It's Friday already? How the heck did that happen?
Feels like only yesterday it was Thursday. Oh no, wait, yesterday was Thursday.
Looks like it's going to be a sunny weekend. I've not got any special plans, though I do need to do some cleaning. There's a MotoGP race on Sunday I believe, and I want to go for another one of my walks.
Unfortunately, the walks have become a bit fortnightly, mainly because when there's a F1 GP on that means there's loads of stuff - 3 practices, qualifying and the race itself, all of which I have to watch across the weekend. I mean, I could leave it, but the problem then would be people spoilering it.
Next week is going to be a short one - I've got the Thursday and Friday off, so just a 3 day week, which will be nice.
Oh, one thing I realised I hadn't mentioned - Eurovision.
We finished stone dead last, and to be perfectly frank I'm not hugely surprised. Well, surprised we were last as there were some real duffers in there that got way more points than they deserved, but not surprised that we didn't do well.
Our song was very poor. I generally don't pay attention to Eurovision until the night itself, so I hadn't heard the song beforehand. Supposedly it was written by Stock & Waterman, of 1980s Stock, Aitken & Waterman, who produced all those cheesy pop songs of the 80s.
The problem there was it just wasn't up to those standards - if it had been an 80s cheesefest, maybe it would have at least been distinctive, but it was just totally non-descript. And it didn't help that they seemed to have got a small boy to sing it, who seemed nice enough, but really lacked any impact.
I suppose at least this year's song wasn't one of those "this is what we think Europop sounds like" jobs.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Thursday, 3 June 2010
new duvet
I got my new duvet the other week. It's incredibly thin. They use something called "togs" to rate duvets for warmth and this is a 4.5 tog duvet. What that means is that it's only just thicker than a blanket.
Now that may sound daft - why not just use a blanket, or a regular sheet? Well for some reason I cannot get to sleep unless I've got a duvet on me. I've tried many times in years past to sleep without any covers or just a sheet and I cannot do it. There's obviously some psychological thing going on that means I just can't.
I'm actually pretty neurotic when it comes to sleeping - I have a whole host of... well, I suppose rituals would be the word, that are essentially there to ensure I go to sleep.
Basically, a summary of the basic ritual goes something like-
First off, I ensure all curtains are fully closed and that all lights are turned off or covered over. Now I don't just mean normal lights. You know how a lot of electrical appliance have some sort of LED that indicates they're in standby, or they have a digital clock or something that emits light? Well I can't have those shinning at me.
It's kinda like a brightness threshold - below a certain level I'm happy, but above and the light will keep me up. This can be so bad for me that I actually have to pin black bin bags to the curtains in my bed-sit, because they're white and crap at blocking out light in the summer or if my landlord leaves a light on.
I then read for at least 10 minutes. This is actually a bit of an odd one, because I know a lot of guides for people with insomnia say you shouldn't do anything stimulating, like read or watch TV before bed. But I dunno, it works for me.
What makes it really ritualistic is that I have to be laying on my side and I have to be in my nightclothes. If I'm not, then it's just ordinary reading and it doesn't help.
After reading I switch off the light and continue to lay on my side. Here, I'm consciously trying clear my mind. I try to force out anything resembling active thought and concentrate on stillness and nothing.
It's also at this stage that any noise will become apparent. Like light, I can't put up with noise while I'm trying to sleep, so if there's a party going on somewhere or my PVR is whirring away, I'll put in my earplugs.
This 'calming down' can last anywhere from 5minutes to half an hour, but once I'm relaxed, I'll turn onto my front and that's when I'll drift off.
At least, I assume I drift off. What will actually happen is the next thing I'll be aware of is waking up. This will usually take one of two forms - waking up very early, desperate for a piss, or wake up about 15 minutes before my alarm is due to go off (also needing a pee).
You'll notice there's no mention of dreaming - I can count the number of dreams I remember on one hand. I sometimes have a sort of a daydream experience while I'm waiting for my alarm to go off, but I've never really thought of these as dreams as they're entirely and actively controlled by my mind.
