Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, July 27th 2004 at 3:43am
So… two more Fantasia updates for you.
<p>First, <a href="http://www.fantasiafest.com/en/films/film_detail.php?id=1006">Angel’s Egg</a> (天使のたまご) from 1985. One of director Mamoru Oshii’s first films, Angel’s Egg is dark and full of fantastic imagery. While there isn’t much dialog, the story is more of an introverted journey that involves, among many things, a little girl who carries a large egg around with her wherever she goes. There are machines of various types that disturb the sanctity of her world, and she encounters a strange crusader character. (I call him a crusader because his weapon resembled a giant cross, as it is no doubt meant to). What little dialogue there is mentions the story of Noah’s ark and questions a lot of it. The film’s imagery suggests some pretty interesting ideas that I haven’t the slightest clue how to interpret at this point. I think I would need to see the movie again (and again, and again) in order to gain some sort of understanding of it. (I kind of wish I took some cinematography classes to learn how to analyze these things). Either way, this movie was pretty deep, and very interesting.</p>
<p>Then came <a href="http://www.fantasiafest.com/en/films/film_detail.php?id=1062">Malice@doll</a>. This movie takes place in the far future ones humans have gone extinct and all that remain are the robots that humans created. Following (what could probably be considered human nature) these robots are mostly sexual “love dolls” designed to adhere to virtually every fetish that man can have. The story revolves around one such doll, Malice, who after discovering a strange hidden area in a “dream” becomes human (through a process involving multiple tentacles). She then proceeds to kiss all of her companions (other love dolls, and their “master”, Joe Admin (a pimp-bot?), as well as a maintenance bot). However unlike Malice’s beautiful transformation, all the others become disfigured hideous monsters. The animation itself is done entirely in some really very awesome CG, which is actually some of the most impressive CG work I’ve seen given the fact the dark CG style of this movie is being used to convey a rather dark and even deep impression of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai">hentai</a> genre. Either way it was a very interesting movie… I think it may have been a little much for Adam though.</p>
<p>Just some food for thought: I’ve noticed (while submitting an entry for “The Bottled Fool” to <a href="http://www.imdb.com"><span class="caps">IMDB</span></a> ) that my site once again appears right near the top when you search Google for <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Bottled+Fool">The Bottled Fool</a>. Pretty cool, eh?</p>
Tags: 2004, anime, fantasia | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, July 19th 2004 at 3:41am
So today was the big day. We’d finally be seeing Cutie Honey which I’ve been looking most forward to ever since I managed to get my hands on the first episode of the original 1973 anime by Go Nagai. The series was never officially licensed in North American and can only be found on really old SVHS fansubs. Luckily some of these have managed to make it onto the internet in DivX format but even then it’s rare and I’ve only managed to find one episode. Anyway, Cutie Honey is often considered to be the “original” magical girl, and is able to transform to any appearance using the “I-System” developed by her father. She is a warrior of love, and fights with the power of love. And as if that’s not cheesy enough… they made a live action remake and Fantasia picked it up.
It’s amazing what filmmakers can do when they use modern technology to make purposefully uber-cheesy effects, and the result is the most over-the-top hilarious and ridiculous thing since the 1960’s Batman TV series and the subsequent movie (remember the “Bat Shark Repellant”?). In the movie, the ditsy Honey has to battle four supervillains from the infamous Panther Claw criminal gang to save her uncle who has been kidnapped. She teams up with Aki Natsuko (“Nat-chan”), the seemingly cold (but still cute) police girl and “Journalist” Seiji who always strikes cheesy poses as he talks. So does Honey. Natsuko refuses to. It’s hilarious. On top of all that I’ve had the movie’s re-working of the theme song (by Koda Kumi) stuck in my head all week (I have the music video too - I love JPop) as well as the awesomely heavy and solo-laden Animetal verison. (The lyrics are great) :). I now have an uncontrollable desire to see this movie again. Hopefully it will get North American distribution. (I also want to see more of the original series - I’ll have to scour the city for it). It’s cheesy, it’s campy, and it even pokes fun satirically at movies like Ju-On. I have to see Cutie Honey again! “もと。。。ほしいい！”
A few hours later, Harley and I moved on to a screening of the first three episodes of Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent. (Satoshi Kon is most famous for his psychological thiller Perfect Blue). Paranoia Agent is in the same thrilling vain and we were hooked by the end of the first episode and subsequently disappointed that they only showed us three. I must see more. Apparently the series has been licensed by Geneon Entertainment but only in the last couple of weeks, meaning that we probably won’t see it around here for another few months still. Why do they bother dubbing it in the first place, I wonder? The kind of people who would be interested in buying something like Paranoia Agent are the same kind that would prefer to watch the series in Japanese with English subtitles. IMO, dubbing is a useless waste of time (especially since it’s usually so bad). Anyway, now I’m really looking forward to seeing more.
