New Subtitled Favorites

Sometimes I feel like I should be working on work. Sometimes I feel like I should be working on my novel. And sometimes I feel like I need to write, once again, about silly distractions that are striking for their artistic merits.

Over the months of perusing the various offerings on Netflix, two of the movies that made their way into our queue based on descriptions and/or creative teams were the 2014 French digitally animated film "Mune," and the 1979 Japanese entrant, Myazaki's feature directorial debut, with a title not for the faint of heart: "Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro."

I'm still not sure how I want to have this discussion (with myself), so I'll just jump in. In reverse order of viewing...

For some reason the description of Mune, coupled with the Netflix-art (which is rarely the movie's poster proper) of the titular character's blue face and long ears, convinced Corrie to put it in our queue. I'm not sure I'd read it, but one day, for some reason, Cass wanted to watch it. The voice cast seemed reasonable, and Corrie had judged it original enough, so we hit play.

Our Netflix account is through our DVD/Blu-Ray player, which is a Sony. At some point in the recent past, our remote for the Blu-Ray player has met its demise. If you have now, or have had in the past, a toddler, this news is not shocking. Our television is also a Sony, and the remote for it works mostly for our Blu-Ray player.

I mention all that because one of the features that our Blu-Ray player's remote may have had would have been for language, and out television remote does not have this feature ability---to toggle between given recorded languages when there are more than one on offer.

I mention that, because our version of Mune is in the original French and subtitled in English, and we can't change it over. The French sounds beautiful, so there's that...

Anyway, the movie starts with a hand-drawn animated sequence, maybe thirty seconds long, setting up the this planet's mythology: It started out a dark planet. Then the first hero of the sun harpooned a star and dragged it into proximity to the planet. The master of dreams then went into the dream world and returned with a crescent-shaped carved moon. This achieved balance on their planet, and two jobs were created: guardian of the sun and guardian of the moon.

I thought that was a nice metaphor for harmony, and then the first scenes in the digital format appear, and you realize, uh, no, that wasn't a metaphor at all:

Just so you know what you're looking at: that's a rocky-mountainous beast of some sort, that has the planet's sun on multiple leashes.

Pretty soon we viewers meet the Temple of the Moon:

This is some kind of supremely enormous camel-like beast, with a long crane-like beak. There exists a temple room inside the hump, where fuzzy spider-like critters have strung up the moon like a balloon, and keep it tethered behind the "temple," which is the only way they refer to the camelid/crane beast.

The job of guardian lasts 350 years, and both are replaced during a ceremony on the same day. Sohone, the name of the brutish protege and heir to the guardian of the sun gig, starts off brash and Buzz Lightyear-like. Mune is chosen as the new guardian of the moon in a shocking turn of events, and is ill-prepared at best. The third main character is a girl named Glim who's made of wax; when it get's too cold she freezes and risks breaking to pieces, and when it's too hot she risks melting away.

As the story goes, both Mune and Sohone fuck up royally on the first day, and need to team up, but only the fragile Glim makes them see that. She's the courageous heart of the movie. The boys end up righting the ship and learn from their mistakes, which is always refreshing, and makes this surprisingly original film something special.

Cass loves it, French and all.

The main person behind the film wanted an original myth-like story based around an idea he had for a guy carrying around the moon like a balloon (which does happen multiple times here). He wanted his main characters to make major mistakes, but get the chance to atone. He wanted a lady character that would be the smartest and bravest person in the trio, while also with the most to lose in regards to mortal danger.

Next up...

In case you have eyes like mine and struggle to read that moster, what we have is Lupin III, The Castle of Cagliostro.

I had to do some research into this.

Lupin III, or Lupin the 3rd as it's occasionally written, is a famous Japanese manga character. He debuted in 1967, for a backstory has a great thief and burglar for a grandfather, Lupin, and is somewhat of a gentleman-thief. He is quite popular across many forms of entertainment in Japan; manga, animated television series, animated feature films, even live action feature films.

He's usually compared to Herge's Tin-Tin, but mostly because of the adventuring/saving the day plot-lines.

In 1979, the owners of the character knew that the time was right for a feature film release (it was probably earlier, like in 1978, but whatever), and decided to let a young hotshot from the television world get a chance at a full-length movie.

