It took a while, but
Happy 1000th fan!
If you aren’t following the list yet, you might discover a gem or two!
Archives For his dark materials
I’m one of the very few people that actually enjoyed The Golden Compass, and I must admit that I’m always the skeptic, but this latest trailer for HBO-BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation has raised my expectations. I’m never a fan of season series, but I’ll allow three for this, of course.
I’m a hyper-real animation skeptic, as well. But it certainly works best in mixed media than *coughliveactionremakescough*.
I hope there’s blood in the bear fight. That always irked me.
Oh, Happy Chinese New Year! Let’s start my (supposedly) bad-luck Goat Year with the now-mandatory Letterboxd list of my film collection~
I have a really weird history with films– born in the late 80s, you’d think I would’ve grown watching loads of 90s kids stuff, but I actually grew up with a lot of Silly Symphonies (which were released in the 30s) and loads of Disney 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s stuff, plus a lot of more grown up 80s movies. Poltergeist, The Thing, The Fly and The Stuff were particularly scary stuff (and I’m pretty sure I was scared of yogurt or white stuff at some point).
I don’t ever remember buying any original VHS tape, except for the rare birthday gift of a Disney’s Sing-Along Songs chapter or that X-Men tape I have. My first DVDs buys were Coyote Ugly, She’s All That and Loser — you can’t blame me. I was a 15-year-old girl. The collection grew bigger, and possibly exploded during my years abroad. I’m nearing my 500th movie.
I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!
A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.
The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.
Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.
1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies
I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.
It took me 3 months (almost 4) to finish reading The Sally Lockhart Mysteries series – shameful I tell you! Four books in that time, shameful!
Thank you, Diana, for letting me borrow these. ^^
So Sally… from the books by Pullman that I’ve read, I noticed that I like his style. Though the more you read him, the more you can predict… guess it’s always like that. The first book on this series, The Ruby in the Smoke, was quite interesting in story and themes. I highly doubt they would’ve let me read this book in school, which deals with the opium trade, dealing, and usage… stuff like murders, extorsion… LOL’ not your very typical ‘children’ literature.
The next book, The Shadow in the North, went sort of the same path with murders and extorsion, but focused a lot more on the financing aspect. However the book wasn’t as good, even though you get to care a little bit more about the characters, and grow up with them. There is also a eh… bedroom scene? xD It reminded me of those PG-13 fanfiction stories. It was intimate on its own, awkward… but you know, it does its purpose for the next book~~~ xD
Book 3, The Tiger in the Well, has some very interestingly written chapters… or maybe just paragraphs. However, by this point, I was beginning to think it was so predictable. I clearly remember I began reading the first chapter, and said out loud “I bet this and that is the one behind!” and then BAM! “I knew it!“. Despite the no-surprise, I enjoyed reading this even more than TSitN… Perhaps it was because it was more complex to me, and I enjoyed Sally discovering how as herself she was a lady, but as someone else she was just a woman… and yes, everybody seemed to be lusting over her. LOL’
Finally Book4, The Tin Princess, which is not really a Sally Lockhart mystery… she’s barely in it. This one was okay, I have nothing against Adelaide, or Becky… and I do like Jim. There are some very well written parts in this one two, but I often found myself skimming. The ending… the ending? I didn’t care enough to… care?
You know how His Dark Materials has sort of a bittersweet ending… more bitter than sweet? This one has a bittersweet ending sweeter than bitter~ LOL’
Oh, yeah! And Amy was there for the 4.20pm show~~ Amy needed her fix of Northern Lights. There weren’t many people then, and even though it was a subtitled version, there were a few kids… one of them was annoying! Talking all throughout the film… kinda cute (bordering on ‘I want to kill that kid’), but really bad-looking on the parent there who couldn’t shut him up.
Quick facts about Amy and His Dark Materials Trilogy:
- Northern Lights (aka Golden Compass) was suggested by a friend who knew I liked Harry Potter.
- After a while, I finally got the books at the beginning of the year.
- Couldn’t control myself, and had to read one after the other.
- Amy’s not a die-hard fan of HDM Trilogy, but it’s become her favorite series overall.
- Amy liked the series so much, she gave her friend the trilogy as a gift. She liked it too.
Overall, the film was pretty good, except for the Flash pace. It is not as much as an editing fault because the film is not jumping, but many of the scenes don’t really flow… as, let say – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban artistically flows… or how Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is so choppy it makes you feel there’s a whole scene missing in between.
Now, onto the good stuff. Effects are pretty good. Iorek is great, though I think Ragnar (aka in the book as Iofur) looked better. The bear fight had me gasping, even though there was no blood… if there had been blood, I would’ve been even more so. I loved Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala… and oh! the Witches are so cool!! They flew and fought with such elegance, it left me in awe. I also loved Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter… evil or not, you have to love her. Dakota Blue Richards did pretty great as Lyra, there were times I thought it was not as good, but scenes like the one in Bolsvangar were very dramatic.
I enjoyed the confrontation at Bolsvangar, even though it’s not quite epic… it was quite thrilling. The kids running, about to be attacked then Iorek shows up and BAM! SNAP! The Witches show up, arrows begin flying… golden sparkles, SWOOSH! And the Gypsies SNAP SNAP!
Would love to watch that again… or wouldn’t mind some blood on the bears, uncensored version, non? x’D How about a Director’s Cut?? Because I would’ve love to have 30min more of it… especially since the film didn’t include the OH SO OMG ending chapter (or chapters…) but I guess it would’ve been unfair to have movie-goers wait for The Subtle Knife to hit theaters in 2009… or maybe even forever if GC bombs at the Box Office. Better leave this with no cliff-hanger…
Grade: 3.5/5 – (docked a whole point for fast-pacing)
My Dæmon is an Ocelot that looks like a domestic cat. His name is Gabriel. Golden Compass looks like such an awesome film. Can’t wait for Mrs. Coulter and Serafina Pekkala x’D
