I must say I'm intrigued that one of the first new originals on the Disney+ streaming service is a live-action film called "Togo." It chronicles the real-life story of Togo, the leading sled dog who made the longest and most dangerous stretch of the journey to bring medicines to the diphtheria-stricken city of Nome.
I guess I'm interested because "Balto" was pretty much my favorite animated movie growing up. (Though I might be somewhat miffed by the fact that the new movie doesn't feature a talking snow goose with a Russian accent. )

I saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood over Thanksgiving weekend. I have a lot of complicated thoughts about it but overall it was great.

I also tried watching Yesterday, but I'm not a Beatles fan and found it a bore, so I snuck off to the bedroom to play video games instead.

Catching up on Christmas movies this month!

First up was Benedict Cumberbatch's Grinch movie. That one was really sweet and the kids and I liked it a lot.
Second was The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is a look at how Charles Dickens came up with the story of The Christmas Carol. The movie started off strong, I liked the first half a lot! but then it kind of came unraveled towards the end imho.

Well, to be fair, The Man Who Invented Christmas couldn't really have shown Dickens overcoming his faults more than it did without getting really historically inaccurate. The ending arguably paints a too rosy view of him as it is. Actually, I was kind of impressed by how dark the movie did get in its portrayal of Dickens. Not that I demand all my movies to be dark. But the movie was advertised as being rather fluffy. BTW, I think the book which gave the movie its title actually says in one sentence that Dickens didn't really invent Christmas. But apparently they wanted to use that dumb title anyway. ?  

I wasn't initially interested in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood but it actually sounds intriguing. I'd like to catch it but I'm not sure when I can. I usually go to the cinema with my mother and she wants to see Little Women. I'd like to see it sometime but I'm not in a hurry at all. Still, I kind of feel like I should since my mom really wants to go but she's probably not going to go by herself. ?

Recently saw Frozen II. I actually liked it more than the first one (admittedly, that might be because I haven't yet experienced my niece insisting on watching it every single day for six months ).

Saw The Rise of Skywalker last night. There was a fan event before the showing I went to (tickets for the event sold out probably within ten seconds), but R2-D2 and BB8 were still there, which was fun. I liked the movie.

Going to see Little Women with Mom probably some time next week. I'm arguing for Christmas day since we're celebrating with the family on Christmas Eve, but I don't think she's going to agree to that. Also, she might not have finished reading the book by then. She read it years ago, but doesn't remember most of what happened.

One of my younger sisters and I have been a bit of 1930s film kick lately, we have watched Miss Pinkerton (1932), High Pressure (1932), The Famous Ferguson Case (1931), Night Nurse (1931), The Crowd Roars (1932), and The Casino Murder Case (1935). My favorite was The Casino Murder Case, Paul Lukas as Philo Vance and Rosalind Russell as a secretary for a wealthy family.

Picked up Angel Has Fallen from the library today, a little surprised it came in before Christmas. Planning to watch it with the above mentioned sister tonight or tomorrow.

SnowAngel

Last was Klaus, which we watched last night. I liked it a lot Thumbs up on the animation AJAiken, it was a very pretty movie. It was also quite funny. I liked how the various legends of Santa came into being. However, I did not care for the standard twist of the main character storyline, it's quite overdone. But definitely worth watching.

Thank you, FK! (And stargazer, too!) I know what you mean about the twist, the first shot I was given to work on was towards the end of the movie, a cute moment between Jesper and Margu, and when I saw it I immediately thought

Rise of Skywalker. I'm still not sure how I feel about this film. As I think I've said before I loved and hated The Last Jedi, and I think, overall, that RoS was better. The best thing about the entire trilogy, in my opinion, is

I've now seen Frozen II four times (once because my friend made me, once taking my niece, once taking my other niece, and then again with my dad, because he felt left out). Suffice to say, I'm at least okay with it. Some of the landscapes were hyper realistic, to the point that I caught myself wondering "if they filmed this at ______" before reminding myself of the animated quality. I did want to post about it, though, because I loved the Narnia nods, even if they were inadvertent, especially

I'm surprised to find myself writing a long post about the recent Little Women movie because I'm a casual fan of the book at best. (My grandmother is a much bigger fan so I'm sort of attached to the story because of her though I've never read the whole thing through.) But I did want to write some about it and I find I can't do it without comparing it to the independent movie that set the story in modern day which came out the year before. Both were released roughly around the book's anniversary. Both tell the story in a nonlinear way, intercutting the second half, in which the characters are adults, with flashbacks of the first half, in which they're teens. (Not being a huge fan of the book, I'm tempted to say they did that because the "adult" half isn't as fun as the "teen" half and they were worried people would get bored halfway through if they told the story chronologically. ? ) Both of them put more emphasis on Jo's being an author, ending with her writing a book, which is all but said to be Little Women, and it getting published.

