Meta: Movies; tags

Last night I came upon a box of DVDs I packed over two years ago, when kareila, alierak, and I moved out of the house we'd been sharing in Watertown. So I decided to give myself a break and watch an old favorite. Which in turn prompted me to remember how much I love movies, and to think that maybe one of the things I could do with LJ is use it to keep track of which ones I've seen and what I thought of them.

So from now on when I watch (or re-watch) a movie, I'm going to try to write an entry about it — even if only to note the title. (One of my problems with such undertakings in the past (most notably several reading logs I've started and abandoned over the years) is that I feel like I ought to write something coherent, and when I don't have time to organize my thoughts, end up not writing anything at all. Then some number of years later I find myself twenty pages into a book going this seems familiar. I'm hoping a commitment from the start to write something, even if it's only the title, will keep me from falling into that pattern on this.) These entries will carry the "movies" tag. Which may prompt me to start using tags in some regular and organized way.

Princess Mononoke

It's been two or three years since I've watched any Miyazaki, which is far too long. Princess Mononoke isn't my favorite of his films: bearing in mind that I've probably only seen five of them, that distinction would go to Kiki's Delivery Service or My Neighbor Totoro — both of which make me smile a bit just thinking about them, though it's been years since I"ve seen either. But Mononoke certainly has some stunning visuals: the portrayal of demonic possession as being covered with writhing snakes is particularly effective: even thought I knew it was coming, I still flinched with the giant pig-demon first appeared out of the woods. (I'm pretty sure I looked away from the screen when I first saw it, in a theater.) And I suspect I could happily sit through an hour of watching the forest spirit's footsteps — so beautiful! Mononoke may also be a more ambitious movie than the other Studio Ghibli films I've seen. There is no cartoon villain here: all the parties are aggrieved; all are portrayed with sympathy. As is generally the case when conflict arises in our own world, all of the parties are justified. And in that, the movie provides much food for thought.

Seeing it agian certainly had one good effect: It reminded me that I haven't watched anywhere near enough of Miyazaki's work. I looked into netflix when they were still fairly new, and at the time they didn't carry several of the titles I tried searching for, so i didn't sign up. I'd been thinking recently about giving them another look, and with that in mind went to their site and searched in Miyazaki. And I am now a netflix member, with a queue consisting of

• Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro
  
• Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
  
• Castle in the Sky
  
• Porco Rosso
  
• The Cat Returns
  
• Howl's Moving Castle

So my Miyazaki education should proceed significantly in the next few weeks.