Another trip, another movie – Mr & Mrs Incredible

This is like the fifth time I’ve flown on KLM this year. This time I watched some non-Cantonese movies as well, so I only got one Canto movie in. It would have been more, but the other movies on offer all seemed to be either romantic movies or heavily Mandarin-influenced, so I wasn’t interested.

What I watched this time was Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, starring Louis Koo and Sandra Ng as a pair of retired superheroes who have to go back to their roots to foil a dastardly plot to steal martial artists’ powers. It’s not as good as it sounds. Pretty much the only good thing about it was that Ng and Koo have some great chemistry as a married couple as they go things like jealousy and infertility and buying a house together, that sort of thing. I can’t say I got too much Cantonese practice out of it, but I did finally figure out that the “gu-leung” thing that annoying ATV series kept saying stands for “Miss” or something close to it. That’s new.

So basically Mr. and Mrs. Incredible was a movie with plenty of failed attempts at humor and some rather mediocre superpower action, but the romance between the two leads made up for it. It was quite sweet and touching. A bit corny sometimes, and that love scene after she gets pissed off, well, that was like borderline marital rape, wasn’t it? But they overcame everything and had a baby in the end, so all’s well that ends well… I guess? It’s best not to think too deeply about it.

Well, enough about that. Next up, I’ve found two fairly modern Canto movies that have colloquial Cantonese subtitles: Stephen Chow’s Knight of Gamblers and Ekin Cheng’s Young and Dangerous 2. Young and Dangerous 1 probably has them as well, but I deleted it long ago and can’t be bothered to get it again, so we’ll make do with that we’ve got. Both movies aren’t much to write home about (YD2 is actually b-a-d), but if I can get my hands on some audio ripping software, I can rip the voice track, chop it up through Audacity and get myself several hundred new entries for my SRS. My computer is almost out of space, so I’d better get on with it sharpish so I can delete them.

That’s it for today!

Laputa: The Castle in the Sky anime review

I’m watching the Ghibli movies in chronological order, so after Nausicaa comes Laputa: Castle in the Sky (or just Castle in the Sky if you’re American). Another excellent movie, with an amazing soundtrack. It picks up faster than Nausicaa and has a happier ending, too. I just wasn’t happy with the bad guys getting away with murdering Nausicaa’s sick old dad in the previous movie, but this time everyone gets what’s coming to them so it feels really good.

“Be careful what you wish for” is normally the theme of this kind of movie, but in this case it’s more like “Wish for whatever you want, just don’t be mean to other people while doing it.” Wanting to find the legendary Laputa wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, and as Pazu said, someone would probably have found it eventually. In fact, if the bad guys had treated Sheeta and Pazu a little better, they might have cooperated willingly (Pazu especially, seeing how eager he was to find it). So they really got what they deserved in the end for their child-kidnapping robot-killing town-blowing up ways.

Laputa is more child-friendly than Nausicaa as well. It’s not half as preachy and Pazu and Sheeta feel more like regular kids just having a fun adventure. What a lovely movie. But the castle itself is such a sad place. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch it again for a while, but it was a great experience nevertheless.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind anime review

I watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind shortly before watching Ocean Waves. I’ve been going on a Ghibli kick lately, ever since I woke up and realized I’d only ever watched two Ghibili movies: Spirited Away and Ponyo on a Cliff. Both were pretty good, so I’ve always meant to watch more stuff from the same studio, so I’m watching them all in order.

I started with Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, but I’m not going to write about it because it didn’t make much of an impression on me. Nausicaa though, Nausicaa was good. It started out a bit slow, but once it took off it just never stopped. Air battles, land battles, plane crashes, random acts of violence, all sorts of crazy monsters, etc. I’m also watching Chrome-Shelled Regios right now, and I can tell it was inspired by Nausicaa. Just look at those crawling bugs and tell me they aren’t Ohmus.

Great soundtrack, fluid action, tons of twists and turns in the story, a lead character who is a borderline Mary Sue yet somehow manages not to be annoying, memorable side characters, a happy ending…what more do you want? This is a real classic.

Ocean Waves anime review

Originally known as Umi ga Kikoeru, Ocean Waves is a Studio Ghibli made-for-TV movie from 1993.  It’s fairly mediocre, as love triangle shows are wont to be.

 A girl named Rikako moves from Tokyo to Kochi because her parents gets divorced, but she has difficulties adjusting to her new life. The story is told through the eyes of one of her new classmates, whose name I have totally forgotten. Let’s call him Billy Bob.
Anyway, Billy Bob’s best friend Yutaka likes Rikako, but somehow Billy Bob is the one who ends up hanging out with her, until Billy Bob and Rikako have a bitter argument and stop talking. And then Billy Bob has a fight with Yutaka as well.
Fast forward to a year after graduation. Billy Bob meets Yutaka again and they make up. And there it is suddenly revealed that Billy Bob liked Rikako too! Except I totally didn’t see that at all in their interactions right until the end. You might say it’s subtle, but this is way beyond subtle and well into virtually-nonexistent territory. They basically just bitched at each other for 1 hour and that meant they were in love?
Well anyway, the ending has Billy Bob and Rikako meeting again at a train station. It’s stated that Rikako has finally gotten the stick out of her *** and stopped being a giant *****, so maybe things will work out between them. I didn’t know what to feel about all that because I just didn’t see the mutual attraction, but whatever. Good luck with that, guys.