*** Mushi-shi
*** The Girl who Played with Fire
**** Downton Abbey
*** The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

E and I saw the live-action movie of Mushi-Shi at SIFF a few years back and enjoyed it. This animated series was the original, which explains why the movie is sort of disconnected and episodic. In the series, each episode is largely standalone — a mystery which Ginko the Bugmaster must somehow figure out and solve by applying his knowledge of Mushi, the mysterious supernatural-ish creatures that come in all kinds of forms. It works pretty well in this form, and is exactly like the X-Files or House or any one of a number of TV shows where each episode poses a question that only the hero can solve. The animation is beautiful and some of the stories are interesting, insightful, or touching. That said, the whole thing wasn’t totally captivating; I often did something else halfway while watching the shows, and when my attention took me somewhere else and I didn’t finish the series, I didn’t mind that much. I may even watch some more episodes here and there, if there’s nothing else on.

We watched the first “Girl Who…” movie a while back. I wasn’t crazy about it, thought it was more violence-against-women than I really needed to watch more of. E, however, wanted to check out the other two, and I’m glad we ended up watching them. These two, the third in particular, stepped away from the gratuitous violence of the first movie and were more about Lisbeth’s history and the politics and conspiracies linked to it. The third really got to a long-craved moment of catharsis that was well set up by the whole series, back to the first movie.

Downton Abbey continued our BBC-period-miniseries festival and was outstanding. We liked it a lot. Hugh Bonneville is awesome and the other people too.