Ash Ketchum

Among the links I posted were high-quality uploads of "Rat Patrol," first episode, and a Christmas episode of "Daniel Boone." Amazing what you can find on YouTube.

malazar

I know I should be watching stuff that gets double credit with the Academy Awards challenge, but I opened the challenge with Truck Turner since it is expiring after tonight on Netflix instant. I don't regret that decision one bit as this has become my new favorite Blaxploitation film. Really great stuff!

shadokitty

I didn't start with double credit watching either. Instead I started with a few episodes of Star Blazers as Youtube as all 3 seasons available to watch.

Trevor

Starting tonight with Stagecoach, which must be double credit. Pretty sure it's a first time viewing.

malazar

Always a good choice! Well, the first two seasons are favorites of mine at least. It is just somewhat jarring watching the third with the voice changes.

BobO'Link

I *must* stop making plans for what and when to watch!

I'd decided to start with Game of Thrones S1 (which I've seen but recently purchased) as I picked up S3 last week and am itching to see it *but* my grandson spent the night so starting before his bed time was out of the question. He wanted to watch The Incredibles! but it was too close to bed time so we watched a few episodes of Josie and the Pussycats which I was surprised to find does not qualify. When bed time hit I was worn out too so didn't try to fight sleep and get in a ep. or two of GOT and just went to bed. I promised we'd watch The Incredibles! today so there'll be at least *one* item for the challenge. I picked up a copy of Defenders of the Earth V1 last week and may put that in to see if he likes it. Hopefully I can get some GOT in tonight...

*EDIT*

OK... did some research on Josie... and am going to count it unless someone objects. Based on what I saw and remember about the series it's really adventure/mystery/comedy/music - much like Scooby Doo (the similarities really make it seem like nothing more than a slight retooling to work in musical numbers - the grandkids even commented on the similarities). IMDB doesn't list the adventure/mystery parts and just says animation/comedy/family/music.

davidh777

You're good with Stagecoach, but you have to be wary with some of those Westerns. I've watched a couple classics in recent years without doing the research and expecting them to qualify, only to find that I wouldn't be able to count them.

If it really is like Scooby, then that sounds good to me.

shadokitty

This morning I started the challenge off for the day with an episode of Knight Rider from the Season 1 set.

ororama

I began with the first two Mr. Moto movies, an episode of Teen Titans, and a French silent western about Indians. I wanted to watch the first 5 Mr. Moto movies during the first 2 nights of the challenge, so I'm on track.

My goals are to watch all the Mr. Moto movies, watch Louis Feuillade's Fantômas movies, continue with M Squad (watched the first 3 episodes during the TV Challenge) and rewatch some movies with my kids that they have requested (probably In Bruges this afternoon). Other than those plans, I probably should work on maintaining my icheckmovies ranking (Fantômas and at least one other French silent will help with that) by filling in some of the qualifying classics and box office hits that I haven't seen yet.

ororama

My recollection (somewhat hazy-I must have watched them when they first aired, or shortly after) is that Josie and the Pussycats were something like spies, so it should qualify.

Hopefully, we'll be watching The Wind Rises this weekend. It doesn't qualify by the imdb genre listings, but I suspect that it may be okay. If it doesn't qualify, I think it would be the first movie that I will have seen by Miyazaki that wasn't an adventure movie. My kids have wanted to see it since we first saw the trailer.

Simple counting, broad interpretation of rules regarding qualifying titles and no drama are three virtues of any challenge that Trevor runs.

I just found out that AllRovi apparently no longer exists, so common sense in figuring out what should qualify for a challenge becomes more important. Imdb often misses obvious genres for some titles, and includes genres that make no sense in other cases.

coyoteblue

Allrovi is now AllMovie.com, AllMusic.com.

Dimension X

Of course it's an action show. Just look at the second verse of the theme song:

shadokitty

Went with Godzilla Raids Again for my first movie of the challenge, Figured kaiju where it is monster vs monster is more action oriented than the first movie in a series where there are no fights.