That hotshot was Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest animation directors ever.

It is said that this film, The Castle of Cagliostro, is both the best entry of any Lupin III story, and a showcasing of many of the rademark visual vocabulary for which Miyazaki is known.

That style is generally known as "European Dream" nowadays, and comes from a  perspective of east Asia looking west with dreamy eyes. Loo at the following scene---it could be from Princess Mononoke or even Spirited Away:

The story and plot are as convoluted as anything, and enjoyable to watch play out. Cagliostro is a tiny European autonomous principality, like Liechtenstein, and has been well known for centuries as the best currency counterfeiters in the world.

The story goes so much deeper into the twisted world of the crown prince, and the history of a tiny, mostly forgotten kingdom, and eventually ends up in some kind of massive revelation/ecological disaster (for the drainage side) and you watch as the thief and his buddy reluctantly leave town after it ends, but they're running from Interpol. Really, what're you going to do?

I've included the next picture because it shows a normal scene in the movie:

Lupin is the one driving the yellow Fiat. It's an unassuming POS, but, he's got it rigged so at the press of a button it turns into some kind of crazy supercharged hypercar. His buddy and partner in crime is the guy in the hat, someone we never see the eyes of, and who is generally less gentlemanly than Lupin, if never really a scoundrel.

The samurai-dude is one of their long-time pals, a guy they call when shit gets really crazy, because, well, of course, wouldn't you want a samurai on your side when the shit goes down?

Also subtitled, also not an issue for Cassius.

I would recommend both Mune and this Lupin III entry, but, then again, I don't mind subtitled films. 

These are both so entertaining. That part I can't stress enough.

Transported Through Time...

I had a meeting in DTLA a while back, and on a walkabout during a break, I found myway to my favorite store in downtown LA, The Last Bookstore. 

As I waited in line to get my book---well within budget---I found a box with the following wax-packs for sale:

Who does that look like to you?

Anyway, for only a quarter I figured I get a couple packs for Cass. I flipped the pack over to check out the date they were produced: 1988.

Oh, and they weren't a quarter a piece, they were two bucks a piece.

And maybe I would save the thirty year old gum for myself.

The cards, which I surprisingly didn't remember, since I was definitely collecting cards at that time, were a followup to the highly successful 1962 Mars Attacks cards.

These were known for their violence and gore, like the 1962 series. And they are gory. I've only given the Boy one pack so far, and some of the cards are truly awesome:

The sticker didn't stick, because why would a thirty-year-old sticker still stick?

As for the gum...

It turned to dust in my mouth as I tried to chew it. It tasted like mildew and bubblegum-flavor, whcih was, eh, unpleasant.

Great discovery...

Congratulations Mike and Zailda!

My cousin Mike and his wife Zailda had their ceremony for family and friends just recently. After eloping in Havana, we all got celebrate with them! Congratulations!

Disney/OKC Trip Reflections, as Time Floats By

The grind has started once again, and there were some ideas I wanted to get to before I fully forget and give up the connection.

One: Epcot has the "countries" in the back, around the lake. Each lives down an alley, and in the alley every stereotype of what many Americans think that place is like. "Italy" is really the peach colored buildings from Tuscany and marble columns from our dreams of Rome and palazzos of Venice. "Germany" is, at Epcot, reduced to what we think of Bavaria, lederhosen and Oktoberfest all the time. "Japan" has been reduced to Kyoto postcards, "China" the forbidden city.

As a visitor, you can tell they spent a ton of money to make everything look like, well, what they wanted it to look like. One thing that makes me nervous is that for many of the visitors, this may fulfill their desire to go visit the real thing. I felt the same way about Harambe and the Nepali village from the Animal Kingdom the following day, but in reality, it's easier to convince Americans to visit Europe or Japan than east Africa or the Himalayas.

Two: How much control do you give to your toddler, and how much peace do you want to experience in any given day? My toddler wanted very much to drive the greet car during our visit to the Autopia at the Magical Kingdom. When our turn came up, there was no green car, but it seemed like there may have been one in the next group of cars.

I had to decide in a fraction of a second whether to let my kid dictate the terms of our driving experience (as in, let people go ahead until we got a green car, a complicated move that would require perfect timing) or just take what was present at the time (and have a less than ideal ride). I chose the latter, and had a screaming boy for the entire ride. I'm not sure if he actually got the lesson, that you can't always get what you want, but I was trying.

