contessa_maggie and I caught a double-feature on Sunday,
Paprika (I love this movie!!! I'll probably see it one more time before it leaves the theatre...) and the Russian flick
Day Watch (currently the highest grossing film in Russia's history, btw) the sequel to
Night Watch. Both films are part of a planned trilogy loosely based on sci-fi novels by Russian author
Sergey Lukyanenko (
his LJ...if you read Russian...) about an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil, light and dark (btw, if you're not into sci-fantasy, stop reading now.) The two sides, the Light Others and Dark Others, struck a treaty centuries ago and appointed a group of overseers on both sides to maintain the peace. Select Light Others monitor the nighttime activities (ergo, the Night Watch) of the Dark Others, who in turn monitor the daytime activities (the Day Watch) of the Light Others. Infractions (i.e., a vampire kills a human, a sorceress manipulates fate, etc.) typically carry the death penalty. All was well, if a little tense, until the discovery of Light and Dark Great Others...should the two Great Others meet, the fragile peace would evaporate...the two sides would resume their war and the world would be plunged into darkness for millenia. Overall, the flick is highly entertaining (the finale is really spectacular), though not consistently engaging and therefore it saddens me to say that I'm not solidly a fan. I much prefer Night Watch, to be honest, which had a much more consistent tone, imo (and I tend to like origin stories anyway...) Day Watch veers (often wildly) from horror movie, to thriller, to sci-fi, to comedy, to drama, to... Each time the tone shifts, it's like watching a different movie...things don't quite gel as well as you'd expect. Eventually, it becomes a little tiresome. Still, I'm really glad to have seen it if for no other reason than that I'm fascinated by the differences between our sci-fi/fantasy/horror flicks and everyone else's...I generally try to make sure I catch whatever comes to town, a recent favorite being South Korea's
The Host. Day Watch is really unlike any genre flick you're likely to see produced in the States (until we remake it, of course! ;), so if that intrigues you, go see it. It's not a bad film...just a little disappointing. At any rate, I'm definitely looking forward to the final installment...