“Spirited Away”

This isn’t my usual fare – I was never much into the Japanese animation scene. I watched Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” on video after all the buzz it got, and I liked it, although I remember almost nothing about it now.

But John‘s enthusiasm won me over, and it turns out to be a highly entertaining night at the movies. One beautiful fanciful image after another unspools in front of you, and the unfailing good nature of the enterprise carries you past the sometimes stilted dialogue or its rather long 2-hour running time.

Lots of people on IMDB compare it to “Alice in Wonderland,” but I would say it’s more like a Japanese “Wizard of Oz.” There’s even a sort of good witch-bad witch thing going on.

As John mentioned, my favorite part was the somewhat Disneyesque exploits of a bug carrying a mouse (trust me, you just have to see it). “Bug and Mouse” doesn’t have the ring of “Gnat and Rat.” But we can iron those details out later.

Recommended.

Anyone want some Halloween candy? Come to my house and you can have as much as you want.

Well, watching “Rosemary’s Baby” on Halloween night with all the lights off still didn’t scare me.

It did put me off health drinks, though.

One of the funniest things about watching Martha Stewart is seeing her when she has kids as guests on her show. Her usual general disdain for all humanity seems to be magnified when she has to deal with the little tykes.

Yesterday, she was making doughnuts, and apparently some mothers won a contest that allowed their children to be on the show with Martha. You could practically see the wisps of steam coming from her ears when the kids didn’t do what she expected.

Particularly funny was when she held up two bottles of food coloring, one red and one yellow, and asked in her best “I love the little darlings” voice, “What color do these two colors make when you mix them together?” She got a succession of good-natured guesses from the two young girls (including “turquoise”), and with each wrong guess, Martha seemed more and more intent on squeezing the right answer out of them. At last, mercifully, the older one “got it” and said timidly, “orange?”

I think if the girl hadn’t come up with the right answer, they would still be there to this day, grimly reciting colors like Christina Crawford contemplating her plate of raw meat.

Things that go ‘clunk’ in the night

When I was in high school, a freshman, I played Dr. Van Helsing in Richland Center High School’s production of “Dracula.” We couldn’t afford the license fee for the more traditional version, so we ended up performing a knock-off that included things like Dr. Seward’s wacky sister (played by the wonderful Val Schutzkus) that didn’t appear in the novel or any other version. Still, we had fun. I wore a 30s-style suit we bought at the thrift store for $5, and munched on an empty pipe to give me that professorial look.

None of us were even decent actors (although Val was hilarious). But Greg Kidd’s rendition of Jonathan Harker will haunt my dreams forever. When I was trying to come up with a Halloween tagline to go with the orange graphics, I thought of him turning to his beloved and bellowing “THERE ARE NO WOLVES HERE, MINA DARLING!” like he was ordering at Jack-in-the-Box through a malfunctioning speaker.

That was my last high school theater production.

Unbelievable update: After I wrote this post, I decided to see if my old high school had a web site. And in doing a simple search on Google, I found that they did the same play again this year. With the same director, the inimitable Ken Beatty. The more things change…

Last night I watched the debate episode of “The West Wing” on tape delay, because John, Matt, Sparky and I were out watching “Spirited Away” at last. While I didn’t think the episode was nearly as kick-ass as it could and should have been, it still caused me to form a 100% serious question in my mind:

Can anyone give me a reason why we wouldn’t be better off with Martin Sheen as the President instead of the current occupant? (I’d also love to have Stockard Channing as the First Lady, but that’s another issue.)

I’m dead serious about this.

Happy Halloween!

In my endless quest to find a movie that will scare me, I have “Rosemary’s Baby” sitting on the counter (on VHS, sadly) ready to go. I’m actually amazed I haven’t seen it before now. And my Japanese “Ring” DVDs arrived yesterday. So the search continues.

What’s the scariest movie you ever saw? Tell me a story to entertain me on Halloween.

Writing a review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” is difficult, since so much of the experience is beyond description. I will say I haven’t seen a more original, thought-provoking and emotionally affecting movie this year. Anyone looking for a traditional brainless slapstick comedy starring Adam Sandler will be terribly disappointed, and so much the better.

One of the remarkable things about this movie is that Sandler plays just a variation of many of his other characters – a barely-there man-child with serious rage issues. But in this movie, he’s a revelation. You feel the anguish of this borderline agoraphobic, autistic man so keenly it can be painful at times. You also feel his bursting joy when he meets a fellow tortured soul played by Emily Watson, whose hip-swinging walk and sparkling eyes would make anyone fall in love with her.

Along the way, there are car crashes, harmoniums in the street, plungers with dice on top, phone sex workers in Utah, music from “Popeye,” and other magic I’ll let you discover for yourself.

Go. see. this. movie.

Scenes from a movie concession stand (all true)

Me: I’d like a medium regular Coke, please.
Concession worker (11 years old): [long pause] Water?
Me: No, a medium regular Coke.
11-year-old: Now, would you like regular water, or flavored?
Me: No. No water. A regular Coke. Medium.

He finally gets that it’s a fountain drink, and slowly, slooowly grabs the paper cup, puts it vaguely under the spigots, and looks back at me.

11-year-old: Cherry Coke?

Had a fine time playing video games with Sparky tonight, even though he gave me a savage drubbing at every game we played. (We also watched “Punch-Drunk Love,” a review of which I will attempt tomorrow after my mind quiets down a bit.) My virtual brains were littered across miles of Halo ground – although I did manage to blow up his jeep several times, which was satisfying. I remain convinced that I’m too old for video games, and should be prohibited by state law from playing them in front of anyone. Sparky was gracious about it, which I appreciate.

Damn kids and their video games. 🙂