@avclub-8583cd7c50cc85d47a8db2dae972cd72:disqus I thought that was actually one of the clearer plot points in the movie. The war began because the prince disappeared and his country accused the other country of kidnapping or killing him. Prince is found and returned to human form: problem solved.

Besides what rubi-kun said, I'm not even sure what "story trope" you have in mind there. Obviously Dances with Wolves and Avatar have a common theme of a character from the more modern/Western world "going native" and becoming a war hero for the other side… but that doesn't fit with Mononoke at all. Moro isn't someone…

Yeah, I was struck by exactly that in watching those two clips above. Totoro at the bus stop, and Totoro sleeping in the cave, are filmed in a way that's pretty suspenseful— what is this crazy creature, look how big it is, what's it going to do— but the character animation and the camera movements are all very clear…

See, totally aside from how it compares to the book, the kind of character shifts you're calling "ridiculous" are part of what I love about Miyazaki. The idea that this person can be really awful and fearsome and cause you a lot of grief, and it seems like the story is going to be about you finding a way to defeat…

Diana Wynne Jones liked it a lot, for what it's worth, and said that if Miyazaki's version of the story was different from hers it was probably just because he had a more optimistic view of people than she did.

As another non-newbie, I'll just say that TBOSH's comment isn't spoiling anything because it's bullshit; sheet-checking scenes are not common in the books. Readers of this series have a weird way of convincing themselves that they've seen something dozens of times when it was like twice.

I can't speak from experience, but I was uncomfortable with Pete's tactic there because his mom isn't entirely on the crazy train— she's still lucid enough that contradicting her on one of the things she's actually right about(*) seems cruel and destructive. He's knocking out one of her remaining reality supports for…

Don DeLillo's Libra could be made into either an incredibly good movie or an incredibly pointless movie. The latter would probably be more likely, because everything that makes the novel interesting would piss someone off: it's too much from Oswald's point of view, it's not exactly sympathetic to Oswald, it spends a…

@avclub-cb0e59b8f769a8698b9f7154dd8809b5:disqus It's a little less charming if you know the reason for the huge stray cat population: Romans by and large don't believe in spaying/neutering, and when their pets get pregnant they tend to just throw them out in the street.

You forgot the part about how Steven Moffat obviously has total contempt for the audience— like, it can't just be that he made poor decisions and thought something would work that turned out not to work, it must be that he literally hates Doctor Who fans and is trying to fuck up the show— because he writes stories…

The Will+Beverly scenes have usually felt warmer to me than the Will+Alana scenes, maybe just because I personally find Hettienne Park cuter, but I agree that there was plenty of setup for this. Will's move still felt abrupt and wrong but, to me, it was wrong in a believable way, i.e. it was just bad timing and a…

Early in the series, Graham has a line (from the book, I think) about how an intelligent sociopath is very rare and hard to catch. Tobias, despite having an elaborate fantasy hobby and a super-controlled demeanor, isn't all that smart… or just isn't interested enough to use his intelligence for self-preservation. If…

The neck-snapping was one thing I didn't like; I can believe that you could badly injure someone with such an easy move, but not drop them instantly dead as is now the fashion in movies and TV. The human neck is made of bones and muscles and ligaments rather than crispy cookie wafers, and if you're standing at arm's…

And in the book, IIRC, he killed Raspail in therapy, stabbing him in the heart halfway through a sentence that Hannibal was too bored to hear the end of.

Well, Graham is only in one book and you only hear about most of his cases in retrospect. He does do his dream-reenactment thing at the Red Dragon murder scenes, and he makes intuitive leaps from there that help him in the regular detective work. And the way the other characters talk about his past cases, it's clear…

I think it makes sense that he takes that chance with Will. His top priority at the moment is to get Tobias out of the picture somehow before the guy starts talking to anyone else about Lecter. Going after Tobias himself is too risky— there's no plausible excuse if he's found out. But he knows Tobias is incapable of…

Yeah, there were two distinct beats in that scene where she said something like "This is a bad idea…" and I started cringing a little because, in so many scripts, that's inevitably followed by the big passionate moment where they both fling aside their caution. And when writers manage to avoid that cliché, they often…

If you're going to rant about things being "sloppy", perhaps you might want to avoid sounding incredibly drunk. Also, Jaime in the bear pit, great as that scene is, is literally one fucking page in the book.

Oh, I didn't mean that Robb was blameless in the whole mill thing— of course he should've been clearer. But Edmure was way too thrilled about his own potential heroism there; and when it turned out he'd been wrong, he became petulant and, when he was scolded for that, he shut up and hasn't even tried to contribute…

@avclub-5464de04a20d6f48ab22695edf00475e:disqus Yeah, the original bridge deal with Frey was at the beginning of the war. The Lannisters had started attacking Tully allies in the Riverlands— remember when Ned was taking statements from victims of Gregor Clegane? Ned didn't take the bait to go into battle then (he sent…