FunBlog

J Greely has a theory, and I have an awful feeling that he is right. I say “awful” because if he is right, the series probably never will be licensed. A damned shame.

Full Disclosure: Since I have a collie I am obviously biased…

At this point there must be hundreds of movies and television episodes featuring the lovable super-intelligent collie. Some of them (let’s face it) have been pretty bad (including a hilariously awful Canadian television series aired in the late 1990’s).

However the latest movie is a class act, with good writing, a great cast, and beautiful locations filmed in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

This movie goes back to the original source material: the 1938 novel Lassie Come Home by Eric Knight, which spawned an entire genre of stories about faithful pets traveling incredible distances and braving impossible odds to be reunited with their owners. This book has already been made into several movies, one of which managed to turn Lassie into a horse.

This version sticks much closer to the original material and is all the better for it. Any animal lover will probably find it irresistible.

The movie is easily suitable for ages 7 and up. Some younger children may be able to enjoy it but might find some of the scenes upsetting.

About half-way through this series it occurred to me that I was watching two loosely-connected but very different stories:

1. A coming of age story about twin girls living on a farm in Hokkaido.
2. A science fiction adventure about fighting monsters with the help of an unusual type of mecha.

The two stories even look different: the first has a bright, cheerful hand-drawn appearance; the second is dark, with the rather soulless look that comes from over-reliance on computer-generated images.

The coming of age story is very well done (though very sentimental) and gets most of the screen time.

The science fiction story is definitely the lesser of the two. It is not particularly original and not as thrilling as it wants to be.

This led me to wonder if the science fiction story could have been eliminated entirely. Something similar to the first story could have been written without including the SF elements, but I don’t think it would really have worked. There is one important respect in which the main story needs the science fiction story.

If you like sentimental stories about children growing up then you probably will like this one a lot. On the other hand if you can’t stand stories like that, you should consider yourself warned.
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This is an entertaining little gem of a movie: dark, atmospheric and romantic. It is set in the decadent world of Imperial Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century. Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton) is a stage magician who creates illusions of such marvelous subtlety and beauty that most members of his audience are convinced that he must really have supernatural powers.

But Eisenheim, a mere commoner, has fallen in love with the beautiful Sophie (Jessica Biel), a duchess who is the intended bride of a powerful and ruthless prince (Rufus Sewell). Obviously nothing good can come of this. Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti), who is in the pay of the prince, warns Eisenheim to stay away, and sends his agents to tail both Eisenheim and Sophie.
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This movie doesn’t really tell the story about what happened to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It just focuses on a tiny part of the story, what happened to a handful of people, in particular to two people who were rescued from the wreckage.

(I’m not going to worry about giving away the ending. Presumably everyone knows what happened. If you don’t know and want to watch the movie anyway, this would be a good place to stop reading.)
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I can’t give a good reason it, but this has become one of my favorite anime series. It has a rather dark premise; it is full of bizarre over-the-top characters and the ending does not resolve the central problem.

Still I love it. It is dark-romantic rather than dark-realistic. The bizarre characters are fascinating; the episodes feel like an invigorating adrenaline rush and the ending resolves just enough to feel satisfactory.
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