also extremely amused that the very first shot after the Fellowship is formed is a long shot of the Fellowship traversing a mountain range, silhouetted against the sky. Also, the end Boromir + Frodo scene is filmed disturbingly like a rape scene.

Yay! Giant sweep for Return of the King! Hee hee, and I am very glad that it rivals Titanic in awards.

Not much unexpectedness at all... I was kind of rooting for Bill Murray and Triplets of Belleville and American Splendor, but oh well.

Speaking of which, the jazzy musical number for Triplets and the snippets of animation they showed convinces me that I must go watch it very soon.

But yay! I'm just glad that after all the movies and everything people didn't just get sick of the hype and snub LotR. Because that was the movie this year that made me cry buckets.

Even more thoughts!

( RotK spoilers )

No real spoilers, just a very brief reaction because I have to collapse from sheer exhaustion now:

( Here )

Watched Fellowship of the Ring again today, in prep for RotK on Tuesday! The boy and I are going to the midnight showing, which means work on Wednesday will be hellish, but worth it ^_^. Some things that strike me:

The Shire grounds everything. It always makes me tear up later, after having seen that beautiful intro to the Shire -- Frodo's vision in Galadriel's mirror, Sam's companionship, Sam's speech in TT, with the faint strain of the Shire music playing, and the exchange between Merry and Pippin: "Don't you get it? There won't be a Shire."

I still miss Gandalf the Grey, who did things like smoke and joke around with the hobbits.

Boromir's fall and Faramir's subsequent temptation are fun parallels. I also heart the extra Boromir scene in the extended ed. DVDs very much, and they make Boromir's words and actions in the council of Elrond make even more sense.

I can't get the image out of my head of Elrond saying, "Welcome to Riveldell, Mr. Anderson."

I also still think that after Elrond has gone through his entire spiel on how they have to destroy the ring and says, "One of you must take it" in that giant silence that follows, everyone has their finger on their nose, except for Frodo, who's never heard of that game.

More Eowyn icons, because I like her a lot.

( Icons )
Inspired by hecatehatesthat's really awesome Buffy icon.

Been having a great deal of fun going through the special features of Two Towers and Chicago.. although I wish Chicago had more of everyone practicing backstage. Saw some clips of Catherine Zeta-Jones in rehearsal, and wow! She is amazing!

Still have yet to rewatch Two Towers, but I figure there'll be enough time for that tomorrow. I always get to a greater degree why there's so much LoTRPS out there after watching the actors talk about their experiences filming this giant thing. Wished there were more of Miranda Otto, because she was funny. I loved her reaction to seeing Viggo Mortensen for the first time, when she basically just gushed -- exactly what I would have thought! I do wish there were a bit more about Eowyn, but then I'm greatly biased ;). I wanted stuff on Eowyn's costumes and Eowyn's psychology, etc. etc. And maybe even a gentle nod and hint at the scenes in the Houses of Healing with Faramir. I was really excited to see that the extended version of TT is going to have more Boromir/Faramir/Denethor backstory in a flashback of some sort! I was kind of miffed when Faramir turned out to be almost villainous because he's painted as so noble in the book. It's quite unreasonable, but hey, I read it at a very impressionable age. The preview for RotK looks awesome. Can't wait for December! Sigh. Still four more months till then, huh?

But oh, the set for Minas Tirith looked beautiful! And I so desperately want to see Eowyn kill the Witch king! (and get together with Faramir because I am a hopeless romantic)

Fixed up my site a little more so now some of the fic links are working. I realize that my page is probably a giant page to load. Oh well. It's got the complete opposite design philosophy of TMT. TMT was text based and for low-bandwidths, supposedly compatible with all screen sizes and all OSs and browsers to make the info more accessible. My personal page is basically just going to be eye candy for me. So it looks best on my computer, and I really haven't bothered making it fit anyone else's. It's probably quite selfish, but I figure, it's a self-indulgent site, and really, who's going to wander over there anyway? So I'm making giant Photoshop images and the like. If anyone does want to brave it... it's here.

Still kind of in a depressed mood though =(.