Friday Entertainment

[drakyndra]

Was going to comment last night, but I wasn't back until late-ish, and decided that sleep was rather high on my To Do List.

But, onto Friday's entertainment:

My slave duties were finally taken up on, which meant at lunchtime Friday, the entirety of Second Floor got gifted with the bizarre sight of altheas all in black with his Darth Vader mask, annatheannoying also in black, but with an Emperor-esque cloak (well...academic gown) and fa11ing_away and I dressed as stormtroopers (or wearing white labcoats, at least. I thought we looked more like doctors) all marching around to the Imperial March.

And then singing the Star Wars Gangster Rap.

All together now: Oookay, then...

But, slave time was being used up, so it was of the good. And I know pictures were being taken, so I expect some to show up on my flist any day now.

Dinner was odd, seeing as the Kitchen staff had decorated the kitchen for Halloween. Fake spider webs, that cheesy haunted house music, skulls and monsters and all that stuff. Randomly amusing, but really, really unexpected. I wish I had photos, though.

Also, that evening, Penny and a few other college types I know asked if I wanted to go see Howl's Moving Castle (the original Japanese version, not the dubbed one) at Nova. As I am a bit of a Diana Wynne Jones fan, and quite liked the book, I decided to join in.

Which meant firstly a supper with some Church friends of hers, which was quite fun (and religion was left out of it, which was good).

The movie itself...the graphics were awesome, I can say that much. Truly, truly fabulous. And I coped quite well with subtitles, even if there was an occasional oddity. But the story...well, they cut out almost all the nice backstory which I had loved in the book, and did some very odd symbolic stuff about Sophie's aging. And what the hell was all that bird junk?

I mean, it has been a while since I read the book, but really, the further you went into the movie, the more it differed from the book. Which annoyed me a lot. And that ending...I swear, it looked as if people had just suddenly realised that they had used up all the time, and so they crammed all the climax and concusion into about 5 minutes.

Oh well. Though watching the movie has made me want to go read the book again, so something good has come of it.

Comments

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

The bird stuff I could cope with, it fits in a bit of a discussion of Howl's Magical abilities that got cut along the lines.

The bit I didn't understand was how the plot suddenly took a u turn and started to be about a war and then introduced new characters who disappeared after 5 minutes.

I normally have enormous respect for Miyazaki-san's work, but this just left me boggled. The visuals were gorgeous, but the latter part of the story was almost incoherent.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

True. And it was the latter half where they differed hugely from the book. And they dropped the back-story which explained about the war (the scarecrow prince - it was his disappearance that caused the fighting to go major)

[fasangel.livejournal.com]

I only saw the dubbed version, but yes, the changes were so strange and pointless. As I explained to someone, take the book, remove all the plot, and add a big ass war. But the worst point I still find was Sophie saying something along the lines of "but I love you, so I can stick my nose into anything I like, even if you don't care about me".

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty certain the war was in the book, but as backstory. You never saw any of it close, you just heard about it from a distance.

And the romance...it was just weird. I don't know what they were thinking there.

[nearlyalegume.livejournal.com]

And the war wasn't war war, it was in sync with the rest of the timeline... none of this bomb-dropping mega-zeppelin weirdness.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Very, very true.