If some of the battling nerds on the movie’s IMDB page are to be believed, Miyazaki’s adaptation of this beloved children’s classic was a disgrace. I read the book (the existence of neither it nor its author I suspected until I checked said IMDB page) with that criticism in mind, and have to say: balderdash. While it is true that the two stories diverge in minute details, and that Miyazaki added elements typical for his work, and created visuals not prescribed in Jones’ book, the two are remarkably congruent. The story does make a bit more sense in the book, but then I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing in a book about demons falling from the sky and stealing hearts. I was smitten with the strangeness of Miyazaki’s take, and the straightforward resolution left me a bit underenchanted. On the other hand, the character’s behaviour makes more sense in the book, making them both more likeable and more interesting than the somewhat randomly bouncing anime folk.

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It is one of the secrets of the creative process that a bunch of people who sound like they haven’t a clue about what they are doing, or why, can produce something profound and moving. Comparing, in this case, the cast and crew interviews on the DVD with the movie itself, the dichotomy couldn’t be greater. Where the movie is a masterpiece for so many reasons and in so many ways (and in spite of its occasionally stilted acting in the tradition of the German Kleines Fernsehspiel), the comments of the people who made it fall amazingly short. Most telling was Maria Schrade, who in the space of under two minutes mentioned no less than six times that the fact that it was a lesbian lovestory didn’t matter at all. Form and function, quite at odds, but thanks for the effort.
When Brokeback Mountain made it big recently, some German critic complained how utterly unthinkable a like movie would be in a German setting – two male blue collar workers in the Ruhrgebiet getting it on – the opposite of cool and moving (I’m transcribing liberally here)(which, funny enough, is just one little typo away from literally, as I just discovered). But Aimee and Jaguar is that movie, and both the fact that it tells a true story, and the backdrop of the apocalyptic insanity of Berlin during the end of the Second World War, heighten the intensity of its message. I don’t want to compare Brokeback Mountain and Aimee and Jaguar to each other, both movies are great achievements in their own right, but I do think they should have the right to marry each other and have lots of kids. I’d love to see them.

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When I get tired while watching one of Oliver Stone’s docudramas, is it because my attention span has been lamentably brought down from what would be a decent standard, or because Stone tends to overload his movies with too much information about his ever intriguing subjects? In this case, the effect was exacerbated by Stone wanting to show Morrison’s death as a sudden event and an abrupt ending, rather than a conclusion, which means that – unless you knew when he died, in which case the occasional chapter-like caption indicating the time of the action would give you a hint – you’d be well into the third hour until you felt the end approaching. By that time it had become my friend, indeed. Kilmer’s acting, however, the amazing script, and, of course, the soundtrack all make this a wonderful treat. The cliche notion of the artist as a messianic figure, burning brightly so the audience doesn’t have to, yet gets to enjoy the warmth vicariously I didn’t care too much about, but Stone doesn’t push it too hard, and Morrison’s particular blaze drowns the light of reasoned argument in his great balls of fire anyway. Oops, wrong band.

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The plot of this odd movie about the unlikely friendship between a drug enforcer cop and a big time coke dealer doesn’t make too much sense, and the love story thrown in doesn’t help either. The script at times seems incoherent, as though the writers didn’t quite know where to take it. The hairdos and dresscode are a vivid reminder of everything that was bad about the eighties, but the single worst thing about this movie has to be the signature Sexophone that starts whining every time romance lurks in the shadows. Puh-lease. The highlight of the movie is Raul Julia as the mexican druglord Carlos. The plot surrounding him, especially the supposed eight years of covertly working with the DEA, without them knowing that he wasn’t a Mexican official, diesn’t make any sense, but his acting does.

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About halfway through the movie I realized that I was waiting in vain, and that the strong sense of tension probably wasn’t going to be relieved by some big event. Turns out I was wrong, but I’d still say that this is a movie about ideas more than about events. An aging, repressed and puritan writer of mystery novels is sent to France to find inspiration, finds her missing psychological counterpart instead, in a young promiscuous and hedonisitic woman, and embraces her worldview, to return to her editor with a book that reflects her maturation. How much of the plot truly happened, and how much of it just reflects the story she writes is anybody’s guess, but the cinematography and design is consistently geat and very subtle, and the atmosphere of unresolved tension is almost palpable throughout.

