The Fantasy Hall of Fame

You mean like Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

I guess that makes us the Three Musketeers lol
I call Athos

You know how pointy a swizzle stick is? We'll have them running off in huffs of annoyance lol

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That's very poetic.

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DragonHeart



It's a fun movie. I wouldn't call the acting great, except I thought David Thewliss did well and I did actually enjoy Sean Connery as the voice of the dragon. I personally thought it was a great pick.

Loved the score too actually, yeah, it's got that Braveheart type of vibe to it and I don't really care if it tried to rip it off.

Fantasy movies are all about fun for the most part for me and I was drawn in well enough to the story, even if it wasn't a fascinating one. I laughed quite a bit and enjoyed the films witty and playful dialogue. Also I just loved the epic feel of the ending with the whole stars scene. Just felt really cool. Yeah there's a lot of cheese and a lot of lull to this film that isn't really long at all. However, pretty decent start to this all.

I'm not a Monty Python fan, but that's NOT a cute bunny.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

LOL

But look at those fangs!

VERY nicely said!!

I'll try to get The Return of the King review written, hopefully, sooner rather than later. I've tried to write it for days now, but it's not advancing. It doesn't help that I relapsed to participate on a political thread, too

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E.T.



While this isn't really in my definition of a fantasy film (though, yes, it really is one), I still really like the film. And most of that credit is to Spielberg. I love the way he crafts this story. I love how a friendship between a boy and an alien can feel so real and touching and how a friendship can be crafted from literally out of the blue.

The film is an overall technical marvel, also aided by a great score by John Williams. I also think the acting from the child actors is pretty good, a true rarity in film. Cool to see where Drew Barrymore started it all, and the boy who played Elliott did a real good job. It is a movie that has a lot of heart, and you could tell it was a passion project from Spielberg as well.

I like the films attempt at comedy too. And love the scenes with E.T. hiding in the closet as a stuffed animal. Just a real fun ride overall. My second time seeing it as an adult but it always gives off a youth vibe.

I'm glad you enjoyed watching E.T. again. I was hoping that some people who didn't see this as a fantasy film might look at it a little differently this time, and hopefully see the fantasy side of it, and it sounds like maybe you saw a new side of it with this viewing. That's always been what I've loved about this movie, since the first time I saw it.

Kwaidan (1964):
I rarely do well with Japanese movies, and sadly, this movie was no exception. Maybe it's just the different cultures, but I just don't seem to understand a lot of what seems obvious to everyone else in these movies. But, the good news is that Tideland is no longer my least favorite movie in this HoF.

The bad news is that I just didn't get this movie at all. I couldn't connect to any of the characters, and I barely understood what was going on most of the time. I understand that these were ghost stories, but they just didn't make much sense to me. Each segment just left me with more questions than answers.


"The Black Hair" - They spent almost no time at all introducing us to the characters. I never got to know any of them, so I never cared about what happened to them. I wasn't even sure that the guy getting married was the same guy who left his wife until he went back to find his first wife. That made the whole segment emotionless to me. And the ending made no sense to me. Was it a dream? Did I see right? Did her hair attack him?


"The Woman of the Snow" - I couldn't figure out who the woman in the cabin was supposed to be. Was she supposed to be Lady Death? Did she kill the old guy, or did he die from the cold? How did the young guy know that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone about her? Did I miss her telling him not to tell anyone? And the only person he told was her, and he even said that he thought it was a dream, so why did she get so mad at him? He didn't tell anyone else. And in the end, she left him alone with their children? That made no sense to me because it hurts the children to not have a mother as much as it hurts him, if not more.


"Hoichi the Earless" - I didn't understand anything that was happening at the beginning except that we were being told a story about a war, and a mass suicide that caused the waters to be haunted. I didn't understand how that connected to Hoichi. Was the samurai a ghost from that war? How did writing all over him hide him from the samurai? And if the writing was supposed to hide him from the samurai, why did he wear a robe that covered most of the writing?


"In a Cup of Tea" - Why did the man appear in his tea? What did he want from the guy who drank the tea? Did the ghost attack him because he drank the tea, or because he didn't admit that he recognized him from the tea? Was the writer, (whose face we see in the water at the end of the segment), the same guy who saw the face in his tea, or was that a different guy?


So the moral of the first story is that money isn't important to be happy, but the moral of the third story is that money brought him happiness regardless of the pain that he went through to get it. (Seems like a bit of a mixed message to me.)

I just watched these first two segments of Kwaidan tonight...

Just think of this segment as a Japanese Twilight Zone that explains it, as it's all about the ironic, shock value of the end reveal.

