fred's adventures in trashy movies continue ... bedknobs and broomsticks: watched in honor of angela lansbury's recent 80th birthday. angela's quite lovable here, and overall the movie is enjoyable, although not particularly memorable. the castle of cagliostro (rupan sansei: kariosutoro no shiro): great james bond-type adventure movie, w/ a distinctly miyazaki feel. very enjoyable. evita: i enjoyed re-watching this. i think this musical is one of ALW's best, and the production values are high. good adaptation, cinematography, and direction, and solid acting from madonna and banderas. much better than the average movie musical. the phantom of the opera: echhh. this movie makes me strongly forget i ever liked any part of this show. terrible acting and adaptation and mediocre singing. primary colors: rented mostly to see emma thompson, who was uninteresting here. travolta's pretty good, as is "newcomer" adriane lester, but the story was fairly boring and way too long. psycho: good (esp. the first half) and a classic w/ good acting, but def. not worth the #25 best movie of all time slot on imdb. spider-man: the new animated series: i remember hearing about this when it came out, but i've just now gotten around to watching disk 1. mtv put out this series (which only lasted 1 season) to sort of follow spidey in the time between the first and 2nd movies. as a result pretty much all of the episodes are standalone adventures against a new baddie. they were gearing it more towards teens than kids and recruited some interesting voices: neil patrick harris as spidey (who is distractingly recognizable), lisa loeb as mary jane (she actually does really well -- when's the last time she put out an album?), and ian ziering who i vaguely remember as being a bad guy on 90210. they also got rob zombie, eve, and virginia madsen in on it. the animation was the big point of contention for a lot of people, as it's prob. one of the first series to almost completely rely on CGI. as you'd expect, generally the people movement looks stiff and video game-y, but you get used to it, and the fight scenes and web-slinging action are pretty good. all in all not a bad way to spend an evening or two if you really liked the movies. ukigusa (floating weeds): not my favorite ozu movie so far, but good acting and his usual great cinematography and atmosphere. wallace & gromit in the curse of the were-rabbit: hurrah! W&G's movie debut is a great success. nick park's humour and inventiveness are still going strong. just points up how unintelligent other animated films are.