Between the editing and the over-designed costumes and Enchanted Objects in this version, who would have thought a "Beauty and the Beast" adaptation would owe more to Bay than Cocteau?

This was dissected in the comments over at Jezebel when they posted this scene last night — she leaves a coin on the tray, but it's very very easy to miss.

I'm glad to find I'm not the only one who thinks the costumes are way too lavish for this setting, especially compared to how the characters look in the animated feature. These ladies are wearing their Sunday best just to do the laundry!

What's weird is that the "Beauty and the Beast" coming next month is giving me similar vibes with regard to why it's not appealing to me — namely, the overblown, ridiculously ornate production values and weak CGI.

It's worth a look. It's low-key and has a bit of an abrupt wrap-up, but the storyline is compelling and I'm surprised there haven't been more straightforward remakes of it, as opposed to the action-oriented ones of the last 20 or so years and now.

Yeah, things aren't looking good for the final-years-of-Michael-Jackson film, are they? Though at least a lack of his music won't really be an issue, given what those final years were like…

I don't think admitting you don't like a fun movie as much as everyone else seems to makes you an enemy of fun, if it helps. (I liked "The Lego Batman Movie" a lot but it is overstuffed in some respects.) If I were considered an enemy of fun for not enjoying myself at "fun" movies, especially "fun" movies for kids,…

I started on "March" last summer just because I was browsing the graphic novel shelves at my library and it looked like quality work on a subject I was interested in, and it's definitely one of the best uses of the medium I've ever seen. Of course the whole thing is more relevant than ever now.

So far this weekend (I might squeeze a bit more in later) I've read Volume 2 of "Ouran High School Host Club" and finally caught up with the film "In the Loop" — a funny movie, if not the easiest to follow, and as good as anything "The Thick of It" had to offer. I also have made progress into the making-of book…

Yes, but it's not meant to be romantic! This LeFou is extremely insecure and allows Gaston to mistreat him because A) he's been Gaston's biggest fan for years and B) being around the town hero is the only way anyone notices him. The novelization explains he tried to get people to call them Le Duo but it didn't take.…

I note this in a reply below, but I've already read the novelization, and anyone looking to see remake!Belle as a Strong Woman Hero superior to the original's is going to be pretty let down. They're hyping up her independence and intelligence, but it doesn't impact the actual story all that much. If anything I think…

Good idea, because I've read the novelization already and there are going to be a lot of those. Not just about the Belle-Beast relationship dynamic, either. Gaston and the villagers are even more xenophobic, sexist, and just plain evil than they were in the animated feature, and Belle's well-read nature is played up…

The Disney "Beauty and the Beast" is a personal favorite of mine as far as love stories go, though it and most other adaptations of that particular fairy tale, such as Cocteau's, are problematic due to the Stockholm syndrome issues involved. (Donna Jo Napoli's fascinating YA novel "Beast" probably does the best job…

Yay for awesome moms!

This weekend I finished up Marvel's excellent Darth Vader series and saw "The Lego Batman Movie", which was exceptional; it gave me a nice giddy feeling. (It helped that I'd kept away from spoilers.) Definitely worth a look; I really need to catch up with the original Lego movie. The morning audience was about 85%…

When I saw "The Lego Batman Movie" yesterday they had the trailers for "Power Rangers", "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature", "Despicable Me 3", "The Emoji Movie", and "The Lego Ninjago Movie" (naturally, and it looks pretty good), but also those for "Gifted" and "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets". I can see…

I agree about Lego Batman's quotability. "Ask your nerd friends" comes to mind, but thanks for reminding me of that particular line.

Also, as far as fascinating trainwrecks that never were go, a Michael Jackson memoir could have been amazing. "Moonwalk" was written in 1988 and in hindsight doesn't have all that much to say about anything.

He did contribute anecdotes to a collection of Mick Rock's photos of him from the Ziggy Stardust era, "Moonage Daydream", and yes, a whole book of that sort of thing would have been great fun.

"He's a character actor. No, I don't think he died!" (From "The Critic")