Without having done a marathon of Little Women movies, I can say that the 2019 movie has probably the best script of all the ones I remember. But it doesn't have the best cast, especially not the best cast for the "little women" themselves. Saoirse Ronan is a fine actress but she really doesn't strike me as the Jo type. Florence Pugh is great as the adult Amy but when she has to play a kid, it's really obvious that she's not a kid and the character comes across like she has a mental disability. ? Eliza Scanlen makes very little impression. I know her character is supposed to be quiet and retiring but I've seen other actresses play this character and characters like her to much more memorable effect. The only heroine whom I thought was really cast well was Emma Watson's Meg.

Like I said though, the script was really good. The only major thing that I can't make up my mind if liked is the ending.

Something that I admire about the 2019 movie though, and which I think fans of the book will appreciate even more, is that it tries to give an equal focus to all the sisters. In the "adult" half of most adaptations I remember, Meg, Beth and Amy fade into the background and the story becomes pretty much the Jo Show. While Jo is definitely the main character of the 2019 movie, you can tell the director/writer didn't want to lose focus on the other characters.

The same can't be said of the 2018 movie. But what I can say of it, is that all four of the main actresses are really well cast. I think Sarah Davenport is the best Jo I've seen. (Yeah, she's too pretty but that's true of all the actresses who've played the part.) This adaptation may be set in the wrong time period, but I think it captures the most popular character's personality perfectly: blustery, brusque, fun to be around, bit of a temper, no nonsense.

And remember what I said about other actresses making Beth more memorable than she is in the 2019 movie? Well, Allie Jennings is a great example of one of those actresses.

As a homeschooler myself, I appreciated this movie's sympathetic and uncondescending portrayal of it. In fact, it's kind of a pro-homeschool fantasy. The only characters outside the home are only portrayed positively if, like the Laurences, they're willing to adapt themselves to the Marches rather than getting the Marches to adapt to the outside world, like the Moffats. (Before you dismiss this movie as a piece of homeschooling propaganda, let me assure you it isn't. It's just being true to the source material.) This is true of the 2019 movie too but there the filmmakers feel the need to apologize for it by placing it in a historical context.

Now that's not to say I liked everything about the 2018 movie. The screenwriters wanted to reference the same books that the book referenced, The Pilgrim's Progress and The Pickwick Papers. But they apparently couldn't be bothered to read either of those books themselves. I can sympathize with that since I'm not much of a fan of either (though I'm a big Dickens fan in general.) But I couldn't help cringing at the mistakes they made. They confused Apollyon, a bad guy from Pilgrim's Progress, with another character who was a good guy. And they portrayed the members of the Pickwick Club as army guys when they were supposed to be more like sociologists. ? Seriously! A glance at Wikipedia would have cleared up these misconceptions.

Anyway, Prof. Bhaer's characterization is pretty different in both movies from how he is in the book. So if you're a big fan of him from there, neither of these adaptations is going to be your favorite. As a neutral party, I'd say I prefer him in the 2018 movie which gives him more dialogue with Jo. In the 2019 movie, the only really long dialogue scene they have by themselves turns into an argument about him criticizing her writing. In the book, from what I remember, he disapproves of its sensational violence. This idea is implied in the movie too but it's not explained very well. I can definitely understand that since for a Hollywood movie to criticize sensationalism and violence would be the height of hypocrisy but it makes the ensuing argument kind of vague and hard to get invested in.

So, while it didn't get any Oscar nods and you've probably never heard of it, I consider the 2018 Little Women movie to be the better movie of the two and, in that sense, the better adaptation. Both movies are super cute though and if they're the kind of thing you enjoy, I recommend the both of them to you.