Ash Ketchum

THE WIND RISES is partly a love story, but mostly a biopic. The only real action in it is found in the aerial activity in the dream sequences. Personally, I would rule it out for this challenge. But I'm not the moderator.

It's also not for kids. There's nothing in it that would disturb them, but it would bore pretty much anyone under the ages of eight or nine. In fact, I wish there had been disturbing images in it, something to indicate that Miyazaki understood the horrific implications of his protagonist's "beautiful dream." As it stands, the film does little to acknowledge the thousands of deaths caused by that dream and the devastation that was visited on Japan as a (deserved) result. I found the film infuriating.

Here's a paragraph from one of the few negative reviews of the film (Jeff Meyers in Detroit's MetroTimes):

malazar

Yeah, I saw The Wind Rises on Friday too and would not count it for this challenge. It really didn't have much adventure to it at all, but different people will have different opinions on it I am sure. Yesterday, I actually managed to watch a couple things that had double credit with Fantastic Mr. Fox and Rebecca. Both were first time watches for me and were pretty great. After those I finally cracked open my Game of Thrones season 3 blu-ray set and began watching that with the first episode. I would marathon through it quickly, but I am watching it with someone else so I will probably be on the week or two plan for it.

BobO'Link

I went with Hetty Wainthropp Investigates as my next series. That was mainly because my grandson spent the night again and it looks like he'll be at the house all afternoon (along with his sisters as they just came in...). At least that's one he can watch, although he'll probably be bored by it. We're expecting a round of bad weather (freezing rain/sleet/snow) and they'll *probably* be out of school tomorrow. That'll make grandma "happy" but I'll still go to work unless it gets *really* bad.

mrcellophane

I also watched The Wind Rises, wondering if it would count. Going into it, I didn't know anything about it except that it was a biopic. While it didn't raise my ire, I have to say that I enjoy Miyazaki's adventure/fantasy films more. A lot of the dialogue sounds stilted, and I'm wondering if watching the original Japanese version would help with that.

Started the challenge with a episode of Naked City which was a blind-buy when it was super cheap at Wal-Mart. Then I watched The Adventures of Tintin (2011) with a friend. I'm a big fan of the film and adventure fiction of that ilk in general. Good way to start things off!

shadokitty

Another Miyazaki film that isn't really an adventure film is Grave of the Fireflies. Instead it is a movie about the horrors of war on the homefront of Japan during the closing years of WW2. Very moving, and moved me to tears in spots, but not adventure.

On topic, watched a double credit movie earlier today, Jurassic Park.

malazar

I ended up watching A Clockwork Orange for double credit this afternoon and am now going to start watching the first set of the Space Adventure Cobra original TV series until the Academy Awards ceremony comes on. I am really looking forward to watching this series after many years of wanting to be able to see the whole thing.

Ash Ketchum

I saw THE WIND RISES in Japanese and it didn't help. In fact, I was wondering if the characters come to life at all in the English dub!

Re: Naked City: My brother just sent me an e-mail saying that he watched an episode, "Tombstone for a Derelict," that guest-starred Robert Redford and was partly filmed in our old neighborhood in the Bronx.

ororama

After watching it, I agree on the adventure question.

The movie is generally described as a highly fictionalized biography of Jirô Horikoshi. The mid-1930s novel that is the source of part of its plot, and from which the title comes, apparently has nothing to do with him, but is about a woman being treated in a tuberculosis sanitarium. The romantic story, which I think is the most effective part of the movie, has nothing to do with the real Horikoshi.

The part of the story that is based on the real Horikoshi is the design of the Zero fighter. Miyazaki's love of flight is obvious from many of his other movies, and this must be what drew him to Horikoshi's story. However, the movie never went into the details of the design and testing that I expected. There are mentions of issues regarding struts and bolts, but based on what you see in the movie you would think that he was only responsible for a few minor details in the plane, not its design as the movie and his New York Times obituary credit him.

