@ajaiken Well, I was referring to Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky specifically (or to be precise the English dubs of them. ? ) If memory serves, I found My Neighbor Totoro cute but nothing special. BTW are you familiar with Whisper of the Heart or My Neighbors, the Yamadas? They're not fantasies so I think they have fewer confusing or surreal plot points and they don't suffer from anticlimactic endings, which, as much as I enjoy them, I feel Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky do.

This is changing the subject from movies to music, but are nonclassical concerts generally about storytelling?  

I haven't seen Whisper of the Heart or My Neighbours the Yamadas yet, but as a lot of Ghibli films are now on Netflix in the UK I'm hoping to soon!

I guess I wanted to make it clear I was talking about classical music, rather than what else might come to mind if I wrote concert.  

Some of you may remember that I don't do streaming services. Well, lockdown has pressured me into getting, one Disney+. (If I still have it, when there's a new Narnia adaptation, I'm going to cancel it and get Netflix instead.) So I got to watch the new Phineas and Ferb movie, Candace Against the Universe. As I expected, it was as good as the first movie, Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension. What I loved about that movie was how it took the characters to places the average episode of the show would never take them. By contrast, the main premise of Candace Against the Universe (the characters go to outer space and meet extraterrestrials) is something that happened fairly regularly on the show. (There was even an episode where Candace meets a group of aliens who make a celebrity, which she initially prefers to her life of Earth but becomes disenchanted with!) And there were actually a lot of dramatic moments that were recycled from similar moments from episodes and specials. To be fair though, the show's been off the air for a good while. Familiar Phineas and Ferb territory is arguably what fans of the franchise want right now. (I still prefer my idea for a Candace centered movie, that she finds out that Perry and Doofenshmirtz have been generally responsible for her failures to "bust" her brothers, and goes crazy, trying to kill them. ?) 

But the movie did take the characters into some new territory. (I had no one idea how much I needed a rivalry between Doofenshmirtz and Isabella.) They had Phineas be confronted with the fact that his inventions and projects have been making his beloved sister miserable, though the plot structure kept them from really exploring this.

I was kind of bothered that they didn't do more with Stacy and Jeremy. Neither of them is the greatest character on the show or anything but they're very close to Candace and it felt weird not to give them bigger roles in a movie centered on her, especially given the part where she considers living out the rest of her days on another planet. I can see her getting mad enough at her brothers and mother to cut all ties with them, but not Stacy or Jeremy.

But I really did enjoy the movie more than my carping makes it sound like I did. It had almost all the virtues that made the show popular, great voice acting (Ferb's new voice is almost a perfect match for the old one), absurdist humor (what happens when a space ship doubles the speed of light is brilliant) and great songs. (The big musical finale summarizing the moral actually tops the similar ones from the episodes, Summer Belongs to You and Rollercoaster: the Musical!) Candace Against the Universe didn't make me look forward to a potential Phineas and Ferb revival on Disney+. I think the franchise has really "done it all" at this point, and they should let it rest in peace rather than try to stretch it out to point where it'll inevitably go out on a low point. After all, one of the themes of the show is that good times can't be made to last forever and that people just have to enjoy them while they're happening. But it didn't make me dread a potential revival either.

I just got back from Tenet and I have pretty mixed feelings on it.

@Reepicheep775 - Tenet - yep.

Since the library reopened in mid summer, I've been getting one or two John Wayne films with each library pickup. We have watched Dark Command (1940), The Fighting Seabees (1944), and War of the Wildcats (1943), and last weekend we watched Flying Leathernecks (1951). It's been years we saw three of the four films, so the younger siblings didn't remember them at all and I only remembered bits and pieces. We hadn't seen War of the Wildcats previously, it was pretty good. 

And then last night we watched Back To Bataan (1945) from our family collection and although we have had it for years this was the first time we had watched it. After watching I am really not sure why we hadn't watched it sooner. 

Recently my younger sister and I watched Dawn At Socorro (1954) and A Man Alone (1955). Dawn At Socorro was okay, I got it as part of a set and as such it's fine. A Man Alone was quite good, a nice addition to my growing western collection.  

SnowAngel

For various reasons  I have been to very few movies this year. I've missed some significant ones, have probably forgotten what they were. 

Would anyone care to suggest 3 or 4 that came out this year, to help me look for them for hire? Thank you.

If you like Jane Austen, there was the new version of Emma — I was thinking of seeing it at the cinema and then the lockdown put paid to all that. I still haven't seen it, but it looked good and was getting very favourable reviews.

After talking about it a bunch, we decided to watch a non Christmas movie last night and that movie was The Hunt For Red October which is one of my favorite movies ever and has been for a very long time. So the conversation at lunch today was full of quotes from the movie and discussion about favorite scenes. My youngest sibling didn't remember much from watching it a couple years ago and was full of questions and comments.  

We will return to watching Christmas movies this evening as we still have several in our collection to watch, plus a couple more I got from the library. We've been watching classic Christmas movies this year, all made in the '30s, '40s, and '50s.

SnowAngel

I had the chance to watch the new Emma movie recently. Before any fan of the book reads this post, I should probably lay my cards on the table. I'm more a fan of the 1996 Emma movie (directed by Douglas McGrath) than I am a fan of the book. That's not to say I dislike the book. In fact, most of things I love about the movie were things it inherited from the book. But it also has a few original things that I love and those tip the scales in its favor. (Plus it's shorter. ?) 

