p e n g u i n d e v i l

Dead dead dead. That’s how this week was. Not sure where the time went, but not much for films. I did manage to throw down three in the last 24 hours or so…

Well, I finally watched The Stairway to the Distant Past. Being rather fond of The Most Terrible Time in My Life (it being the film that started me down the Japanese film road), I have been wanting for a good while to watch the rest of the Maiku Hama trilogy. This one though, didn’t really do much for me. It took three views to make it to the end and I can’t really say that it made any impression on me. It did have Shinya Tsukamoto, who I always like to watch. Aside from that, it didn’t strike me as having the same character or freshness of the first one. Though now I need to see what the final chapter has in store, I would recommended The Most Terrible Time in My Life to anyone with a liking for light-hearted japanese detective films.

Though I never made much progress with my Star Wars series a few weeks ago, I do plan on finishing a smaller series by watching the first 3 Alien movies. Tonight I watched Alien. Only my second time through this “Director’s Cut”, I feel like I like it more than the theatrical release, Director’s vision be damned! I like how it flows, though I suppose that I should watch them both sometime to really get a feeling for how the story-line is affected. I am sure that I will continue this for the next two movies. All of the first three are among my favorite films.

Then yesterday, well. We watched Bride & Prejudice. It’s the closest thing I have seen to a Bollywood film. Some of it was very colorful and kind of fun. For a musical, there weren’t too many numbers and they weren’t that bad. I think that my watching of it was a bit colored by having seen the new film just a couple of weeks ago (and my pre-conceptions, of course). I liked the new Pride & Prejudice quite a bit and having just watched the same story made it a bit distracting for this one. Aside from that, it was entertaining and a fun watch.

As an aside, I am finding people lately who are a bit too shy when it comes to Terry Gilliam. As just about the finest filmmaker out there, everyone owes it to themselves to watch his films. In terms of watching those films, I would also venture that the best of them (Brazil, Fear & Loathing, The Adventures of the Baron Munchausen) should be closely watched at least once. A casual viewing will cause one to miss too much of the movie and they will not realize the full experience! Yes, I am even saying that Fear & Loathing should be watched straight… At least once…