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2005-03-05 Entry: "Catching Up (Mrs Bradley and Miyazaki)"

Wow, I've managed to get a long way behind... okay, Tuesday saw me finish the disc of The Mrs Bradley Mysteries with "Rising Of The Moon" which sees the death of a knife thrower's assistant amongst a bunch of travellers in a small country village. Cue Mrs Bradley, George, and Inspector Christmas digging in to the secrets of the varied performers.

Then, I got carried away, and the reason I didn't write anything, was the films were in Japanese and I had to watch the subtitles. Starting with "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds" and managing to squeeze in "The Cat Returns" before deciding some sleep might be a good idea!

Nausicaa covers many of the same themes as Princess Mononoke, but is slightly more comprehensible. Basically the Earth has been ravaged by giant red statues, that burnt most of mankind's construction to the ground. In the places they'd been, the Sea Of Decay has grown up, full of toxic fungi and killer insects. Nausicaa is the Princess of a small kingdom that survive due to the winds of their valley that keep them free of the fungus.

Cue war, conflict, discovered secrets, moronic other kingdoms, and a whole lot of killer insects. This was a good film, but other than wanting to see the English dub (Patrick Stewart in the cast) I'm not desperate to see it again all that soon.

The Cat Returns sees a young, unconfident girl save a cat from getting hit by a truck, and then finds him talking to her. When the Cat King turns up at her house wanting to do her a favour for saving his son, things go pear shaped. After they try to give her gifts, they eventually decide she should marry the Prince, which she obviously finds a strange idea... humans marrying cats?

Anyway, she's given enough information to go and seek help from the Cat Bureau - the food obsessed Muto, the mysterious Baron, and their friend the crow (whose name escapes me) - who attempt to extract her from her predicament.

This is an incredibly light and fluffy film, but is just such fun that you barely notice the 78 minutes of its run time.

Wednesday saw an evening out, so nothing watched, but Thursday saw me finish The Mrs Bradley Mysteries. That would be "Laurels Are Poison" which gave us some history of George Moody and his (and his family's) part in the war; and "The Worsted Viper" which sees Inspector Christmas get an award and George's daughter getting married... oh, and someone recreating the events from Mrs Bradley's first case.

On the whole not a bad show, and you can never go wrong with Diana Rigg - I doubt you'd be able to predict the storyline for any of these (except maybe the last one, which is a fraction obvious).

Tonight opens with no DVD watching whatsoever - it's Formula One opening weekend, so I've got to watch qualifying... and this time it actually counts against them as they take an aggregate of this time and tomorrow's.

Okay, that was one of the more eventful qualifying rounds - and because it counts towards final positions, we could be in for some interesting race positions tomorrow...

I started in on "The Karate Kid" but am too tired to finish it, so we'll have to leave Daniel at sanding the floor...