Hercules, Tony Takitani, 2046 DVD, Affliction, & The Children of Heaven

Well, I've seen Hercules. The Disney animated version. Why did I watch it? Think of the geekiest reason you could possibly imagine, and then go geekier. I watched it because at some point, in the next year, I will own either a PS2 or a PS3, which will allow me to play Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, both of which feature parts of Hercules. And I wanted to know a little about it before playing those. And it was on the Disney channel when I had some free time. See? That's pretty darn geeky. As for the movie itself, Megara was attractive, and James Woods was enjoyable, but man, those songs sucked and their abuse of Greek Mythology (why is it that they use Hercules rather than Heracles like every other Greek name in it?) was horrendous. Why did they have Hera be his mother, when her hatred for Zeus cheating was the reason for all of his struggles, not Hades trying to take over Mt. Olympus? Damn things like that just pissed me off mightily. And while the CGI, especially during the fight with the Hydra (which wasn't killed by fire, for some reason), was mediocre, it was in a cartoon which didn't bother me at all.

Tony Takitani's name was... Tony Takitani. Tony Takitani the movie is a fairly faithful version of one of Haruki Murakami's short stories, this one published in the New Yorker in 2002. This one, unlike a lot of his short stories actually has an ending, even if it's just a big bunch of depressing. And about the only thing it doesn't have that most of his stories have is cats. Well, cats and supernatural activities. It is a well-constructed film, with lots of slow camera movements showing characters alone, even when in public, emphasizing the theme. I'm actually surprised that Murakami allowed anything of his to be filmed, but this one seems like it was simple enough for him to allow it. Even if the end was different, and there were some other minor differences within it, even if a lot of the dialogue and narration were directly from the story. But if he's allowing films to be made, I really hope that he never allows anyone to screw up Norwegian Wood. I believe I would have to get violent were that to happen. I actually would love to see someone try, but any script changes would have to be approved. If I had the money, I'd pay to make the movie. Anyway, Tony Takitani was possibly the slowest 75 minutes ever made. But it was also extremely well made and accurately portrays the story.

I lost a hell of a lot of text about the 2046 DVD because I was writing it in Gmail and it disconnected in the middle. Damnit. It's probably a good thing because all I did was say how great the DVD was, that the CGI was intentionally like it was in 2046, that Tony Leung's English is very good and he should make a good American film at some point, and that I go goofy over the women in this movie. I also wish that the first deleted scene were back in the movie, as I think Gong Li needed another scene to look gorgeous, tortured, and hot. The alternate ending would have made what was clearly implicit in the rest of the movie blatantly explicit, thus detracting somewhat from the movie. The second deleted scene was interesting, as it did allow a little more insight into Chow Mo Wan, but it would have broken the barrier between the "present" and "future". All in all, if you loved the movie, but haven't seen the extras, it's well worth at least renting to see them.

Affliction was just an excuse to try to get some Oscar nods for Nick Nolte and James Coburn. In that it was successful. Otherwise, it was just another one of those terrible abusive father ruins kid's life movies. Even if it took a little longer than it normally would in this type of movie. Really nothing too special about anything in it besides the two actors. Willem Dafoe is boring as hell. So is the movie for extended periods of time. Were it not for the good acting, there would be nothing separating this movie from any other Oscar bait that is nowhere near as good as it thinks it is.

The Children of Heaven is basically a Disney movie about the poverty that exists in Iran. Baran, a later film from Majid Majidi, was actually good, this one not so much. I wasn't too impressed with the child actors, as anyone who's seen lots of movies knows, child actors are almost always the worst thing in a movie. When you have them as the main parts of a movie, it just is a bad sign for the movie. I don't care how novel it is that it's an Iranian film, I didn't get that much out of it. Maybe the movie is good for some people, but I just kept getting bothered by the kids and their extremely forced acting. It's much better when you don't have the kids trying to act sad or happy.