Shadow Art

Check out this art. At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing. Then after seeing more I still don’t believe. But it’s cool.

Hyperlink!

New Whedon AND Abrams Shows This Season!

So I’m an avid television fan. I’ve recently been re-watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with my parents (their first time, definitely not mine) and I’m completely loving it. I’ve missed being exposed to Joss Whedon style TV for a while now. The good news is that he has a new show coming in the new season. I think it’s going to be a replacement in January instead of starting in the fall. Anyway, it stars Whedon alum Eliza Dushku and everyone’s favorite cylon-lover Tahmoh Peniket. Watch the trailer for the show here.

I’m a little more excited about the J.J. Abrams project “Fringe” which we’ll actually get to watch in just a few months. It also brings back tomato-face from “Dawson’s Creek” Joshua Jackson. I liked “Felicity,” was somewhat into “Alias,” hated that weird relationship show he did a couple years ago (“What About Brian”?), and love love love “Lost” more than words can describe. There isn’t really much to say that a lovely video can’t do better, so here it is.

And here is the full television schedule for the fall (as of now, at least). Feel free to download it (it’s in .pdf format).

fall-schedule-2008-2009

Paprika

Accept this random oddball post to keep the blog clicking.

Recently, last week some time, I watched the film Paprika. A film by Satoshi Kon (who some of you may know as the director of Perfect Blue), I asked Jordan about it, and he gave it a three out of five stars. But I decided to watch for myself. He and I are known to have different tastes from time to time.

Sporting Satoshi Kon’s distinct visual style and an array of vocal talent (Megumi Hayashibara and Toru Furuya to name a few), the film radiates eye candy. Color is everywhere, and true to its plot the entire thing is cast in a dream-like air. I actually enjoyed the soundtrack, or what little of it there was. The voice acting is solid. The animation is top notch. CG is integrated seamlessly.

The music really caught my attention. The opening credits had me hooked, and I can’t tell you why. I think it’s cuz I’m a secret fan of Satoshi Kon. But also, the song has this weird detached dream-ness to it that I felt didn’t really capture the suspense-film atmosphere most of Paprika had. I really dug the parade music for some reason. It’s very scary doll parade music and I loved it. I know, I’m weird.

I think the biggest flaw here is that too much is crammed into the two hours or however long it runs. There is little room for character development; the audience never really gets to find out what’s going on with At-chan/Paprika. The cop is really just an accessory, and because we get no real character development, he feels awkward and just pinned in. This essentially can be said of all the characters. And the plot, while compelling, feels rushed through. Conceptually I think it was great – there just wasn’t enough time to tell the story in a cohesive, complete way. Not expansive enough to be a series but too much to make a film, I think this story would have been best told over the course of an OAV. If it had been popular enough, I could see them remaking it as such, but unfortunately I don’t know how the film did in Japan, so for now I’ll assume it’s unlikely that it will be made into an OAV.

But really, generally, I liked it. I didn’t feel it was a wasted mail from Netflix. So where Jor gave it a 3 out of 5, I’ll give it

4 out of 5

Theme song:

American Trailer:

Man plays “March of Bee” on cucumber

Yeah, I was like, this is going to be amazing! Think again.

Iron Sky

I don’t know what I think about this, but I think it actually looks sort of awesome. Sort of ridiculous, but also sort of awesome. If steam punk is your thing.

Overheard a dude on Vent talking about it during my latest Slabs run. I got no gear that was an improvement but I did get a good laugh out of them dying on the first pull of Heroic Durnholde. Mwaha. Like that. I know you were all dying to know that.

So, yeah, interested in that movie.

Chinese Emo?

I spent my night watching Hardball, Keith, and House. Afterwards, I spent an hour flipping through some of the applications I’m going to be filling out for the next two months. Browsing the University of Chicago site, I found this – it’s a brief piece on a student’s thesis on the emo trend in China.

I thought it was very interesting, and am actually curious to read this guy’s thesis, if and when it’s published. Thought I would pass the link along.