I said once that if I wanted to be funny I could just fill up Project 60 baking lots of stuff I'd never baked before, and the same could be said of classic films that I've never watched. There are lots of them and I daresay finding twenty would be child's play. But again as I said with the baking, that's really not in the spirit of the project so I chose one as representative of all those wonderful films that I should have watched by now but haven't, whether through ignorance, accident or design.
I'd never even heard of Princess Mononoke until a few years ago when it suddenly kept cropping up in TV countdown programs ( the OH is addicted, and we're at the age where we can happily watch them more than once safe in the knowledge that we have already forgotten what made the top five) and magazine listings of the 100 Films to see Before you Die type. I mentioned it separately to both my sons and they both told me it was brilliant and I should certainly watch it.
Somehow I never got around to it. It was Japanese, and a cartoon, and given my well known loathing of cartoons as a form and my particular dislike of the faces in Japanese ones with the big eyes and the little snubby noses, initial ignorance was topped off with deliberate avoidance until this Christmas break.
Then Son No 2 suggested that as he had a copy of it on DVD and it was just sitting there in his bedroom, we might watch it together and, tempted though I was just to carry on not watching it, I summoned up the spirit of Project 60 and agreed.
And it was OK. In addition to the fact that it was a cartoon it also had holes in the plot you could drive a tank through and endless unexplained leaps in the story. And because I know little or nothing about the Japanese culture of gods and demons I was a bit at sea with those elements. However, given that son no 2 is a big fan I managed to bite my tongue and not make too many sarcastic comments pointing out the weaknesses in the storyline as we went along.
Like several other things making up this project it's a case of 'Glad I did it, wouldn't do it again'.
Always worth trying something new, if only to cut down the number of things one feels one should try 😉😉
ReplyDeleteI thought it might be on of those Studio Ghibli things (apols if spelling wrong, too late and too lazy to look it up!). I was persuaded to watch one by the youngest sprog, and I have to say that I was divided between boredom, bemusement and the fear of nightmares at the thing! I cannot remember the name, but it involved a weird deserted or not deserted amusement park. If I decide on a Project thingy, I can't include an SG film, can I?
ReplyDelete(I am thinking of learning some Gaelic, due to having fallen comprehensively in love with Sorley . . . oops!)
I believe it is indeed a Studio Ghibli production, I saw something on Facebook about that only the other day. It is amazing how many good ideas you get for Project 60 only to discover that they are not quite such virgin ground as you first thought.
DeleteGaelic is horribly difficult and Sorley was a stroppy so and so at times, but don't let me put you off!