So where can I find an official scale about how much I'm supposed to care about various animals and their feelings? I mean, domestic mammals like dogs or cats are obviously pretty high. Horses, too. Cows, sort of, in that I'm supposed to care about their feelings but I eat them anyway.

The official amount you are supposed to care about an animal is directly proportional to how cute the animal is.

The official amount you are supposed to care about an animal is directly proportional to how cute the animal is.

This is probably why I don't give a crap about the fish in the Marlins' tank. Hell, I'd love to go fishing for Marlin. It's apparently pretty expensive and difficult though.



Animated movies in order of excellence:
1. First 45 minutes of Wall-E
2. Up/My Neighbor Totoro
3. Howl's Moving Castle/The Incredibles
4. Entire Wall-E
5. Finding Nemo
6. Spirited Away/Toy Story/All the rest of the Pixar stuff.

...
1000. Kung-fu panda

Gee, over fifty posts in on a thread about animal (well, fish) abuse, and no mention of the recently cancelled HBO series Luck? I guess the ratings really were as bad as I had heard.

DB

I think Cardsfanboy should have his freedom to discuss pop culture revoked.

Gee, over fifty posts in on a thread about animal (well, fish) abuse, and no mention of the recently cancelled HBO series Luck? I guess the ratings really were as bad as I had heard.

I mentioned it in another thread but the cancellation because of horse deaths was a red herring. HBO wasn't happy with the ratings nor the cost of the show in light of the poor ratings so they used the deaths an excuse.

Stupid phone. I was going to also mention Waltz with Bashir.

Waltz with Bashir was seriously great - best movie of any kind, in its year.
I lucked into seeing that and Sita Sings the Blues on consecutive days at a film fest, which made for a memorably great animated-movie weekend.

I mentioned it [Luck] in another thread but the cancellation because of horse deaths was a red herring. HBO wasn't happy with the ratings nor the cost of the show in light of the poor ratings so they used the deaths an excuse.

Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus. From what I've read the show's pilot drew about a million viewers, but subsequent episodes only pulled in about half that.

Personally I am enjoying the show, and am looking forward to the final two episodes. But the show's pace has been, what's the best word here; deliberate? Yeah, deliberate; I think that's a good description of the pace of Luck, at least so far. I can see where many viewers would lose interest along the way. I'm also sure that many viewers were hoping that Luck would be The Sopranos, except set at the race track.

Since Season Two was already written (or, at least, outlined) it would be nice if the show's writers would put the screen plays into book form, so that at least we can read what happens to the characters they've created.

DB

I too found Spirited Away just OK. I think it gets so overwrought with all the plot twists and different ideas going around that I lost any connectedness to the characters. I think I got bored with it really. My 8 year old on OTOH really liked it, she of course didnt feel that sort of manipulation, and had the energy to stay with it and so bought into it. I suppose the family part of the story also made her respond.

I think both of us, found Ponyo to be pretty good, but not great. I saw a bit of Howl's MOving Castle and will probably watch more of it, I might like it more.

I caught a field mouse in my house once and he such a pain in the ass that I put him to death. He had a partner and I felt so bad, that when I caught the other guy I let him go near a playground. I dont think I'll ever do that to a mouse again. They were cute, brown and white field mouse, so they had a certain cuteness.

Gee, over fifty posts in on a thread about animal (well, fish) abuse, and no mention of the recently cancelled HBO series Luck?

Is that a show about animals?

Since Season Two was already written (or, at least, outlined) it would be nice if the show's writers would put the screen plays into book form, so that at least we can read what happens to the characters they've created.


Well, from what I have heard they finished the first two episodes of season two and they'll be tacking those on at the end of season 1.

Is that [Luck] a show about animals?

Yes.

Mostly the two-legged kind.

DB

I too found Spirited Away just OK. I think it gets so overwrought with all the plot twists and different ideas going around that I lost any connectedness to the characters. I think I got bored with it really. My 8 year old on OTOH really liked it, she of course didnt feel that sort of manipulation, and had the energy to stay with it and so bought into it. I suppose the family part of the story also made her respond.

I think both of us, found Ponyo to be pretty good, but not great. I saw a bit of Howl's MOving Castle and will probably watch more of it, I might like it more.

