The quote “你好嗎,警察?” has been stuck in my head for over a week, but didn’t feel like it deserved it’s own post. Wonder if anyone else can immediately pick up which movie it’s from.

I mentioned VonLobster and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon last weekend. We were originally planning to catch the 3D showing, but shopping ran a bit late and it was a good thing the 2D showing started 20 minutes later than the 3D showing. I’ve been hearing very good things about this movie and was excited to see it. And it did not disappoint!

How to Train Your Dragon is about a young Viking boy named Hiccup trying to prove himself to be a real Viking. The step into Viking manhood is to capture and kill your first dragon. However being weak and scrawny has put him at a disadvantage against the rest of the kids his age, always requiring others to save his butt. But Hiccup is an inventor and he builds a contraption that helps him captured a Night Fury, a dragon that flies so fast, no one has ever seen one or lived to tell so. The story continues on with the journey of how Hiccup develops a bond with Toothless (name he gave to the dragon). This is very much a coming of age story, yet also a story about how misunderstandings between 2 groups has led to conflict.

When I first saw the trailer, I wasn’t too impressed with Toothless as he looked nothing like a dragon that I’d imagine. However, after watching the movie, and how he moves and acts, I fell in love. He’s just so adorable and cute! When he regurgitated the fish to share with Hiccup, the first thing that popped into my head was sushi!

The story was very well told, much better than I had expected from Dreamworks. Usually good storytelling like this is what I expect from Pixar. The overall soundtrack also fitted really well with the movie. The animation was just spectacular. When Hiccup and Astrid flew on Toothless through the mountains and over the ocean, it was just breathtaking. I rated this 5/5 on Netflix.

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You’ve been warned… Reading anything between the spoilers tag may spoil the movie for you.

I thought the little romantic side story was a bit rushed, but I also felt it added a nice touch to the story. One of the reasons Hiccup wanted to capture/kill his own dragon was for the ladies, and who can blame him. I also love the fact that Toothless played a big part of getting Astrid to fall for him. It just reinforces the bond that Hiccup and Toothless share.

One thing I never did quite get was why there was only 1 Night Fury. How do they create more Night Furys? I want to see some baby Night Furys!
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I saw ホッタラケの島　〜遥と魔法の鏡〜 (Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror) while eating dinner last night. I first saw the trailer on Apple’s Japanese trailer site and thought it looked rather fun. This is a Japanese 3D animation if you haven’t guessed from the poster and the title of the movie. I’m generally not a big fan of Japanese 3D animation. I tend to like 2D Japanese anime more since I find 3D animation limits the style of art. However, this movie mixes both 2D drawings with 3D animation. The beautiful background and sceneries were mostly drawn in 2D, while the characters and the world were done in 3D. The 3D animation itself wasn’t shabby either. Whoever created the world did an amazing job as it was just so imaginative and fun! I understand that not everyone here understands Japanese, so here’s the trailer with English subtitles.

This is very much a kids movie. It’s about a girl named Haruka who lost her mom when she was really young. One of the things that Haruka said she’d always treasure was a mirror given to her by her mom. However like most things we treasure, we eventually forget about them. Story has it that when you forget about something, these foxes come and take it away. And that’s how we meet Teo, a fox that accidentally leads Haruka into his world, built with things that humans have forgotten about. The journey begins where Haruka decides to find the mirror her mom had given her.

So what makes this movie cute? COTTON! Cotton is a stuff animal (lamb I think) that Haruka had forgotten and abandoned awhile back. Most of my childhood stuff animals were donated by my mom, and it was so sad to see them leave. Did you ever wished your stuff animal was alive and can move and do everything your imagination said it could? Well, Cotton can!

I definitely shed some tears at different parts of the movie. The story was very well told and I enjoyed the movie a lot. Unfortunately Netflix doesn’t have this movie in their listing yet, but if they did, I would’ve given it 4/5 stars.