I just got done late Wednesday night with my 2month long 'binge-watch' of all the MCU Avengers movies. I had avoided bothering with them until now just because I wasn't interested, but a Facebook meme for New Year's with Tony Stark(won't say anymore because of spoilers) got me curious, so I got them all from the library when available. 22 movies later, I think overall they were hit or miss. My favorites are Iron Man 1 & 2, Thor Ragnarok, Captain Marvel(just because there was a kitty!), and the first group Avengers movie because Tony and Fury had the 2 best lines in the entire series, at least to me.

I haven't seen any of the new Little Women films, although I love the book. I enjoyed reading your post about them, Col. Klink.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned to my younger sister, who I have been trying for over a year to get to watch Band of Brothers with me, that we should watch it and she finally said sure she would watch Band of Brothers with me. We only watched one episode at a time, so over the course of two weeks we watched the 9 episodes we usually watch (we skipped episode 9). It was as epic as ever.

The family has been watching through the Falcon film series (1943-1946). It's has been several years since we last watched them and it's been fun to "rediscover" them. I am still disappointed that George Sanders was only in the first four.

SnowAngel

My family is currently on a western kick that I might have strongly encouraged. We just got the first Tim Holt collection. This week we watched the first three films; Renegade Ranger (1938), The Law West of Tombstone (1938), and Along The Rio Grande (1941), all were fun entertaining B westerns.

I recently purchased a set of Audie Murphy westerns that I had briefly thought about saving for a while, but only briefly. Currently watching them on the weekends with the siblings, last weekend it was Sierra (1950) and The Wild and the Innocent (1959) (only watched the latter with my tv watching pal younger sister), last night Night Passage (1957). I haven't decided yet whether we should watch another one tonight or wait until Sunday night. I sort of trying to spread them out, so as not to blow through them.

SnowAngel

It's been over a month, so I'm back again. Still on a western kick, one more film left to watch in the Audie Murphy western collection. I really didn't think we would have any left by the time May rolled around.

Last night, in honor of VE Day, I watched To Hell And Back (1955) with the siblings. I don't know when the last time I watched it was, but it had been years. We really enjoyed seeing it again, I'm so fascinated by Audie Murphy's story.

My sister and I followed To Hell And Back with Hell Bent For Leather (1960), the theme was Audie Murphy, not the word in both titles. Hell Bent For Leather was pretty good, very dramatic, I might let the siblings watch it sometime.

SnowAngel

Hello, SnowAngel!

You said that you'd been on a Western kick lately. I watched a lot of Western TV shows growing up but have only seen a couple of John Wayne movies (El Dorado and Island in the Sky, which isn't a Western anyway ). Do you have any other suggestions or favorites?

On another note, I enjoyed your thorough analysis of Little Women, Col Klink! I saw the 2019 movie with family shortly after Christmas, and while I do like it, parts of it felt a bit too "modern" for a period film. It's hard to place exactly what felt a bit "off"; perhaps it was the dialogue or mannerisms. I did like the interpretation of Amy's character, at least in her adult years. Young Amy was played too much for comedy, in my opinion, which I though undermined her character. I liked Saorise Ronan as Jo but didn't feel that Emma Watson was well-cast as Meg. As for the ending, I'm a bit ambivalent as well

I hope that this doesn't sound too negative; I really did enjoy the movie. Canon is just really important to me, and Little Women is very near and dear to my heart.

Regarding the 2018 adaptation, I did not see it in theaters nor did I plan to, as I assumed it would another "modern" film that would ruin the charm and heart of the original story, as other films as have. However, reading your review, Col Klink, I will have to check it out!

I'm picky when it comes to movies, and I have some weird tastes (I usually don't like watching the really popular movies that everyone's talking about ) but I thought I might mention one in particular that I do like, that most people probably haven't heard of.

Several years ago, I came across the movie City of Ember, based off a children's book I had once read. It happens to be a Walden Media movie, released in 2008. But it was a box office bomb, unfortunately. So I wasn't expecting much from the movie, but I must say it exceeded my expectations. Though, I tend to like movies more if I come in with low expectations. Yes, it has its flaws, as all movies do, but it was an enjoyable family-friendly film in my opinion.

I was just wondering if anyone here had seen it, and if so, what they thought of it.