I agree with your points on Spirited Away and Ponyo. I think that you would like Howl's Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro better. MNT never gets brought up in these discussions, but I like it the best. I find it to be so much more honest than Spirited Away.

1000. Kung-fu panda

Oh come on, that movie was a delight compared to its ill-advised sequel.

Oh come on, that movie was a delight compared to its ill-advised sequel.

1653. Kung Fu Panda 2

Woefully underrated: The Castle Cagliostro, Miyazaki's Lupin the Third movie. Not as good as Totoro or Spirited Away, but just as fun as you'd imagine a Miyazaki-made Lupin film.

Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are both really underrated also; it's a shame that Satoshi Kon passed away so young, he was a really creative voice with different approaches to narrative than other anime directors.

I ####### love Kung Fu Panda. I LOVE IT. It's funny, it's sad, it looks beautiful, it's got awesome fight scenes, and all in all I think it's basically a perfectly constructed story. And I love Master Oogway. I thought he was awesome.

But yes the sequel was stupid.

Edited because I realized I was straw-manning. (Making a straw man? Arguing with a straw man? What's the verb form of that?)

Kon's Millennium Actress was wonderful, too.

I love all of Miyazaki's films, but I hold a special place in my heart for Porco Rosso and Kiki's Delivery Service. Miyazaki is a vintage aircraft fanatic (heck, his studio is named after a 1930s Italian airplane), and all of the aircraft in Porco Rosso are based on real aircraft, or in some cases, real design proposals for aircraft that never actually flew, and they're so lovingly drawn. In Kiki's Delivery Service, that biplane that you see during the opening sequence isn't just some generic airplane - it's a beautifully rendered Handley Page HP.42, perfect in every detail. It's that kind of craftsmanship that makes his films so wonderful, at least to a fellow airplane nut...

I too found Spirited Away just OK. I think it gets so overwrought with all the plot twists and different ideas going around that I lost any connectedness to the characters. I think I got bored with it really

I don't get this at all. Even if you didn't care about the plot or the characters the animation style in itself is a surrealist masterpiece. How can you be bored by the river spirit, the creepy masked guy, the giant baby, that train scene, etc? Even if it was a collection of shorts with no connections at all it would be fascinating IMO unless you have no interest in artistic animation on its own merits. On the other hand I couldn't get into Howl's much. Seemed a let down after Spirited Away/Mononoke and a bit of retread for him in some ways. Seeing it with the English dub first may have hurt it for me(Billy Crystal is so distinctive and just seemed out of place.)

Speaking of collections of shorts, anyone who is interested in experimental animation needs to see the two Genius Party movies.

Seeing it with the English dub first may have hurt it for me(Billy Crystal is so distinctive and just seemed out of place.)

I've never watched the English-dubbed versions of Miyazaki's movies for that very reason. I always watch the Japanese-language version with sub-titles, because I want to concentrate on the story and the visuals, rather than go "Oh, that's ________ doing the dub..."

Miyazaki's films are the one place dubbing doesn't usually hurt anime IMO because they are so professionally done. Most of them I didn't even know who did the voices until looking it up afterward but Billy Crystal is just impossible to separate from his voice ala Robin Williams in Aladdin(but Robin Williams is naturally a cartoon character even in real life so that worked.)

Anyone dumb enough to think "Finding Nemo" is better than "Kung Fu Panda" is dumb enough to be cut and bled into a gutter without the rest of humanity missing a trace ...

Waltz with Bashir was seriously great - best movie of any kind, in its year.

This.

Easily one of the top 10 films of the last 10 years.

Woefully underrated: The Castle Cagliostro, Miyazaki's Lupin the Third movie. Not as good as Totoro or Spirited Away, but just as fun as you'd imagine a Miyazaki-made Lupin film.

Lupin is awesome all around, and Miyazaki's is certainly no exception. I wish Adult Swim had gotten more episodes than the couple dozen they did, even if their dubbing was .... interesting.

PETA Punks the Miami Marlins (via Snopes)

PETA purchased an engraved pavement stone at Marlins Park that reads "Florida Is Still Hosting Incredible Night Games. Help Us Reach The Stars. Cheer Our Marlins!"