Movies November 2009

Samurai Champloo, disc 1
I started watching this on Cartoon Network a few years ago, but never made time for it. The interplay of the late Edo period setting and hip hop is still pretty neat! It distracts me that the English voice for Mugen is the same guy who did Spike in Cowboy Bebop. The voice is too strongly associated with that one character for my ear to just let it slide into another one.

Scrubs, season 1, disc 1
I decided to rewatch this to learn. It's still funny! But what interests me more is how in-your-face the A-B-C plots are for each episode. I rarely notice when TV shows shift plots and acts, because I'm taking it in rather than studying it. But Scrubs just has really obvious set-ups and twists. Normally, obvious is bad, but this time I don't mean obvious = predictable or boring. It's just that when one of these bones of the show happens, it's sticking out of the flesh. Helpful!

Samurai Champloo, disc 2
This story is filling out nicely, and showing more intriguing Japanese history. The sex is strange here, because it's all sit-com sex, i.e., it never happens because of untimely turns of event. Plus Fuu is supposedly 15 years old, but drawn and sexualized older. And even though there was no age of consent in Tokugawa-era Japan, the modern context they made these stories in and the modern U.S. urban anachronisms they include confuse me as I try to figure out whether they're saying something about sex, or just titillating. Regardless of all that, I still dig it.

Samurai Champloo, disc 3
Ditto.

G.I. Joe: Season 1.1: Disc 1
Part research, part nostalgia. It's pretty bad for art, but ok for a 10-year-old's action-adventure fare, even today.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fun movie! It's a weird adaption, taking a children's book and making it a story about middle age. But that's Wes Anderson for you. It's no Royal Tenenbaums, but I can love it for what it is just fine.

Return of the King (extended)
Good times with my awesome LotR-loving wife.