I believe there's something called lucid dreaming where you know you're dreaming, but it's not like that - it's more like I actively think up a scenario or idea and then muck about with it. So much more like a daydream or fantasy than a dream.
Anyway, this new duvet is great - it's light enough to keep me cool, but weighty enough to fulfil my need for a duvet. My other one is a massive 13.5 togs, which I think is about the maximum. Quite where I'm going to put it, I'm not sure, but it looks like the weather is on the turn, so I don't think I'll need it for ages now.
Now that may sound daft - why not just use a blanket, or a regular sheet? Well for some reason I cannot get to sleep unless I've got a duvet on me. I've tried many times in years past to sleep without any covers or just a sheet and I cannot do it. There's obviously some psychological thing going on that means I just can't.
I'm actually pretty neurotic when it comes to sleeping - I have a whole host of... well, I suppose rituals would be the word, that are essentially there to ensure I go to sleep.
Basically, a summary of the basic ritual goes something like-
First off, I ensure all curtains are fully closed and that all lights are turned off or covered over. Now I don't just mean normal lights. You know how a lot of electrical appliance have some sort of LED that indicates they're in standby, or they have a digital clock or something that emits light? Well I can't have those shinning at me.
It's kinda like a brightness threshold - below a certain level I'm happy, but above and the light will keep me up. This can be so bad for me that I actually have to pin black bin bags to the curtains in my bed-sit, because they're white and crap at blocking out light in the summer or if my landlord leaves a light on.
I then read for at least 10 minutes. This is actually a bit of an odd one, because I know a lot of guides for people with insomnia say you shouldn't do anything stimulating, like read or watch TV before bed. But I dunno, it works for me.
What makes it really ritualistic is that I have to be laying on my side and I have to be in my nightclothes. If I'm not, then it's just ordinary reading and it doesn't help.
After reading I switch off the light and continue to lay on my side. Here, I'm consciously trying clear my mind. I try to force out anything resembling active thought and concentrate on stillness and nothing.
It's also at this stage that any noise will become apparent. Like light, I can't put up with noise while I'm trying to sleep, so if there's a party going on somewhere or my PVR is whirring away, I'll put in my earplugs.
This 'calming down' can last anywhere from 5minutes to half an hour, but once I'm relaxed, I'll turn onto my front and that's when I'll drift off.
At least, I assume I drift off. What will actually happen is the next thing I'll be aware of is waking up. This will usually take one of two forms - waking up very early, desperate for a piss, or wake up about 15 minutes before my alarm is due to go off (also needing a pee).
You'll notice there's no mention of dreaming - I can count the number of dreams I remember on one hand. I sometimes have a sort of a daydream experience while I'm waiting for my alarm to go off, but I've never really thought of these as dreams as they're entirely and actively controlled by my mind.
I believe there's something called lucid dreaming where you know you're dreaming, but it's not like that - it's more like I actively think up a scenario or idea and then muck about with it. So much more like a daydream or fantasy than a dream.
Anyway, this new duvet is great - it's light enough to keep me cool, but weighty enough to fulfil my need for a duvet. My other one is a massive 13.5 togs, which I think is about the maximum. Quite where I'm going to put it, I'm not sure, but it looks like the weather is on the turn, so I don't think I'll need it for ages now.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
drag me to hell
Sam Raimi is possibly best known for two things - the Spiderman trilogy and the Evil Dead films. Of course he's done a whole load of other stuff too - Raimi wrote and directed Darkman, for example and was also producer on the western adaptation of the Japanese horror The Grudge.
But probably most important here are Spiderman and the Evil Dead films - the first because it's what shot Raimi into a position where the bigger studios would be willing to fund a film like this (afaik, the Spiderman films have generated something like $2.5billion in revenue). The second because it represents a kind of spiritual predecessor to this film.
Anyway, the basic point is if you've seen the Evil Dead movies then this is very much in their vein - it's basically a horror film, but with strong comedic elements. I don't think it's really right to say it's a black comedy - black comedy is more similar to satire, where the humour here is of a more slapstick nature - specifically the three stooges.
So what's different about drag me to hell?
