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Dearest listeners, we return this week with the cinematic delights of Japan and… Iowa?
Movies discussed:
Your Name.
Field of Dreams
Other things mentioned:
The northern lights
Consumer Reports
Apple pie
Greek cherry phyllo strudel
Deep fried feta cheese
3 comments
Is FIELD OF DREAMS the best use of the sense of nostalgia in all of American cinema? Arguably!
But I’m here to talk about YOUR NAME. Which absolutely is Shinkai’s masterwork, and please don’t take its excellence as a sign that he is actually getting better because his next film, WEATHERING WITH YOU, is absolutely infuriating (gorgeous, but infuriating). About the only other one of his full-length movies I can really enjoy is THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS, which is still… problematic, from certain angles. For his first feature-length effort, though, it absolutely highlights what his strengths are always going to be and does some visually fascinating things along the way. But. Sigh. He really needs a strong writing partner.
(We had clear skies for The Great Northern Lights Event but I’m deep in suburbia and have no vehicle, so looking “to the north” at oh-dark-thirty got me nothin’. Sigh.)
Author
The Place Promised in Our Early Days was one of the others I’d seen, and it rang sour with me. But the visuals were great and I knew it was an early effort, which is why I thankfully got talked into giving Your Name. a try.
As for northern lights, the trick is to stare at the sky for a long while before giving up. Even with the mega-high activity on that day a couple weeks ago, the lights would disappear entirely for a half-hour or hour at a time. The website linked below is a really good source of up-to-the-second info of the solar wind activity. If I remember right, a lot of the info comes from a satellite that can tell you about 40 minutes ahead of time what’s going to hit the sky.
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/
Completely valid reaction to Place Promised. And thanks for the space weather info!