kung fu hustle, shaolin soccer, blade: trinity, hitchhiker's, nausicaa, mononoke

lots of movies lately. kung fu hustle and shaolin soccer were a while ago. go see KFH in theaters. it's worth 10.50 and 4 bucks for the subway ride. shaolin soccer is out on dvd. they are both amazing. to be honest, i would be hard pressed to admit which is wackier. one question, although this might be a minor spoiler: why is the girl in shaolin soccer pretty at the end? does that mean all she had to do for her entire life was wash those oozing sores (or whatever they were, i watched a not great quality VHS) off her face? still need to catch god of cookery. i can't find it on dvd here in the states. or rather, i can, but i'm afraid it will be a bootleg.

blade: trinity - terrible. i loved blade 2 - in fact, i enjoyed it much more than the first. why didn't they just do the same over the top action with different fill-in-the-blanks for characters and bad guys and witticisms? instead they made this one a fucking slow-paced joke with an out of place unfunny sidekick (van wilder man is funny, but it simply does not work in a vampire flick), an incompetent team of hunters that blade is forced to work with (they put the _BLIND_ woman on watch), a nasty looking head female vampire (nyssa was a hottie, i remember her from the tailor of panama), and the most inappropriate product placement i've ever seen in a movie - and that is saying a lot. jessica biel likes to make playlists on her apple laptop for her apple ipod so she can listen to music while... fighting vampires?? granted, zhu and i watched the extended version as opposed to the theatrical, but if everything that should have been cut was, the movie would be 20 minutes long, and that's being generous. oh, and dracula - the FIRST - looked like a reject from the village people. so gay.

hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy -

oh yes, those fuckers at enfield cinema 12 changed the super matinee (4-6 pm 7 days a week) from $4.25 to $5.00. i remember when, not too long ago, it was only a smooth $4. oh well. $5 is still cheap. it reminds me of those restaurants in the columbia area that, starting out, would give incredible portions for very cheap, and raise their prices every year, until they're no longer a good deal, but they're still not that bad. for example, saji's is still a nice deal, but that first year they opened up was amazing. i think m2m's lunch platters were bigger in the beginning, too.

anyways, hitchhiker's. it's funny how one certain movie can make an actress beautiful. i recognize the name zooey deschanal; i'm sure i've seen her in movies before, but until now she was not remarkable enough for me to recognize her. now she's hot. it was the same thing with jenna elfman in keeping the faith. and kelly preston in nothing to lose. the movie was cool. definitely worth $5. not sure about $(10.50+4). sam rockwell was hilarious, as was mos def. the robot was awesome. i read the series a long time ago and i barely remember it, which probably made the movie better. corny how they placed the romance angle at the forefront, but then movies always need a romance, or the execs think so, at least. i feel they should not have listed douglas adams in the screenplay credit, as he has been _dead_ for a long while now. but i don't think he'd be ashamed of the movie by any means.

nausicaa of the valley of the wind. i picked it up from best buy for 19.99, which was a deal. it was supposed to cost 28.99 but they mislabeled it. i really should have picked up all of those - the cat returns, porco rosso, kiki's delivery service, castle in the sky - when they initially came out and best buy had them for 17.99. in general, movies will go down to under $10 if one is patient. except animated films. which sucks. i'm going to pick up kiki's for 21 something from DDD because i want to show it to my nieces, but that extra 3 dollars and change will eat at me.
the movie is amazing, as are all of miyazaki's films. on the miyazaki meter, which i suppose is some sort of relative rating scale of all of his films that i have seen, i would place it between... damn, it's impossible. they're all good in their own categories. kiki's delivery service is #1 in girl witch sets out on her own and starts a broom flying delivery service. my neighbor totoro is #1 in little kids befriend a magical totoro and ride a catbus. castle in the sky is #1 in boy inventor catches a girl falling out of the sky and discovers the remnants of a lost civilization. so on and so on. they're all so different and so amazingly unique that they can't really be compared with one another.

princess mononoke, or mononoke hime - i will say that this is my favorite miyazaki film. there are a number of reasons: it was the first one i saw. thank you kentaro. the main character is a man, which is unusual, plus i'd give anything to be him. "yes, i was resolved the moment i let my arrow fly." how cool is that. HOW COOL IS THAT? and i think it's more adult in its themes and plot compared to most of his films. i just watched it again last night, fell asleep halfway through, and finished it this morning. so incredible. the symphonic ost is epic. the description on the back of the dvd is a mite painful, but what can you do.