Yup she was a Lady Death, or a ghost, or the grim reaper...And yes she most definitely killed the old guy by breathing on him which froze him and drained his blood...Then she said to the young guy I will spare you because you're so young and handsome but don't tell anyone about me or I will kill you...Later on the young man explains the story in detail to his wife. So we see it once, then it's retold. I'm not sure how you missed that?

Did you not watch it with subtitles? Or were you working on the computer and watching TV at the same time and so missed the sub titles at the moment the snow woman was explained?

The whole movie felt like a Japanese Twilight Zone to me.


Either I missed what she said to the young guy, or I just forgot it. But I still don't understand why she got so angry at him when the only person he told was her, and she already knew about it.


I watched it with subtitles, but I've always had problems with subtitles distracting me from the movie, so either I miss things like expressions on people's faces, or I miss some of the subtitles. I tend to rewind a lot to try to catch what I miss, but sometimes it just doesn't help. I think that's one of the reasons I rarely enjoy foreign movies, unless I can find a dubbed version.

And I can't work on the computer while watching a subtitled movie. I can't watch the movie, read the subtitles. and use the computer at the same time. (I never do computer work while watching a movie I've never seen before because I need to concentrate on my work. Sometimes I play Bubble Shooter while watching English movies, but that's usually only if it's a movie that I've seen before, or a movie that doesn't require complete attention, like a rom-com. But Bubble Shooter doesn't require much attention anyway.)

The Samurai left his poor wife for a new wealthy cruel one. He then had regrets over the marriage, the second wife left him. He went back to his home fell through the floor and died. His first wife was already a ghost haunted their ramshackle home and they spent one night together. When the morning came the Samurai woke up and realized that his wife was dead, and that he was dead. The moral of the story is stay with your wife because had the Samurai been loyal to either of the women he would still be alive.


She's a snow spirit, she has ghostly, witch and vampirac qualities. She did kill although it would be more accurate to say she fed off the old guy and left th 18 year old so that she could marry him. She did tell him not to say anything or she would kill him...this was the bargain. She sparred his life because his death would also mean the death of the children, but as she's a ghost-witch-vampire and confirmed with the husband she couldn't stay. We don't know how many times she did this but her inability to age made it so it was becoming noticeable after spending a decade with her lover.

It seems like you may have been trying to take these fables too literally. They're sort of an equivalent to Grimm's fairy tales. You're not meant to question every element of the stories, because they're not aiming at realism.

Warning: Potential Spoilers for Kwaidan below.

The woman was a Yuki-onna, a type of spirit that is very common in Japanese folklore. She did kill the old man, and before leaving the hut she explicitly warned Minokichi not to tell anyone about what happened.

The ghosts that Hoichi is singing to are the same ones from the tale. This was revealed when we see that the Lord Hoichi was being taken to was the child Emperor. They even take up the same positions during the most dramatic moments of the story.

They are not the same person.

The difference is about intent. The husband in the first story was simply greedy. Hoichi didn't retell the story for money, but rather to calm the spirits of the dead in case any were listening. He was knowingly putting himself in danger to ease the suffering of others.

I think a lot of people struggle with the same thing when they first start watching foreign films. The good news is that it gets easier with practice. Something that might help is to watch subtitled films on a smaller screen if possible. The larger the screen, the more your eyes have to move between the images and the text, so there's a greater chance of missing something.

A few years back, around 2016, a close friend of mine from Argentina sent me an email mentioning this film. He knew my love for the fairytale and for Jean Cocteau's 1946 version. I'm not sure exactly how he came across it but I figured it had to be his love for the Silent Hill video game and the movie that followed. Both, this film and Silent Hill are directed by Christophe Gans.

I watched this shortly after he mentioned it and I was amazed. I knew Vincent Cassel from Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, Léa Seydoux from Blue is the Warmest Colour, André Dussollier from A Very Long Engagement, but I guess the biggest surprise was to see Spanish actor, Eduardo Noriega. I had been a fan of his for a few decades. This rounded out to be a great cast of actors for such a historical fairytale, one most everyone knows a version of.

Things I noticed of the film: the beauty of the set, the expanded storyline and the very different story of why the prince was changed to the beast. Most versions say he was a self-centered, heartless prince who created some atrocity that he was cast by magic into the hideous beast, that only the love of a woman could turn his heart and his body back to a man. He is the same hideous beast but it gives us more understanding, more back story.

I guess I have to say the reason that this, as well as why I am an X-men comic fan, is because of its story asks us, to look inside ourselves and of others for what is good. The appearance on the outside truly means nothing but its what is in our hearts that makes us who we are. Makes us human, not a beast. It teaches us diversity and what it is to truly means to love everyone for what is inside them.

I want to add that most people, in a sense, view me as an outsider but its only after you really know me, you see who I really am.