Three: The redesign of Mickey Mouse and his crew:

A few years back the Disney people tasked animator Paul Rudish with updating Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto, Daisy, and many other canon characters from the animated shorts people my age and older grew up with. I guess the feeling was the characters were falling behind the 90's and later wave of animation created by Genndy Tartovsky and his comrades at Cartoon Network. Of which, Paul Rudish is an alum.

Which has also lead to complaints that the redesign is an awful Cartoon Network-ification of Disney hallmarks.

In the cafeteria/food court at the Pop Century, and on one of the channels in the room, these cartoon ran on a loop, and I tried to figure out how I felt about them. And then the "Mumbai Madness" episode came on, and I was hooked.

I am a fan. It is different, but in my position at work and as a father, I've learned that you can't have a knee-jerk reaction to change. These cartoons could suck, but if so, they should suck on their own merit, and not just because they're new. And, luckily for fans of animation, the generally don't suck, they're clever and enjoyable, and get back to the heart of what an old-timey Mickey cartoon was about, with the occasionally updated adult joke.

Four: Getting to see the Dolman family for only a few total hours over thirty hours of visiting has turned the entire thing in my memory to dream-time understanding. After a week in Orlando, a few hours in Oklahoma was already going to be tough to wrap your head around, and now, three weeks later, it's faded even further. Love the entire family, of course.

Five: Now that the summer is totally and fully over with, the trip to Italy has receded even further into the memory and taken on even more of the dream-time understanding in the recesses in my imagination.

Cass, in his own wonderful way, still remembers parts, with his, "Daddy, mommy, daddy, mommy, airplane!" and "Daddy, me, daddy, airplane ride!" and the like, and as his language develops more, these trip may fade into simply impressions--sounds, smells, visuals---that could shape his worldly views.

And that's fine with me.

Long live the Summer of Plane Trips!

Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Four States in Three Days

Friday started in Orlando, as we checked out and handed over our checked baggage to the hotel people. They saw to it that it would get to our final destination. How awesome is that?

My mom and son and I tried the hotel's arcade as we used up some time between checking out and the airport shuttle. Cass didn't get it so much.

A moment at Orlando's airport pierced me in the heart like a javelin, though. My mom was in a different line, but we were flying together to Phoenix, with Cass and I heading to OKC for (other) grandma's birthday party.

I was getting everything together to go through the X-ray machine. I had my shoes on the platform and was frantically looking for my Paperwhite so I could put it in the tray and try and forgo the annoyance of an extended search. (A Paperwhite is a type a Kindle. I bought it as a gift erroneously and didn't return it in time, so now it's mine. It's pretty sweet, I must say. I thought it wanted to replace books, but it makes me want more books.)

Anyway, I can't find the damn thing and Cass is starting to freak out. He wants to be like daddy and take his shoes off, too. But these are his hightop Mickey Mouse shoes (brought along specifically for this trip) which he can't quite get off his feet.

Of course Toddlers don't have to remove their shoes. I give up looking for the Kindle as the line backs up, pick up Cass who goes from mild freak out to initial meltdown phase and head through the family metal detector, telling him Don't worry about it, your shoes are fine, it's okay...all to no avail.

The hitting and glasses-smacking and hair-pulling commences as I try to get all our stuff from the machine...

It's funny: There are lots of words here to describe this, and yet, none of it seems out of the ordinary to me. These are regular things in the life of toddler-parenting.

We make it to one of the benches where adults re-arrange themselves, and I'm beginning to lose my cool. This is early on day seven of muggy one-hundo-percent-daddy-time. "Fine!" I say to him with a bit of exasperated sharpness. "I'll take your shoes off! And then we can put right 'em back on! Right here!"

He's crying and I'm asking myself What the hell are you doing, yelling at him right now...he hasn't eaten regularly or slept normally for a whole week, it's not his fault. Through his tears he looks at me and says, "I'm trying daddy, I'm trying..."

I almost burst into tears. I crashed to my haunches and took him in my arms and told him everything was okay, that I was SO proud on him, that he didn't need to try to do anything more for me. I get emotional now just thinking about it.

