Movie recommendation: Girl with a Pearl Earring

[whispercricket]

I'm not so great at writing reviews (I hated writing book reviews in grade school and just don't feel I do the things I'd be reviewing justice now), but I'd at least like to recommend the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring. I watched it tonight thinking that it might not be very good and I could discard it afterwards to make space for another dvd, but instead, I found it to be excellent - a gorgeous period fairy tale of sorts in the style of Ever After (that is, without magic or fairies). The movie follows a (late-teenaged?) girl [Scarlet Johanssen, from Lost in Translation, which I also highly recommend] who becomes a maid at the house of the Dutch painter Vermeer.

Beautiful cinematography (and they supposedly were highly authentic to the 17th century time period in their filming, from the house design, to the costumes, to the exterior shots of Delft). Very nice soundtrack. Excellent -subtle- acting. I highly enjoyed it.

(Note that I have not read the book on which the movie was based, so I can't say whether or not it is faithful to the text.)

Comments

[its-just-me.livejournal.com]

Have you seen, Chobits? We had it on our Netflix list and it came today. Dan is wondering if it's more your style of movie before we watch it.

[whispercricket]

Please define my style of movie. :) Are you asking whether it's overly cute or shoujo? I believe Chobits is shounen (granted, I think A Little Snow Fairy Sugar also is shounen, so that doesn't rule out cute). I have not seen the show, despite owning the manga; from what I've read, I'll prefer the manga to the anime.

Let me know what you think. :)

[its-just-me.livejournal.com]

Shonen? Shoujo? I know not these strange words.

[whispercricket]

Oh dear - I was afraid of that after I posted the comment. :)

The easy explanation is that shoujo is anime for girls and shounen is anime for boys. The complication is that these are usually based off where the manga for the show was originally published, and that they're more like Japanese marketing terms. Thus why you get things like Sugar as shounen (I believe there's a precedence for cute fluffy anime being directed at boys instead of girls, the opposite of what would be expected in this country). Of course, I've found shounen anime I like and shoujo anime I like, so marketing doesn't have to mean that much.

Some sub-genres would be mahou shoujo (magic girl - like Sailor Moon) and shounen-ai / shoujo-ai (boys love / girls love, but not hentai - I believe Gravitation would be considered shounen-ai, and that shounen-ai is targeted at girls; yaoi would be a more explicit version of shounen-ai, and yuri the same for shoujo-ai). I believe most harem animes are shounen (one guy, sometimes amazingly wimpy yet fawned on by multitudes of pretty girls). Then there are animes like Escaflowne (I think?) that were in both shoujo and shounen manga serials, so are sort of for everyone. Most mecha, I believe, is shounen, although there are shows like Gundam Wing which were designed in part to get girls interested in the Gundam universe (lots of bishounen - pretty boys).

I think I'm getting this mostly right (anyone else reading, feel free to elaborate and / or correct me).

So this is all fascinating, right? :) From my experience, at least with anime containing romance, I have a preference for shoujo over shounen, because harem anime so far has tended to annoy me (however, I have not yet watched El Hazard: The Magnificent World, which many people I know like very much, and that's a harem anime). However, I've also found some shoujo (e.g. Boys Over Flowers) overwhelmingly melodramatic. I also highly prefer fan service in shoujo shows over fan service in shounen ones (e.g. Miyuki-chan in Wonderland [shoujo], which I find hilarious, versus the fairly light fan service in Magic User's Club [shounen, despite having magic girls], which I didn't care for at all).

So what this means when considering Chobits is that it contains fan service, and it's a shounen show, and I've heard that the lead male is kind of a loser (not all that surprising in shounen shows for a reason I can't really comprehend), so it's not that high on my list of anime to get, even though I love the character design (by Clamp).

In case you're still curious (or confused, although it's still a little confusing to me too, so I don't really try to categorize that much), here's a shoujo anime list, and an Anipike magazine article.

[whispercricket]

Oh, if you've seen the pink plushy bunny that sometimes sits on our mantel, that's Atashi from Chobits. However, I believe Atashi is a storybook character, if you're afraid of pink bunny overload.

[keshwyn]

I'd wanted to see this movie at the Somerville Theater when it was playing there, because I thought it sounded interesting. However, I didn't make it before it left second string. Now I really want to see it.