I've blogged about Neil Gaiman's MirrorMask before, and have neglected to follow up with comments on the movie. To make it short and to the point: it's brilliant. Original story (Alice-esque, but is otherwise new and fascinating), amazing artwork, impressive photography, great music and terrific acting. This is a top-notch movie which in many ways is better than Labyrinth, and easily parallels Dark City in imagination and visual production. Although this is not a movie for everyone, I would greatly recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed the above movies, or for that matter Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

A completely different beast is Borat (I'll spare you the full title). Anyone who's ever watched Ali G should already be familiar with how hysterically sad this character is; it's not that Borat as a character is funny, it's just how stupid the people he interviews are. To put it mildly, it was difficult getting up when the movie ended because my stomach muscles were so sore from laughing. And Borat speaks Hebrew almost the whole movie, to boot!
_{(Disclaimer: it's worth noting that this movie is completely idiotic, full of profanity and racist jokes. If you're touchy enough to be bothered by this, you shouldn't be reading this blog.)}

I won't deny being an Alfonso Cuarón fan; although I've only seen two of his movies, they both impressed me by being completely original and visually striking. His newest movie, Children of Men, definitely struck a chord with me. I'm not sure if this is obvious to anyone but me, but the narrative is like a modernized version of War of the Worlds with a human emphasis (i.e. no aliens): a regular joe getting caught in turbulent times, just one amazing thread of story that appears meaningless when viewed in the grand scheme of things. I'm not a professional writer so it's difficult for me to explain this properly - I hope I've managed to at least pique your curiosity.

Finally, I just feel the need to share a bunch of anecdotes:

• The Princess Bride is still (after so many years) a masterpiece of duality: sentimentality and criticism, virtue and wickedness, beauty and hardship. It's simply a brilliant tale, and if you haven't seen the movie you literally owe it to yourself.
• Holy shite, they're making a new Beowulf movie! One directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Neil Gaiman no less. Who knows, maybe it won't utterly suck?
• They're actually making new Rocky and Rambo movies. Rocky 5000 all over again?... I mean, I like Sly as much as the next guy, but he's over 60!
• Pan's Labyrinth looks really gorgeous. The visual style is starting to get old, but the movie itself looks incredibly promising, and I'm definitely looking forward to it.