The quotes from Horikoshi about his pure interest in the beauty of flight obviously came after the war, and seem like the typical excuses offered by people who participated in the war effort in any of the Axis countries, which does not rule out the sentiments being genuine. I would guess that almost no one outside Japan, and few in Japan, know enough about him to know his true feelings about the war.

The plane design part of the story seemed like it could have been a Japanese (or British or American) propaganda movie from World War II, except for the references to the secret police and Thomas Mann (a banned author in Nazi Germany, although the primary reason for mentioning him apparently comes from the tuberculosis aspect of the movie).

I think you should give Miyazaki a break on the war issue. I think his primary interest and influence has been in the visual aspect of animated film, not in complex stories. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind's environmental message is appealing, but not very deep. I don't think there would be any legitimate basis for suspecting Horikoshi of war crimes unless he was involved in the use of slave labor for the manufacture of the planes, and I assume that he was not. If he hadn't designed the Zero, someone else would have designed a similar plane that probably wasn't quite as good.

I'm sure you are familiar with movies by directors like Nagisa Oshima, Yasuzô Masumura, Masaki Kobayashi, Seijun Suzuki and Kinji Fukasaku that are highly critical of Japan's actions in World War II. I don't think that every Japanese movie about World War II has to go into all the details, although it wouldn't hurt if some do every few years or so. I am disturbed by the continuing practice of leading Japanese politicians honoring the memory of war criminals, and of minimizing or denying Japanese war crimes. It's probably just a cynical political ploy, like the Confederate flag issue in southern states, but it indicates a failure of the reconstruction of Japan compared to that of Germany, where the renunciation of the Nazi era seems genuine and almost universal.

In recent years, I prefer to go into movies as blind as possible, so I didn't have any idea whether it might be an adventure story beyond Miyazaki's track record. I found the love story moving, and interesting as a rare venture into the adult world for Miyazaki.

Ash Ketchum

Three points in response to bolded lines above:

1) I would be a lot happier if Japan's key fighter plane had been designed by someone who was not as good. It would have meant fewer American lives lost--and more Japanese casualties a lot sooner in the war, enough to have maybe sped up the outcome and averted the need for nukes.

2) And let's not forget Kurosawa's NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH and Kon Ichikawa's THE BURMESE HARP. I would expect (and hope) for Miyazaki to join their company and that of the filmmakers you cite and not that of the revisionists who gloss over Japan's wartime atrocities. Look at the way Miyazaki stakes out the positions of the various factions in PRINCESS MONONOKE. He doesn't soften anyone's blame or guilt in the conflict. I would have hoped for the same kind of clearheaded analysis in this film.

3) What makes Miyazaki's film particularly disturbing to me is exactly the fact that it comes out at the same time that Prime Minister Abe is pissing off Japan's neighbors (China and South Korea, for starters) and allies (the U.S.) with his actions, such as visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, calling for revising textbooks, and dismissing the claims of the Comfort Women. There's an alarming pattern here and Miyazaki's film is part of it. What lessons has Japan ultimately learned from the war?

I should add that my father was a Marine Corps drill instructor during the war and he trained men for combat in the Pacific. A number of his trainees no doubt went to their deaths from bullets fired by Horikoshi's planes.

bacigalup

First time participant, & a question...

In my DVD collection I have a title, Fourteen Hours (1951), which was released as part of the "Fox Film Noir" collection by 20th Century Fox. IMDB lists this under genre as being a "thriller" & that is right after "drama" and "film noir".

So would a genre based "thriller" movie like this be eligible for this challenge?

Trevor

Sure!

HyperWeather

So I had watched the pilot of Scandal last month and was planning on watching more this month, but imdb doesn't list it as crime like I thought it would, since I thought it was a crime drama. Would anybody else count it?