The Cat Returns and Raiders of the Lost Ark

Posted on 2009/02/27 00:04:13 (February 2009).

[Tuesday 24th February]
The repercussions of yesterday's regrettable mail, and the previous week's general crappiness, continued to rebound at work today, to the extent that I was extremely keen to leave the office bang on time at 5:30, and was also adamant that I had something to take my mind off work altogether in the evening.

To this end I decided to go and buy some DVDs, and after some searching around discovered a little HMV store tucked away in Victoria station which satisfied this requirement admirably.

I bought a Ghibli film I hadn't seen before called The Cat Returns, along with two very reasonably priced boxsets (both 15 quid): the first three (i.e. non-crap) Indiana Jones films, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I ordered in pizza for the full effect, and we had a delightfully lazy and escapist evening stuffing our faces and turning our brains off.

We watched The Cat Returns first, which like pretty much every other Ghibli film I've seen was utterly charming and visually stunning. In parts it was strongly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, only with all the characters apart from Alice replaced with Cats. I like to imagine the script writer leafing through Lewis Carrol's well known book and at every page thinking "say, what about making that a cat instead...?"

After that, I was still very much in the mood for more cinematic escapism, and so watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I have to admit that having loved these movies as a kid, but having been utterly appalled at the abomination that was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull last year, I experienced more than a little trepidation before putting this film on - I couldn't help but wonder if I was about to completely ruin a childhood memory. Luckily that turned out not to be the case, and the film stood the test of time extremely well - it is probably just as entertaining today as it was when I watched it when I was 8 years old. Which only goes to make me even more confused about why the Crystal bloody Skull was just so bloody awful.

Anywho, a very effective way to take my mind of the worries of the world - many thanks Harrison and co.

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