The Green Hornet

Being a fan of comics I try to eventually see all movies based on comics and at the rate they are being pumped out these days it sometime seems like that is easier said than done.

I'm not really a fan of The Green Hornet, I've seen some episodes of the TV show and read a few of  the comics, I guess I could claim to be familiar with the characters but not a fan or any kind of expert on them.

Last night I saw The Green Hornet movie and it was terrible, just terrible, such a wasted opportunity.

One to avoid unless you are a die hard Seth Rogan fan but even then you might want to think twice about watching it.

Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys

I tend to be a sucker for these types of fan documentaries and I had been aware that Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys was being produced and was looking forward to seeing it.

Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys really only covers the toys that were produced by Kenner for the original movie trilogy with an extremely brief mention of some later toys so the documentary is hardly comprehensive and given it's short running time of around 70 minutes there's no way it could have been.

As a child growing up I had but sadly no longer have a lot of the original Star Wars action figures and I was looking forward to seeing some of those for nostalgic reasons but for me the thing that makes some of these fan documentaries so enjoyable is that they often interview at least one character that I find interesting or can somehow identify with and unfortunately this time that didn't happen.

Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys is a decent reasonably entertaining if somewhat short documentary, there is certainly plenty of scope for a second film about Star Wars merchandising and if that film ever gets made I'd like to see a little more depth when discussing the subject.

Plastic Galaxy: The Story of Star Wars Toys is certainly worth watching but I don't know that it's worth owning unless you are truly passionate about collecting Star Wars toys.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ( Blu-ray )

I consider myself to be a fan of Hayao Miyazaki's movies with the exception of this one, I find Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to have a disjointed plot, the animation looks ( to me anyway ) primitive and badly aged in a way older works by Miyazaki aren't and it's environmental themes are overly heavy handed in the way they are delivered.

The Blu-ray itself delivers the expected crisp and colourful image as you would expect but on a repeat viewing I've confirmed that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind still isn't for me.

Spirited Away ( Blu-ray )

I have no idea where Writer / Director Hayao Miyazaki gets his story ideas or his artistic vision but his retirement from feature length film making is a great loss indeed.

Miyazaki is a man with stunning skill as a film maker and Spirited Away is a great example of that, the movie starts and efficiently introduces it's main character and sets it's story in motion, it isn't burdened by excess exposition it simply tells the audience what it needs to know and does so in such a way that viewers of different ages can all understand what is going on and enjoy the adventure that is Spirited Away.

Spirited Away is a good spirited film, even the somewhat antagonistic characters aren't beyond redemption and unlike a lot of anime films it never becomes dark or violent.

What really impresses on the Blu-ray edition of the movie is the visuals, it the film looks simply stunning, this is a true achievement in the era of 3D computer animation that a traditionally animated movie that was made in 2001 remains one of the best looking animated movies I have ever seen.

If you haven't at least seen Spirited Away you are doing yourself a real disservice, if you are a collector of quality movies then it deserves to be in your collection and preferably on Blu-ray.

John Carpenter's Starman

I remember seeing John Carpenter's Starman back when I was in high school and at the time I don't think I really appreciated the movie, I hadn't yet become a fan of John Carpenter's films, in fact I don't think I had connected Carpenter to his movies yet although I had seen and enjoyed several of them by that point.

Starman was a movie I remember liking when I saw it but having seen it, it wasn't something I felt I needed to see again and when the movie was released in the rental market on VHS it seemed like everyone I knew had rented it and insisted on watching whenever I was around so to be honest I think I got pretty sick of the movie for a time although I did enjoy the short lived TV series that was based on the movie.

I tend to be somewhat of an obsessive completest so when I decided I needed to own all of John Carpenter's movies on DVD that of course included Starman, the Starman DVD sat around unwatched for ages before I decided to watch it and I found that I really enjoyed seeing the movie again something like 20 years later, while it's certainly not the type of film that I would usually expect from John Carpenter it's a well made movie and the performances from Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith especially Jeff Bridges were all excellent.

Over the last few years I have been upgrading some of my favourite movies to Blu-ray and this has included all of John Carpenter's movies that are currently available in that format and a while ago I purchased the Blu-ray released in the USA and while some of the effects work looked a little dated overall I enjoyed watching the movie in HD, in Australia John Carpenter's Starman received a sub-standard release on Blu-ray, just the movie and none of the special features from earlier DVD release which is disappointing but I thought I give the disc a spin tonight just to check out the quality of the movie transfer and while I'm no expert on these things it seemed to be the same or similar quality as the US released Blu-ray so given the insane price the US released Staman Blu-ray seems to be selling for on Amazon if you have the ability to play discs from other regions it just might be worth buying the Australian released disc instead.

Is John Carpenter's Starman a classic movie ?, no it's not but it is damn fine movie and deserves a place in any collection.