Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

In keeping up with the “Cartoon Brew” web site, I noticed reports of two “Looney Tunes movies” that had been made only to become entangled in the run-down state of their studio. Coyote vs. Acme became a cause celebre, or at least one recent example of “people want what they cannot have.” Amid rumours of other companies trying to acquire the rights to it, though, the other movie did get to the point of being picked up. With the impression it was connected to “new Looney Tunes” shorts I’d heard about but never quite got around to tracking down, I did start thinking it might be interesting to see The Day the Earth Blew Up.
( More than a few surprises )

Advance reports of a new Gundam series did get my attention. It hadn’t been all that long since The Witch From Mercury; for all of the complaints from other fans feeding into my self-pitying thoughts that “mecha series don’t get a fair shake these days,” perhaps the temptation was to now think the franchise was actually doing all right. (In reflecting on the years between that series and Iron-Blooded Orphans, though, I did wind up reminding myself the “Build Divers” shows had appeared in between them.) The peculiar subtitle of the upcoming series “GQuuuuuuX” at least got my attention too, for all that I felt very tempted to anticipate knocking out the “u”s in private record-keeping of episodes watched. (While it’s not the exact same thing, I’ll admit to forever being tempted to think of “The 08th MS Team” as “Gundam MST08,” even if this didn’t extend to trying to cast that OVA’s characters in yet another “non-standard MSTing...”)
( At the very least, hints at a surprise given away )

Just as I’d happened to do during the first months of this year, I came upon on certain notices there’d be another altogether unofficial streaming of Do You Remember Love? This time, the promise was of the original Japanese language dialogue with subtitles. That would be more familiar to me than the perhaps-infamous English dub streamed earlier, but I still thought I could make a late evening of the movie.
( Found in translation )

Positive comments about Godzilla Minus One collected where I could notice them to the point that when I picked up the movie was now available on Netflix my interest was well piqued. The nagging thought that I’d kept paying for a Netflix subscription without having watched anything on it for some months got pushed back. At the same time, starting into the movie I remained conscious of a thought that nags in different ways, namely how my interest in “drawings from Japan” has never quite transferred into a similar interest in live action from that country. That always seems to hint at just how I “see” those drawings but leaves attempts at articulating the whole matter further feeling too indelicate to make a big deal about.
( From then to now )

At the start of this year I’d picked up on a few upcoming anime series that seemed interesting to me from their first descriptions and the comments of a few other people. More than that, I could find the time to properly begin watching all of them. Having only managed both those things during one quarter of last year, I did feel as if things were coming back together at last. Even so, I suppose a few familiar risks were returning too. The benefit of “watching anime as it streams” would seem to be augmenting the experience by joining discussions about it and picking up on the interest of others. That can skew into “my good taste is demonstrated by picking shows everyone else likes,” though, and then the problem becomes that if-and-when smirking shrugs about “Sturgeon’s Law” apply, watching everyone else sour on things, or even bumping into casual brushoff postmortems, can get pretty dispiriting. Even so, the wrinkle of not being as exposed to the comments of others as I once was aside, I did seek a certain solace in still getting around to a good number of “older” titles from previous seasons or decades.
( Once upon a time: Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger and Getter Robo )
( Manga preparation: Heavenly Delusion, Aria the Natural, and Frieren )
( Movies part one: Weathering With You and For Whom the Alchemist Exists )
( Streaming part one: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki and Metallic Rouge )
( Streaming part two: Sengoku Youko and Bang Brave Bravern )
( Wrapping up and moving along: Soaring Sky Pretty Cure and Pretty Cure All Stars F )
( Movies part two: The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes and Blue Thermal )

In managing to watch another one of the movies on Kanopy I noticed quite some time ago, I got around to a film I’d known about for rather longer than that. The library in my home town had a book about “twenty all-time great science fiction films,” from Things to Come to A Clockwork Orange (although it had been written a decade after the latest movie it covered), and one of its choices was The Man in the White Suit. That movie could have seemed interesting just because it was described as taking place on a modest scale at the time it was made (early-1950s England), but I suppose it starring Alec Guinness would have got my attention too.
( Better living through chemistry? )

Understanding I’d be visited around Thanksgiving rather than going visiting myself, I got started on my once-a-year viewing of my Star Wars Blu-Ray set a bit earlier than usual. When I watch them might still be a relic of what month the Revenge of the Sith DVD went on sale in; I’m at least daydreaming now about “summer movies.” So far as “you always find the time to watch those movies, but for all the other weekends in a year you’re frittering time away...” went, I had at least managed to watch The Searchers for the first time a few weekends before, conscious among other things of how it’s been invoked in Star Wars more than once. Thinking back months rather than weeks to how I’d been able to see Return of the Jedi at the movies, I’d decided to “not get clever” and just go through the set in numerical order, reprising a closed gap of more than a decade in just those few months.
( But perhaps I am being clever... )

Getting out to the movies twice in a succession that would have been rapid for me years ago might have had an effect on me. I’d watched the trailers at both of those screenings with a thought or two about upcoming films I might also go to; when I noticed a movie I’d at least been aware of would be screening in theatres sooner than those possibilities, the thought of going to see it as well came to me in a hurry. I’ll admit to a certain feeling of “I’ve seen an animated movie made in Japan; I’ve seen a forty-year-old science fiction blockbuster; maybe now I can go to something a bit more ‘ordinary’ than either of them.” A movie “based on real events,” telling the tale of a particular kind of smartphone, did seem to fit that category.
( Picking up )

There were times when my thoughts turned to Weathering With You that I just wound up thinking “at least The Rise of Skywalker wasn’t the last movie I saw in a theatre.” (As for that second film mentioned, though, I understand the three-screen movie theatre in my home town where I saw it for the sake of a gathering of old friends has now closed, and that is something to deal with given I was taken to a re-release of the original Star Wars: A New Hope at an early yet impressionable age back when the theatre had two screens...) When I heard Makoto Shinkai had completed another anime feature and it was going to be brought over here, however, the temptation crept up on me to make it “the movie I went back to theatres for.” It took a little while for local listings for Suzume to show up, and I wound up crossing the city line where Weathering With You had got into the multiplex closest to me. I was aware of the comments that “Makoto Shinkai only makes one movie over and over again,” but was willing to take my chances.

For all of the complaints that have been made about “irks at the movies” over the past decade or so, I have to admit that with the lights down I found myself, to use a familiar word, “immersed” in the experience. There’s a cable box clock in my line of sight when I watch something on my own TV, and that can get me thinking “well, it won’t be much longer.” With Suzume, though, I did find myself surprised time and again by new developments in the plot, then able to fit them into the story. That I was “surprised” so much does leave me in a familiar fix of feeling cautious about how much to say here, however. I perhaps found myself more involved with the characters and what they were doing than just “taking in the scenery,” and that might be a difference from previous Makoto Shinkai movies for all that I did find myself thinking back a bit further into his filmography than your name. The movie was satisfying to see in the moment, although a few days later the temptation to turn over plot elements and “try to make them make sense” might be unfortunate. I’m at least thinking right now it would be nice to see it again on Blu-Ray, though.

Rewinding into the 1970s constrained what anime films I had ready to hand once more, but in being willing to watch something again I was able to open another Blu-Ray. It had been a while since I’d seen the first Lupin the Third movie to be animated, Mystery of Mamo, via Discotek’s previous DVD. I did, though, have the impression my reactions back then had been muted and polite; looking back I found the comment I’d made in a “quarterly review” had been rather brief. However, having dared to watch an anime title with its old dub a week ago did have me contemplating shaking things up the same way.
( An earlier stop back )