It took me a while to realize that he wasn't saying I'm trying, what he was saying, because he has troubles with his kappa, the hard-K sound, what he was saying was more of the declaration "I'm crying daddy, I'm crying..." Which...seems slightly less heartbreaking to me.

Anyway, here he is at the Phoenix airport as we waited for the flight to Oklahoma City:

We made it in around midnight Oklahoma time, so 1 am for us. It was...rough.

The next day we had grandma Carol's birthday party in the afternoon and evening at Corrie's brother Pete's house, where someone besides his cousins and aunties could hold the Boy:

With Grandpa Ron

The OKC skyline seems bigger than I last remember:

Breakfast the next morning was rowdy, as 18 showed up at a diner. They stacked a bunch of tables down the center of the dining room and had no issues with handing out seven checks.

Have you ever worked in the industry? I have. Those folks were baller-ass superstars, and since most everyone who had their own check had worked in restaurants, I'm sure the collection of tips was, eh, above-average.

It felt like not enough time, because after breakfast we went right to the airport. A few more hours and we were back in LA:

Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, and California in three days.

Our jet-setting boy...

Thursday: Animal Kingdom

Here we go again, park detritus and Google Maps:

This park seemed huge, and it was quite nice, like a zoo and a safari and a roller coaster park and Pandora from the movie Avatar all rolled into one place.

And it was mostly all of those things. And while Epcot had countries you could visit around that lake (about which I'll say more later, because I forgot to say it when I wrote the last post), this park had entire continents: Africa and Asia.

Those turned out to be a fictional east African port town called Harambe and a mock up of rural Nepal. We'll get there...

This was the RAIN day. It rained a little the day before, at Epcot, but pretty much in one quick and heavy downpour and a light and sustained drizzle a little later.

At this park it rained pretty well for most of the time.

The boys enjoyed the relative dryness of the bus there, Cass eating his usual croissant for breakfast:

We got the ponchos out pretty much as we entered, because that was when the rain started falling. Here's Cass with the Tree of Life in the background: (Norm and I refrained from wearing ponchos, the only members of our party to do so.)

The Tree of Life is an enormous fake baobab tree. When you get close, and underneath, and self-guiding yourself on the walking tour before the main park opens, you can see how much work went into the stamped and stained concrete. It looks so much like bark and wood, driftwood in some places, ponderosa pine bark in other places, and nearly the entire trunk and lower branches are carved animals, hidden upon first glancing:

Once the gates to Africa were opened, we headed over to explore Harambe as we waited for the safari ride. Some of the pictures got out of whack from the day, but I'll do my best (this is what I get for putting the pictures up last week and not writing anything until now...).

Harambe messed me up. The attention to detail in this tiny recreation of what normal Americans think an African town looks like blew me away. Is this all just a safe facsimile for American tourists so they never actually have to go to Africa?

It could have been any developing nation, really, depending on the script and language:

I felt like I took too many pictures:

It was the place for our dinner later on that day.

The first ride we took was the jungle safari. This was not effing around. It was a full on canvas covered open sided truck, driving around in the downpour, with repeated warnings that "THE CHILDREN MUST BE SEATED. IF ANYONE FALLS OUT, WE WILL NOT BE STOPPING FOR YOU. WE CANNOT STOP FOR YOU."

Yeah...working on it...

We got to see the ghosts of the forest:

Bongos, I think they're called otherwise.

We saw some napping lions, some sleepy wild dogs, and the baby elephant:

The giraffes were fully out, while both the hippos and the crocs were chilling in their watering holes. This was different than an amusement park ride, per se, as it was essentially open Savannah and some mildly dense forrest sections, mimicking normal African habitats, and we were driving through in a huge jeep.

We rode it again after dinner, just to see the evening animals stirring...

I think we went to Pandora next, but the pictures get all wonky here.

All the boys loved Dinoland, as we had tickets to cut the line at the dino ride. It was a very popular ride, and in the vein of Indiana Jones at Disneyland: not a roller coaster, but a jerky-moving-about controlled jeep ride. Here we are with one of the skeletons:

At lunch Cass found (and soon menaced) a heron or egret, looking to scavenge some hot dog bun or French fry:

Later, at dinner back in Africa, they brought out the big guns, the costumed characters we'd all wanted to see during the trip. Earlier, maybe at breakfast on Monday, there were three characters I'd never heard of and Goofy. At this dinner it was Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy. Look how excited my son is to see Donald. Who knew he'd be this over-the-moon?

