Kubo and the Two Strings

[klen7]

[jellydonut25]

I understood his motivation more or less. He's like many other parental/granparental figures in movies who thinks he knows what's best for this kid more than the person raising the child. He doesn't want to snatch out Kubo's eyes in order to harm Kubo, but more as a symbolic way of making him blind to humanity and increasing his magical powers so he can live without all the strife (and beauty) of being human. I feel like that's actually somewhat well-worn territory.

Interestingly, as for his resolution, I wonder if I'd like to watch it again to try to clear that up for myself.

[Gwangi]

Finally saw it, and thought it brilliant! Great storytelling, wonderful effects and a George Harrison song to conclude it, so what is there not to like?!

My biggest fear was that McConaughey's southern drawl was going to take me out of the moment, in this very Japanese story. But to his credit, he did a good job changing his tone, and thus I was able to better accept his character.

Some had described this as a Kurosawa film in stop motion. But because it is a fantasy, I saw it more in the vein of say "The Magic Serpent".

And glad that it got nominated for two Academy Awards. One obviously for Best Animated Feature, and it will go against Disney juggernauts, "Moana" and "Zootopia" (surprisingly no "Finding Dory, and this category was pretty much created to award Pixar a statuette). And the other is for Best Visual Effects, the first all stop-motion feature to garner that nomination since "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (and again going against Disney heavyweights "The Jungle Book" and "Rogue One").

[lhb412]

It may be a long shot, but damn do I want this film to win best special effects.

Sadly, the academy voters are notoriously underinformed about stuff like this.

[Dr Kain]

It needs to win in both areas (and deserved more nominations than it got) because this movie required people with actual skill compared to the auto pilot of CGI. Don't get me wrong, I loved both Zootopia and Moana, as they were also in my favorite films of 2016, but Kubo was in a league of its own.

Then again, The Nice Guys didn't get a single nomination while Suicide Squad got one, so it shows how brainless the awards are.

[canofhumdingers]

I don't know why people even bother with the academy awards (or really any of the music/movie/tv award shows). It's a bunch of Hollywood elite getting together to pat each other on the back and say, "look how great we are! Aren't we awesome! We're so awesome and wonderful we should give ourselves awards for it! And put it all over tv and the internet so all the peons can see how wonderful we are too!"

Still haven't seen kubo but it's in my Netflix queue, so.... soon....

[jellydonut25]

[lhb412]

^ Yeah, I don't know if the studios would even make most dramas (and other non-Blockbuster type films) if they didn't sniff a possible Oscar nom. Unfortunately, the blandest or safest of the noms often win, and on same categories (animation, foreign film) the voters tend to be uninformed.