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During this week I have watched a few movies, the first of which being Hurt Locker. Now I am aware that this movie one a couple awards last week so I really wanted to see what it was all about. My universities ROTC club put the showing on so it was free for me biggrin I was pretty excited about it. The film was all about what it was like to be on a bomb squad in Iraq for a little over a month. The whole thing seemed to be pretty realistic, and afterwords we had an actual Army Sergeant and an Air Force Captain come up front for some Q&A time. The one thing that they really stressed that was realistic was the aftermath of everything, just how the soldiers reacted once they got home and after the battle was over. The Sergeant was telling us about how the Army and other services have gotten much better about having doctors over there to help with the phycological aspect of things. A thing that was pretty unrealistic about the movie was how they seemed to just kind of go, or, just run off and do a mission. In reality there is loads of paper work and planning before you even leave a gate just to do a regular mission each day. The Sergeant said that “you would be communicating with the base and with the other units in the area that you go into. You would tell them alright, were going from this point to that point, this is our mission, we have x number of guys and x number of weapons. You do that just so they know you are there if they need you and just what your mission is.” So quite a bit of the movie was Hollywoodified, especially the part with the snipers out in the desert. They could have called in for support of for an airstrike on the snipers location. That sort of thing was just very unrealistic. Over all though the movie was quite well done, it was very moving, and I think they did an excellent job at capturing another side of the war, the one that we in America almost never see a part of except in films and newspapers.

Studio Ghibli's new film, 借りぐらしのアリエッティ, is an adaptation of The Borrowers by Mary Norton. The will not be a Miyuzaki film, it will instead be directed by the 36 year old Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi has been a key animator in several of the Ghibli films since he joined the team, and this movie looks like it will not disappoint. The movie is about these little tiny people (4 centimeters tall) that live under the floor in Japanese homes. It was originally set in England, but this adaptation will take it to the neighborhood of several Japanese animation studios including Studio Ghibli. The teaser, though short and hardly revealing at all, gives you a glimpse at the lush world that they are creating for us. . .

Teaser