Here's a picture from the central piece from the Pandora area. It looked cool, for sure...

We had the fast pass for a ride that had normal folks waiting 105 minutes, the sign said. Over an hour and a half...

The ride was...like Pirates of the Caribbean, but in Pandora, and mostly, meh... Norm and I looked at each other afterwards and said, "Hour and a half?"

At some point we took the kids to an extended playground, with multiple levels of slides and rope bridges and the like, and, following one specific path, you could cross over a major walkway in the park and arrive at a gravelly "dig site:"

I found Cass and Norman over there after losing eyes on them. The site was only accessible from the tiny elevated path over the park's thoroughfare.

After dinner Norm and I sprinted out to the roller coaster in the Himalayas, the tiny Nepali village remake as Asia, as everyone else went on the gorilla walk. Cass slept.

My one picture from this part sucks, but the flags signify the entrance of the area up ahead:

Norm and I had a fast pass for the ride, and went through literally minutes after the time was good. It took about six minutes to get to, and ride, the yeti ride. Which was great!

It starts off kinda fast, not so bad, but comes up to a halt as it looks like the track has been destroyed by a yeti, iron all mangled and bent.

Then you start to roll backward over a different set of tracks all the way to another stopping point, and then back down the mountain on a third set of tracks, in which you pull the most g's of the ride. It's a very solid roller coaster.

But we were done so fast, and had plenty of time before the evening safari ride, that we entertained the idea of riding it again.

The sign said 50 minutes, but what it really said was "from this point" 50 minutes, and there was nobody in sight. We looked at each other for a half second, blinked once, and sashayed right through the opening and got into line again. 

It snaked around for a while before we saw anybody. When it was all done, we maybe waited thirteen minutes the second time to ride. That was awesome.

On the safari the second time we saw some longhorn cattle that have the biggest horns of any bovine (and this picture does no justice...these were as big around as my thigh):

We caught a glimpse of the male lion:

And the other rhinos were out. In the morning it was the black rhinos, but in the evening it was the red rhinos, who were closer to the path:

This park was last, and I feel like it was where we did the most stuff, but I don't remember what happened after the second safari and Cass's meltdown as my mother was returning her scooter.

At some point during the day we saw the Lion King show, which was a mix of Cirque du Soleil and a singalong. We sat in Simba's section, and roared when it was our turn to make noise.

My mom had the boys all get their hands painted and pressed onto a paper, which were then turned into animals:

I wasn't sure I had this picture...

That was early in Harambe, and we picked it up when we left to go back to Pop Century...

The day remains a rainy blur of so much activity and dreamy memories.

Quite a full day for the last day...

Wednesday: Epcot Center

Once again, the map with the Map(s):

All along I thought that Epcot Center was the golf-ball building and, eh, nothing else. Parking, probably? My entire life was spent where, in my imagination, "Epcot Center" was the golf ball shaped building in Orlando. "No, it's...a park," both Corrie and my mom would say. An amusement park. A huge one, at that.

Discussion came up at some point during the day that Epcot was the biggest park in the Disney conglomeration. Norm and I even spoke to, eh, no way is this bigger than even Disneyland in Anaheim.

That's about when we noticed the swollen-tic part of the map. A huge lake is bound in by countries. More than half of the Epcot  had yet to be explored by us.

The ball after a very thorough search:

The ball itself is a ride, the Spaceship Earth ride. With such a cool name, and the fact that mom hadn't ever ridden it, on account of the line, meant that riding it should be a priority.

Cass was very cute with his cousins on this trip. Following and copying as much as would be expected.

One ride went through greenhouses and growing zones, both aero- and hydroponic. At the end, Holly and my mom took a backstage tour, while Norm and I had the boys for a while. One of the main areas at Epcot is basically a huge mall, with a ride at the bottom:

Imagine Sunrise Mall, or Arden Fair, with a main hallway where one end had an anchor like Sears or Nordstrom, only here there'd be a ride, like Pirates of the Caribbean. People would get onto a boat and putter away from view, into a warehouse-sized area for the content of the ride.

