Let's kill off all the main characters!

You know those are cool sunglasses.

Akira Kurosawa is actually pretty good. I knew he was good from the start, but as usual I was pleasantly surprised. Again.

Anyway, I'd say Yojimbo was my favorite movie of his, followed by Ran, with "Stray Dog" not even making the list. That loud panting in the main menu of "Stray Dog" made me cringe and the movie didn't do much to alleviate that. Anyway, I can't get enough of the theme song in Yojimbo, the one that plays whenever the samurai guy is rollin' down the street looking for stuff to cut up. I just can't get enough of that. For example, when he walks up to the "badass" bad guys and cuts up about four of em, he just calls em cute, cuts em all up, and walks away with his awesome theme song playing. How cool is that?

The best part, though, is the bad guy who... well, I'll just let the scene speak for itself. The coffin guy tells him that there were four coffins made for the opposing "family", and two for his. He holds up two fingers, counts on them, and about five seconds later he says "Good, good." How awesome is that? He also helps carry Sanjuro to safety, despite trying to kill him. I'm telling you, the guy's beyond awesome. He's super special awesome.

It's making too much sense! Make it stop!!!

These little clicky-head guys are the coolest things I have ever seen in my entire life.

Anyway, Princess Mononoke was an amazing movie.
I easily enjoyed it the most out of all Miyazaki's movies, but the one thing that really stood out was that it made some sense. It, instead of throwing in random characters like the rolling heads in Spirited Away and the top-hat ghost things in Howl's Moving Castle, actually uses meaningful characters and relates to a contemporary issue, protection of the environment. It, however, does it with spunk. Lots and lots of spunk. Everything is a spirit and there is a lot of random battle and slaughter. For example, the main character punk kid shoots a bunch of guys with his bow. He hits them all in the neck. What do these arrow heads each less than an inch wide do? Well, they knock the guys' heads clean off. Honestly, what the hell? I guess I'd better watch out for arrows or my head's gonna come flying off too.

The coolest part of the movie, though, is these awesome little clicky guys pictured above. Basically, they're these little things that randomly run around and click their heads. They ride on each others' heads, jump around, and appear from trees. There is also a random shot of thousands of them clicking at once. How awesome is that?

Let's Hitchcock it up.

Here in this wonderful portrait, Hitchcock is trying to impersonate Doctor Evil but is having a bit of trouble, namely using the wrong finger.

Anyway, I must say I was pleasantly surprised with Hitchcock's movies, because before now I had thought of him as some old director of bad horror movies (Psycho and/or The Birds). After seeing 3 of his movies, I can actually say that I really enjoyed them despite how old they are.

He has a very unique style that I really found interesting and I particularly liked his tendency to prefer suspense to surprise, and this was very apparently in Rear Window, when Girlie Sue is in Thorwald's apartment and we see him walking down the hallway to his apartment, I was genuinely wondering what was going to happen. This is obviously different from other directors because in their movies I know the main character is invincible and everything will be peachy in the end. Hitchcock changed that, and it was a very refreshing change of pace.

What kinda creeped me out is Hitchcock's disturbing obsession with stalking and "smart blonds". Hmmm...

Now the ghosts have top hats.

Well now. In Spirited Away I was trippin' out and wondering what in the name of jackassery was going on, but now in Howl's Moving Castle, I was wondering why time didn't matter anymore.

Take Girlie Sue, for example. She starts out at maybe 20 years old. Some amoeba/witch thing puts a curse on her and she wakes up at like 30,000 years old. We can see that this is somewhat possible assuming that witches can cast spells and stuff. It gets better, though. She becomes a very feminine wizard's cleaning lady at the request of the complete studmuffin/fire thing/garbage disposal/loudmouth above. Anyway, she randomly becomes younger, maybe 60 years old, doesn't hunch over to 2 feet tall anymore, and has a somewhat normal voice. Then, the wizard randomly walks into the closet and there she is, sleeping, 20 years old again. He runs away screaming (not really) and she becomes 30,000 years old again the next morning. This happens maybe half a dozen times in the movie and by the end she's back to her old self, except she has gray hair for no reason. Yeah. Don't ask.

Howl's moving castle has an enjoyable cast of confusing characters. We've got the same old ghost blob things, but this time they have top hats. (How cool is that?) We've got a scarecrow pogo stick turnip thing, we've got an old woman race to the top of stairs and one of them melts on the way up. There are also a squeaking, obese dog that can fly with its ears, an amoeba person, a feminine wizard who turns to goo when he has an emo attack, and awesome guys who run around carrying a blob in a box.

Case in point: Dubbya tee eff is going on here?

My purpose in life is now to find out what Miyazaki is smoking.

Go away, you damn ghost things!

Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away was trippy, dude. Far out. I know I'm going to be blasted as "racist" for this, but as far as I have seen, 99% of Japanese things are completely crazy and make about one atom of sense. Commercials, movies, game shows, you name it. It's all crazy and looking at it for more than a second or so would give nearly anyone a siezure. Spirited away was no different.

Basically, a girl, Chihiro, on a car trip with her parents, randomly finds an abandoned theme park and is transported to a very... interesting spirit world bathhouse thing. She then has to go on a quest to bring back her parents who were (of course) turned into pigs. There are chicken people, frog people, rolling decapitated heads, a cannibalistic blob who can spawn gold, and a skeleton who barfs up a junkyard and can fly. What else? Anyway, Chihiro outsmarts the evil witch who runs the bathhouse and is randomly transported back where she started.

Hayao Miyazaki obviously has a very "unique" style. Spirited Away is a great movie, I'll grant it that, but the setting was nothing less than a psychedelic wonderland and frankly it made no sense. I could easily sit here for several hours and tear the movie apart for that, but that was the purpose of the movie methinks. It's just an escape from having to have everything make sense.

On IMDB, Spirited Away got an 8.5 out of 10 and is the 56th best movie on there according to viewers. I'd say they agree with me that it's a damn good movie.

Do the Right Thing, eh?

Buggin' Out here basically results in the death of one of his comrades because of his incredibly obstinate nature and desire to pick fights in general.

As he showed with a white biker who accidentally ran over his shoes yet apologized or it, Buggin' Out insists on picking fights with all the whites around him.

Buggin' Out also sparks an argument with Sal because there aren't any blacks on his wall of famous Italian-Americans. It's Sal's shop and Sal has the right to do anything he wants in his shop. If I recall correctly, Italian-Americans are almost completely white, as Italy played almost no part in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Telling Sal to have a correct percentage of black people on the wall is telling him to model his wall after the racial makeup of the country, but race is only one aspect of a person. That's like calling Sal discriminatory for not having the correct number of people above 5'10", the correct number of people with chicken pox, or the correct number of people with health insurance. The entire concept is absurd.

The Battle of Algiers

I read this review for The Battle of Algiers.

The author makes a good point in that we are facing the same situation in Iraq as the French faced in Algeria in the 50s. The enemy cannot be beaten if they can't be found with ethical means. That's why resistance groups are so potent despite their lack of resources, skills, or strength. They fight dirty, kill civilians, but are protected by the fact that nations can't make any low blows. That's like a midget with a minigun vs. an 8 foot tall, 500 pound guy with a plastic spoon and both arms tied behind his back by the UN.

My opinion is this. If you're going to fight a war with rubber bullets, you might as well not fight the war at all. Either pull out or do what needs to be done to win. Otherwise, you're just getting people killed and wasting money.