{"id":122,"date":"2001-12-22T01:11:48","date_gmt":"2001-12-22T06:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/12\/22\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-23T19:16:38","modified_gmt":"2005-10-23T23:16:38","slug":"short-and-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/12\/22\/short-and-sweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Short and Sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Time for various mini-reviews!<\/p>\n

Rose of Versailles: From what I can tell, the live action movie actually pre-dates the anime, which I thought was interesting. The movie had a Toei logo at the start (As Okina said, anything from the makers of Gojira must be good), but I’m not sure if they just distributed it or if it was their production. The director was french, but the cast was of various European ethnicities and they were all speaking English. I guess I don’t have any feel for how popular RoV was when it was coming out in the 70s. Would Japanese people have gone to see a subtitled live action movie about a shoujo manga? Apparently. I must admit up front that I’m not really familiar with the ending of the RoV manga. I know the basic plot, but have tried to remain relatively unspoiled until I can get around to watching\/reading it. So I can’t comment on cuts and additions which this movie made. I can say that I thought it was actually pretty good. It started with Oscar’s birth and ended with the storming of the Bastille, so spanned a pretty long period of time in 2 hours, but they simplified the plot enough that this wasn’t a problem. They also went the distance trying to get their actors and actresses to look like the manga characters. Oscar \/was\/ Oscar. It was very impressive. Summary: It had everything I look for in a movie of this nature: costumes and swordfights. Probably not entirely accurate to the manga but not painful to watch. It was good. 7\/10.<\/p>\n

Harry Potter: No, I haven’t seen it again, but after seeing Lord of the Rings (below), I have to revise my opinion of it. I think that I begin to see the point of the people who are complaining that ‘they stuck too closely to the book to make a good movie’. That’s not entirely accurate, but I get the idea. They were too worried about including as many incidents from the book as possible. The movie was essentially scene after scene, shot out rapid fire with little to connect them. Each event seemed to have as much importance as the next, which was, essentially, none. There was no character growth, no learning process for the audience. The book takes the reader through the first year of Hogwarts, introducing us to the wizarding world as Harry learns about it. Quidditch and Voldemort are persistant themes throughout the book, but in the movie, they seemed more… pasted in, not a continuing thread. Because of the obsession with scenes<\/i>, the movie failed to present a cohesive plot<\/i>, and as I said before, really missed the characterization. <\/p>\n

Lord of the Rings: I’ve seen it twice now, and it was better the second time. Wow. Just.. wow. The effects were wonderful — as seamlessly integrated as they could have been… none of that Harry Potter rubberiness for LotR, thank you. The acting was top notch. The first scene of HP was a little flat (to go back to that movie for a moment); the actors seemed to just be reciting their lines. There was none of that here. It pulled you in right from the very beginning. There was action and plot and character development and everything happened for a reason. Even if we didn’t find out about it yet, it was obvious that we would<\/i> eventually. Things did not happen only to be forgotten and never thought of again. The purists are still raging that it didn’t ape the book, but I’ve already voiced an opinion on that. I don’t think the book was that great. I’ve been reading it again, and making some progress, but… it drags. The movie took the plot and tightened it a lot. And now, the actors… again, wow. Aside from their acting, which was great, they were (for the most part) SO YUMMY. See, you don’t get that in the books. It’s just ‘here’s a story with all guys and hardly any girls’. I forsee lots of slash in the future. Not that I happen to agree with all of the pairings (already) being suggested. But I can see the potential for some. I mean, if there are no women around, these boys have to be doing something, right? 10\/10.<\/p>\n

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Time for various mini-reviews! Rose of Versailles: From what I can tell, the live action movie actually pre-dates the anime, which I thought was interesting. The movie had a Toei logo at the start (As Okina said, anything from the makers of Gojira must be good), but I’m not sure if they just distributed it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}