Tags: 2004, anime, fantasia | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Friday, July 9th 2004 at 2:06am
So today I woke up and went to (bum bum bum) a job interview at Bureau En Gros? It turns out they have a company policy about men with long hair. Something about no ponytails and no hair below the neck. So a big ‘fuck you’ to Bureau En Gros from yours truly. (It’s no wonder Bureau En Gros salespeople are always so clueless) :P
And sometime thereafter I went off to Fantasia for the inaugural presentation, Wonderful Days, a Korean anime that had some of the most amazingly stunning visuals ever. Unfortunately the story seemed kind of … lacking. Not that it was a bad story, just that it’s been done a few too many times. It was kind of like a cross between Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Total Recall. Either way it had some insanely cool fight scenes and explosive action sequences as well as mouth-watering computer graphics. Wow. Impressive.
Of course now I need to get to the title of this post… Immediately after Wonderful Days was Ju-On, the scariest creepiest movie ever. It was just… totally frightening. It was very awesome though. Harley even declared “I think I can end my lifelong search to find a horror movie that actually scares me”. Unfortunately it’s being subjected to debauchery as it will be remade into a crappy American movie with Sarah Michelle Geller and Bill Pullman (wtf?). (View the american trailer here). Strangely enough, it still seems to take place in Japan, and the settings are the same, and the preview even seems to be shot-for-shot what the Japanese version was, only with American actors instead of Japanese ones, and considerably less creepy. Anyway, I think everyone should see the original Ju-On, and bring their girlfriends/boyfriends if they have them. (Clinging and screaming aplenty).
Tags: 2004, anime, fantasia | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Monday, July 5th 2004 at 11:50pm
So the programmes for this year’s annual “Fantasia Film Festival”:http://www.fantasiafest.com/en/ came out so I picked up a copy at Capitaine Quebec. (Starting tomorrow, however, they’ll be available in Concordia’s Hall Building). Harley and I went though the entire guide and narrowed it down to 15 movies that we want to see, and worked out a schedule for when we will be seeing them. (Thanks to StarOffice, you can easily look at our “Fantasia schedule”:http://skrud.net/FantasiaFest.html). There are some pretty interesting movies playing like the original “Godzilla”:http://www.fantasiafest.com/en/films/filmdetail.php?id=1078 and a live-action version of “Cutie Honey”:http://www.fantasiafest.com/en/films/filmdetail.php?id=1014. Plus, I figure whatever I can’t catch at the festival I’ll just rent later at “Marché Clandestin”:http://www.mcanime.com. I’m going to try to pick up tickets tomorrow. :)
On a completely unrelated note, I picked up the most recent issue of “Dr. Dobbs”:http://www.ddj.com because “Christopher Diggins”:http://www.heron-language.com/blog.html has written an article in here about “Aspect Oriented Programming in C++”. Yep, this is the same guy that can be found around my “forums”:http://forum.skrud.net promoting his “programming language”:http://www.heron-language.com (which applies really interesting concepts that I know nothing about like “Aspect Oriented Programming”. But I’m more than willing learn.) So I suggest you read up on “Heron”:http://www.heron-language.com too.
And on a third even less related note, it turns I get to have an actual band practice tomorrow night with a real band! w00t! I hope they don’t expect too much of me though… I think being “Arie’s”:http://pages.infinit.net/aitman pupil has given me a certain reputation to live up to and I certainly hope I don’t disappoint. (Yet I still am under the impression that they’re expecting Yngwie-like output out of me and I certainly can’t do that). Wish me luck!
Tags: anime, news, random | 2 comments
Posted by Skrud at Saturday, June 19th 2004 at 3:22am
So I’ve been using Windows a lot lately… I’ve been gaming. “Syberia”:http://www.adventurecompanygames.com/tac/syberia/ was totally awesome. And so I will be trying “Syberia 2”:http://www.syberia2.info/english/. But in the meantime “Thien”:http://forum.skrud.net/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=27 got me addicted to some new Korean MMORPG(Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) called “PristonTale”:http://www.pristontale.com (or “PristoneTale” as it says in one of the loading screens…. yeah, it’s full of typoes and “Engrish”:http://www.engrish.com). It is very reminiscent of Raganrok Online[1], except that PristonTale is still free for the time being. PristonTale is so massively addictive that I actually played all through last night until 8am, when I meant to start Syberia 2 instead. I just figured I’d give PristonTale a try and next thing you know I get adopted into some party at the Road to the Wind and start racking up massive XP and end up around level 8. Now, I can start to learn skills at level 10 so I figured I’d play until then… of course, that took until about 8am and so I finally went to bed having learned “Agony”. Which, in hindsight, was not such a good idea, and I should have saved the skill point so that I could upgrade Fire Bolt when I reached level 12. By the way, my character is a Magician named Devarus. I can usually be found in Valley of Tranquillity on the MIDRANDA Beta server.
fn1. By the way, I’m still looking for free servers for RO…
Tags: anime, games | no comments
