Wind & Water, Metal & Wood

I watched this movie last night. Graphically, it was very pretty. However, I felt its presentation was mediocre at best. I was annoyed with the narrator at the beginning and near the end of the movie. The narrator's voice was fine, but for some reason, the way the narrator was used to present the movie in the beginning really irritated me. I practically rolled my eyes when I heard the narrator again near the end of the movie because it didn't seem necessary. Surely the audience could figure out what was going to happen without the narrator telling them.

I understand that writing a movie version of a comic book is particularly difficult since a lot of information has to be compressed into a one to two-hour movie. Yet the whole point of a movie is to watch the story unfold, not to be told the story as if it was an audio book.

Maybe the movie could have started with a different scene to pull the audience in a bit better. The backstory could have been shown in flashbacks instead of having a narrator explain what was going on at the start and end of the movie. Some of the dialog could have been re-worked to make the movie less corny. There was only one scene I liked, and it had to do with the main character's secret identity and his love interest. That particular scene was not bad and was refreshingly original.

Overall, the movie seemed unpolished and rushed for some reason. It's kinda disappointing since it's the first Green Lantern movie produced. I feel sorry for all the Green Lantern fans that were really looking forward to this movie since it's clear they got shafted. :/

I had so much fun making wisecracks in the previous movie, that I wanted to watch this one. Sadly, there weren't many wisecrack opportunities in this one, so it was mostly boring.

I don't like Bella. It helps her character that she's mostly reasonable and nice, but I don't really care for her. I like Jacob over Edward, but he does have anger management issues so he's not particularly daydream-worthy.

I didn't like how the movie ended by killing off a minor character. She was so minor of a character that she had no name. (If she did have a name, I don't remember it being mentioned in the movie.) For such an insignificant character, it was ridiculous how the movie dramatized her death. It was a pointless death, and while lots of movies have pointless deaths, the way this one was setup for the very end left me with a sour aftertaste.

I finally finished watching Inuyasha and all four Inuyasha movies. The last Inuyasha series I have to watch is Inuyasha: The Final Act, and that won't be out until sometime in 2011. My thoughts:

• I was disappointed in the Shichinintai (Band of Seven). I expected them to last longer somehow and/or be more interesting. The Inuyasha fanfics I read have truly expanded upon this group far more than the anime series.
• The filler episodes, while amusing at times, were a little boring.
• Seasons 1-3 were the best.
• Unfortunately, some of the best episodes about Sesshoumaru are in the later seasons.
• The Inuyasha Movie 3 (Swords of an Honorable Ruler) was my favorite Inuyasha movie. It also had the best story out of the four movies.
• The Inuyasha Movie 4 (Fire on the Mystic Island) was the most disappointing movie. I expected more out of it. Some of the things that happen in the movie were too cliché or unbelievable. For example, why would Kikyou drop her only weapon to the ground when she was stuck on the island that still had enemy youkai (demons) on it? It doesn't make sense! >_>

Anyway, I know I'll be getting the Inuyasha: The Final Act DVD set once it is out. I don't know if it will be any good, but hopefully the storyline will be more exciting since they have to wrap up all loose ends in one season.

I was looking around on Amazon during Black Friday and noticed that many of the volumes for RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE Tsubasa (geez CLAMP, couldn't you have made the title a bit easier to type?!) were a bit cheaper than if I bought them at regular price in a bookstore. So I went ahead and bought the rest of the series since I was a bit behind. >_> I've been curious about xxxHolic too, so I bought volumes 1-10 of that series as well to see if it was any good.

Once the volumes arrived, I sat down and read the rest of Tsubasa in 1-2 days. (I had left off on volume 22.) The artwork for the series is decent. The storyline? It's fairly disappointing to me. It's too contrived.

I had a hard time caring about any of the main characters. The only main characters I cared about were Syaoran and Kurogane. Even then, they just barely held my interest. I was far more interested in the vampire twins (heh) or how all the different worlds were connected to each other. There were some implications about some of the worlds I would have liked to know more about.

It seems to me that CLAMP is running out of good ideas for their manga. Tsubasa is to CLAMP as Kingdom Hearts is to Square-Enix; a way to make an engaging story without having to re-invent the wheel too much. (I haven't really played Kingdom Hearts, so I hope Kingdom Hearts' storyline is much better than Tsubasa.) I was actually excited over the initial idea of Tsubasa, and I enjoyed the first few volumes of the series immensely.

However, as the series dragged on, I found myself getting really annoyed with the series. There are parts that are not fully explained, so you have to guess by examining the imagery carefully. Sometimes you have to go back and read past volumes just to get a sense of what you missed out. In the later volumes, I found myself staring at a some of the pages just trying to figure out what was going on. All I could make out were explosions, yet I got the feeling there were some small details on the page that were significant... Except I couldn't really find or see them. >_> That was pretty frustrating.

Maybe one day I'll go back to volume 1 and reread the whole series again. For now however, I remain somewhat disappointed in the entire series.

I hated the TV trailers for this movie. The TV trailers actually convinced me not to watch this movie in theaters since it made Sherlock Holmes look like some old fashioned version of James Bond (the movie version). Now, James Bond movies have good action scenes, but character development and story fall flat. The trailers for Sherlock Holmes made me think that the movie was just like a James Bond film: good action scenes, but terrible character development and bad story.

Another reason why I didn't like the trailers was because I read one Sherlock Holmes book when I was a kid. I loved the book. To me, the trailers did not match up to my memories of the book.

So when I sat down to watch the movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the story and character development weren't all that bad. I'm still not won over with the movie version of Sherlock Holmes, but I thought Dr. Watson was cool and the storyline was pretty good.

Though why did the only female lead character have to be a criminal?!

I saw New Moon on DVD a few days ago. It was definitely not as good as the first movie. Oddly enough, I enjoyed watching it because I was making jokes about it while watching it with aslan294 and his brother. Such as:

• Why do the guys drive Bella home with her truck? Why doesn't Bella drive since she's perfectly capable of driving herself?!
• Then when they arrive at Bella's house, they park her car and then walk or run away? (Leaving the truck behind.)
• Edward pulled a Mamoru (aka Darien) from Sailormoon R. Insert smirk here.

One thing I really liked was how the werewolves looked. They're just freaking cool. <3 Unfortunately, they have hate management issues.

I still don't like Bella or Edward. Bella has a nice personality, but she's terribly shallow. (You're kinda beautiful. Can you be my rebound guy?)

I guess I liked the movie for the laughs it brought. :)