We had to get the hell out of there.

We left and headed in a straight line to the Nemo ride. I'm not sure what that looks like on the map, but that's how it went for us.

The Finding Nemo ride was like Peter Pan at Anaheim, maybe, with a clam-shell that slowed as got inside. The ride went around underwater curves, with screens hidden seamlessly with rocks that made it look like Nemo and Dory and Marlin and Bruce and the rest were part of the fun.

The coolest part was that it let you out in an aquarium.

The boys were having a great time. And then we made it to the manatee enclosure. We'd scoped them earlier, from beneath. But up an escalator (big jump!) had us at the top, with one of the manatee caretakers.

Norman and Simon talked to this young lady for quite a while, and it was awesome to be a part of, to be a witness and observer.

When we met up with the ladies again we'd all pretty much had enough. Dinner was in Japan in a few hours, and we felt like heading back to the hotel. The return trip, if we were committed to dinner, proved too daunting, so we stayed, but broke up for a time. Norman and my mom and me went walkabout, meandering our way around the lake until we hit Japan, nearly at the far end.

Norm and Holly took the sleeping Simon and Cass to a shady corner and then walk, in the stroller, and met us at dinner. It was a sushi joint, because both Norman and Simon, along with Norm and Holly and I, love sushi. Cass, depending on his mood and hunger level, would eat it. My mom---not so much.

After dinner, we even rode Spaceship Earth! Before, dinner, I think...

You get in a car-ish thing it takes you off in an generally upwards spiral. Everyone is in a car that can hole up to three people, like an adult and two kids. Cass and I were in our own car. Each of these cars is equipped with a touchscreen, and this screen allows you to choose the language that will be piped in through the speakers behind your head, explaining what you see on the ride.

Cass spent the entire available time with the screen pressing buttons and tapping ovals, until it ended, and we'd chosen German as the language of the ride.

I remember guffawing and wishing that at least it could be in French, which may make your ears feel massaged and relaxed afterwards.

The car goes up; it passes animatronic cavefolks hunting mammoth; it passes Egyptian pharaohs; it passes Greek antiquity; you see the first printing press. I did what I could with my German knowledge to piece it together

Near what feels like the apex of the world's longest right turn, you come into a computer control room, like from NASA in Houston, only updated to a future based on the reality in Houston. Then the car pivots and sets you down. Your position is reclined, like a fancy living room chair. The screen has activities to do, make postcards and video grams and the like, but outside there's quite a static light show.

This picture explains more than I could with words:

I took one last picture of the golf ball, only now it was night and the colors were pretty neat:

Tuesday: Magical Kingdom

Again, I use the map they give and the map from Google, just to compare...

Is this a "Never ask how the sausage is made..." moment, with the pictures?

Anyway, the Magical Kingdom is basically Disneyland on steroids. Or supersized.

The parks are mostly the same, only the scale is different. The castle in Anaheim is almost the same as Orlando. In Florida its bigger, but you can't walk through it---they have a stage set up to prevent:

In reality, it's the castle at Neuschwanstein looked straight on.

Anyway, check it out, a Shakespeare joke in Tomorrowland:

We rode our send-in-a-row shoot-em-up ride based on Toy Story characters, and then jumped on Small World, where I was hypnotized by the engineering:

We finally got to ride a roller coaster, and I use the qualifier "finally" for Cass and not myself, as it had been one of my missions to get him on a roller coaster. We rode the Snow White coaster, which was really a Seven Dwarves coaster, and he loved the stuffing out of it.

We waited in line for nearly thirty whole minutes for the Haunted Mansion, and afterwards Cass asked repeatedly at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, "This one not scary?"

"No, boy, this one is very cool," I must have answered a hundred times.

The picture above was from dinner, and a few minutes before those glasses were broken. Forever. We had ourselves a moment.

Afterwards, as the family contemplated the fireworks show after having ridden the People Mover (a ride that no longer exists at the park in Anaheim) Cass and I headed back to the Pop Century.

The Boy got his own seat while I stood. A nice mom next to him eventually let him rest his (sleeping) head on her bag. The rest of the fam got to see a spectacular show.

They made it back to the Pop Century closer to midnight than to nine...