That being said, I can definitely see some fans of the source material liking the 2020 movie better. It includes a lot of lines and details that weren't in the 1996 movie. (Though I'd argue the 1996 movie also had some lines and details that aren't in the 2020 movie.) It gives characterizations to Emma's sister and her husband, who have very brief cameos in the 1996 movie. (Though to be honest, I kind of wish they hadn't because their characters just come across as really unpleasant. Of course, Emma is supposed to be about unpleasant characters. But in the book, I got the impression that despite Isabella's annoyingness and John's crabbiness, they were decent people who liked each other underneath it all.) And Frank Churchill's character is much more developed. (If a deleted scene had been included, the movie would also have done a way better job of developing Jane Fairfax.) There's a good case to be made that this script did the best job of telling the book's story.

But even granting all that, I have to say the 1996 Emma is better on the whole. I feel like that cast had a charm that this movie's cast doesn't. In particular, I feel Anya Taylor-Joy was kind of unappealing as Emma. I hate to say that because she doesn't look like she came from the same assembly line as your average starlets and I want to praise the movie for casting an actress who isn't conventionally beautiful by Hollywood's specific standards as its leading lady. And she definitely has some fun moments and line readings. But she plays the character as so stiff and aloof. It's true that Emma Woodhouse is so supposed to be snobby and self satisfied but she's also playful and outgoing. She can even be capable of self deprecatory humor once in a while. (When Mr. Knightley accuses her of being prejudiced in Frank Churchill's favor, in both this movie and the book, she cheerfully admits she is because there aren't many hot guys in her life.) This Emma comes across as so uptight that if they didn't establish she was lonely right away, it'd be hard to understand why she reaches out to Harriet Smith. 

A little sparkle and mischief would also have helped her arguments with Mr. Knightly. The book does a great job (and the 1996 movie does an even better one ? ) of conveying that although they're always fighting, these two characters really like and, on some level anyway, respect each other. Despite having most of its dialogue come from the book, the 2020 movie really can't seem to hit the tone. The actors seem so annoyed by each other that I have a hard time buying they'd make good friends, let alone a couple. (To be fair, this problem isn't nearly as big in this movie as it was in the 1997 BBC movie adaptation.) 

Thanks to the script, if to nothing else, I enjoyed the movie and recommend it to people who like this kind of thing.

Spoiler

If nothing else, it deserves credit for having the heroine get a nosebleed in the middle of her true love's marriage proposal. Not a lot of romance's go there. ) 

P.S.

Sheesh, first Little Women and now Emma. I should really write about some guy movies. But action films give me headaches and it's hard to say anything good about a headache.

I got several movies from the library this week. Tonight's feature will be Towards The Unknown (1956) which I really like, but my sister Scarlet refuses to watch it because of what happens to James Garners' character. Although I don't care for that part of the movie either, it's William Holden that's the main character.  

Another of the library movies was Crossfire (1947) starring Robert Young, Robert Ryan, and a young Robert Mitchum which Scarlet and I watched. The plot was interesting. I was surprised that there wasn't a main character, it followed one character and then another and then back again. It was different, but it worked.

When the library movies are finished we will return to watching the Hornblower series which we started rewatching last weekend. It's been ages since we last watched them and I had forgotten how much I enjoy them. 

SnowAngel

I actually watched a new-to-me movie last night (shocking!). I pulled up Knives Out on Amazon Prime because I had been kind of intrigued by it. I enjoyed it fairly well (except for the language) and I need to go back and watch it a second time to pick up on all the little clues that were dropped here and there. 

Movie theatres in my area opened back up recently and I just got back from Black Widow, the first movie I've seen in theatres for several months.

It's hard to pick an all-time favorite movie. I would say The Karate Kid trilogy (probably not a popular choice). I don't know if it is because I am a huge fan of Ralph Macchio or I just like the character development of Daniel overall. He kind of comes off as a pill, but he has a soft spot.

I also grew up on Disney (I was even named after a Disney princess). I've watched Disney movies as a child. Probably my favorites are Sleeping Beauty, The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and The Beast, Hunchback of Notre Dame. I just love the theme of "love taming the savage beast" in Beauty and the Beast, how true love changes him. The Lion King is something I can kind of relate to, having lost a father at a young age (for those of you who may not know, my parents are both my parents and grandparents, and I had two dads). Though my life story wasn't like my uncle killed my dad and he told me to runaway and never come back. But I guess you could say that I was one of those kids raised by grandparents. Aladdin touches on themes about it is not what is outside but inside that counts. Hunchback of Notre Dame has a very complex plot (there is debate about whether it is actually for kids). While there is argument that it is religious, it does touch on heavy themes like Heaven and Hell, hypocrisy, genocide, race, and even lust. Though I think it did a pretty good job on touching the good in the thoughtful and caring love and the evil in vengeful and malicious lust.

While it is hard to pick an all-time favorite movie, there are a lot that I enjoy so much.

I have many favorite films including The Sound of Music, Ben Hur, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Star Trek movies, and many more of the older films. However I have not seen a film with a really good story in a long time (perhaps decades).  There are now fewer adaptations of novels into big screen movies, which may account for the lack of good stories in films. The same is often true for television series. If you want to watch a good film choose a classic on DVD or blu-ray because your local theater probably doesn’t offer films of the past, and one wonders if the recent films are even worth the price of the ticket. This is really sad because the big screen can be a very good way to present a book.  It is a good thing that today’s technology allows us to view and own smaller versions of our favorite films, something which wasn’t possible decades ago.