Dreams

Tonight we had some friends over and watched the Akira Kurosawa movie, Dreams. Now, I could review it and tell you about the stylized graphics, the wonderful costumes, the thought-provoking presentation of so many forms of death, etcetera etcetera. Yet it remains that there are many people out there who have reviewed this movie in greater detail than I care to at this time, and so I will let them be the ones to analyze and simplify my own review to: yes, it is good. I recommend it. :)

I do, however, have a great need to tell you of what I did not like about the film. This thing that I disliked occured throughout the movie, and was important enough in what was happening to make it noticeable most every time. It was obvious enough for me to exclaim, "Oh my gawd, did you see that?!" as if some horrendous movie faux pas had occured. What was this detail which was to haunt me so throughout the viewing? Specifically, the letters v, w, and x.

Yes, v, w, and x. As they occured in the captioning (for I—unfortunately—cannot understand a lick of Japanese, so English subtitles are quite necessary), the x-height of those particular letters was not the same as the rest of the typeface. Oh, it was horrible. The letters of the face were just so horribly aligned, the relation of letters to eachother not appropriate at all. Being a spacially minded person, this bad typography was glaringly evident to me, and I probably made a face every time one of those letters came up in a word.

Now that I have mentioned this wicked error in typographical design and implementation, I feel oblidged to point out that if you watch the movie (with English subtitles, of course) after reading this, and notice the misalignment of the letters' x-heights, you will most likely have me to blame, as most people won't notice such a minor detail. (No one I watched it with did, nor did it bother them even after I pointed it out.) And if you do watch the subtitled version, and pay close enough attention to notice these three foul letters, you will probably wonder how I could manage to be so bothered by such a minute difference. I'll tell you how: because I am me, and am a perfectionist when it comes to aesthetics. Hopefully you will not have the same problem.

P.S. — Chapter 21 of Stargate is called "There can be only one". Hahaha, isn't that from another movie...? *snicker*