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The biggest corporate scandal of our time, explained. Before I saw this, I feared to see the ruthless and ingenious machinations of evil people would get me agitated without offering a way out. But to see the ruthless machinations of evil people leaves me incredulous for their lack of ingenuity, and the problem turns out not to be a few crooks, but a fundamentally flawed system. None of it should have happened, but scores of investment bankers and brokers fell for the nude emperor, because they had stock in non-clothing. Sure enough, there are a few monstrous moments, as when the Californian energy grid is played for money, but overall, it’s just business as usual. How horrible.

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Neil Gaiman’s work is a bit of a paradox to me. I like his storytelling and inventiveness – if sometimes reluctantly, for excessive use of pathos -, but visually he consistently seems to be balancing on the fringes of a realm of exuberant quirkyness and fantasy running wild that gives me the creeps for all the wrong reasons. This movie is no exception, with a neat twist on good/evil dichotomies, a likable set of characters, and oodles of visual frills. But several of the ideas here are so enjoyable (the birdmonkeys, sphinx/cats and the pair of giants being just three of the more memorable), that the flaws don’t much matter. Maybe I can even bring myself to read the Sandman one of these days. Why? Because it’s there.

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I still remember being blown to pieces by Mononoke-hime, and it’s hard to imagine anything ever will surpass Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, but Hauro ranks a close (Totoro!) third in the Miyazaki charts. While the plot becomes impenetrable in more than one place, the mysteriousness of what’s going on just adds to the dreamlike quality of the story. The fire demon is a delight, the design a visual triumph, and the characters, in their moral murkyness typical for Miyazaki, likable even when they are the closest anyone can come to evil in his universe. I could maybe have done with a little less screentime for his usual themes of the evils of war and industrialism, but since even those looked good, I won’t bicker. See it if you haven’t, see it again if you have.

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A justified message hardly ever gets better, when it is preached instead of told subtly, and Network makes no difference. This drama of a unscrupulous bunch of network executives turning TV news into a quota hungry travesty akin to a televangelism sideshow would have been much stronger if there weren’t several droning monologues of the main character about the evils of television. It is somewhat ironic that a movie that accuses audiences of blindly gobbling up sensationalism and following any and every leader, if he shouts loud enough, and the executives of ruthlessly exploiting this lack of maturity, resorts to propaganda to try and get its message across, not trusting its own audience, either. Just who, one wonders, are the writers trying to talk to here, and what do they really want to say? As it stands, the message seems to be that since audiences are dumb sheep, the producers of media need to be responsible shepherds. That message is snobbery so close to the opinions held by the films villains as to make it hard to take its scathing criticism of western society seriously. Network has its nice moments – some of Peter Finch’s madman preaching is quite cute, as is the cinematography and the acting -, but overall, it disappoints.

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While parts of the second season of the new Galactica drag just as badly as the first – in particular the plot elements concerned with the Cylon masterplan and the impending birth of the child of doom are stretched so thin as to be practically impreceptible. Also, the density of journalists and the political and social structure of the fleet still don’t make much sense other than as commentary on the US today. On the plus side, the acting, set design and the general military mood are great, and the writing, which is generally quite good, of the last few episodes of the second season in particular was excellent. Partly because the main plotline, stalled by the arrival of the Pegasus and its semifascist admiral, finally started moving, but also because the usual seriousness was spiced up with some nice humorous elements. A welcome relief from the heavy handedness which some of the political and moral issues were presented with. The explanation for how the humans were detected (the atomic blast was picked up a year later and a light year away) is a nice nod to physics (though you have to wonder where this nebula clad planet is located for there to be something of interest just a lightyear away. Ah, well). I’m looking forward to the next season, which is slated for airing starting October.

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