doing nothing while eating a sandwich
Wednesday's movie: the Great Yokai War (or: Yokai Daisenso, if you're otaku enough to care). Crazy, man! It's filled with a lot of the same trad. Japanese spirits that you see in Spirited Away. But this is much more of an action movie with FX, CGI, rubber monster suits, etc. Plus it's often just this side of being really twisted. Which is not suprising when you consider that it was directed by Takashi Miike, who's generally known for, shall we say, edgier offerings like Audition and Ichi the Killer. Even with the weird-to-creepy touches, this is still basically a family friendly movie. I'm sure it makes much more sense if you're Japanese or at least more familiar with the folkloric traditions being drawn on.
More babble, w/ some spoilers, below the cut.
Final verdict: Rodney sez "check it out."
Basic plot: a little boy who's been sent off to the countryside after his parents' divorce (is it just me or does something like this happen in A LOT of Japanese movies?) ends up entangled in a battle between yokai (folkloric Japanese spirits) and a demon intent on destroying the world.
Message alert: Lord Kato, the demon, draws his power from the collective resentment felt by all the things humans throw away and discard.
One touch I particularly liked: when Tadashi, the little boy, gets the magic sword, it's clear that it's the sword doing most of the work -- he's mostly just along for the ride when he's holding it.
Agi, Lord Kato's sidekick with the platinum beehive hairdo and the badass whip, is played by Chiaki Kuriyama, known to a certain segment of the viewing public as Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill, vol 1. She pretty much steals the movie, at least on the bad guy side of things.