Well, for starters there's a heavier focus on the horror aspects. This isn't really a bad thing as it means the humour tends to come out of left field and therefore has a bigger impact. It also tends to build into it - so the scary stuff will be building and building, and then it will reach a point of absurdity and you'll find yourself laughing. Or you'll be expecting an even bigger fright and instead something silly will happen.
There's also a fine line at times between gross out and comic - in anyone else but Raimi's hands I think some bits would simply have been stomach churning, but the way he handles it you end up giggling instead.
Overall, I therefore enjoyed it. I think the story works particularly well - I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it hangs together in a coherent fashion and makes sense.
I would level a few criticism at it, though. Firstly, the horror is slightly dampened by the reliance on 'shock' moments. By these I mean the old bogey-man jumps out of the closet and the soundtrack is filled with loud, shrieking violins.
These are fine, but it could have done with a few false shocks - ones that turn out not to happen or to actually be benign things.
It also wimps out a bit with the blood sacrifice - not so much because it doesn't show it, but that the main character doesn't really feel any remorse or regret about it.
And the shock ending was a little odd - firstly the key element was so telegraphed it kinda rendered the scenes before it oddly redundant. But also, and not wanting to spoiler, but the nature of the shock kinda left an odd feeling.
But those don't spoil what is a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining film that's well worth checking out.
(I love it when I end these mini reviews like that - it's like I'm pretending t be a proper critic :P)
But probably most important here are Spiderman and the Evil Dead films - the first because it's what shot Raimi into a position where the bigger studios would be willing to fund a film like this (afaik, the Spiderman films have generated something like $2.5billion in revenue). The second because it represents a kind of spiritual predecessor to this film.
Anyway, the basic point is if you've seen the Evil Dead movies then this is very much in their vein - it's basically a horror film, but with strong comedic elements. I don't think it's really right to say it's a black comedy - black comedy is more similar to satire, where the humour here is of a more slapstick nature - specifically the three stooges.
So what's different about drag me to hell?
Well, for starters there's a heavier focus on the horror aspects. This isn't really a bad thing as it means the humour tends to come out of left field and therefore has a bigger impact. It also tends to build into it - so the scary stuff will be building and building, and then it will reach a point of absurdity and you'll find yourself laughing. Or you'll be expecting an even bigger fright and instead something silly will happen.
There's also a fine line at times between gross out and comic - in anyone else but Raimi's hands I think some bits would simply have been stomach churning, but the way he handles it you end up giggling instead.
Overall, I therefore enjoyed it. I think the story works particularly well - I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it hangs together in a coherent fashion and makes sense.
I would level a few criticism at it, though. Firstly, the horror is slightly dampened by the reliance on 'shock' moments. By these I mean the old bogey-man jumps out of the closet and the soundtrack is filled with loud, shrieking violins.
These are fine, but it could have done with a few false shocks - ones that turn out not to happen or to actually be benign things.
It also wimps out a bit with the blood sacrifice - not so much because it doesn't show it, but that the main character doesn't really feel any remorse or regret about it.
And the shock ending was a little odd - firstly the key element was so telegraphed it kinda rendered the scenes before it oddly redundant. But also, and not wanting to spoiler, but the nature of the shock kinda left an odd feeling.
But those don't spoil what is a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining film that's well worth checking out.
(I love it when I end these mini reviews like that - it's like I'm pretending t be a proper critic :P)
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
wasted weekend
And I don't mean wasted as in booze soaked, I mean wasted as in opportunity.
I'd been hoping going into the weekend that I would do some scanning. That was the plan - I would start to tackle the New Types after the kick-start I had doing loads of animedias the other week.
My backup plan, for if and when I got really bored of scanning was I'd continue sorting my room a bit. I've not really progressed the room sorting very much, because I've had all sorts of stuff that needed to go down the recycling centre.
Well, one thing that was fixed on the schedule for early Saturday morning was a second trip to the recycling place to dispose of most of the rest of the stuff. This was fixed because I also wanted to get a haircut and I was desperate to clear some space at least (I can now see my settee for the first time in months!).
Well I did neither of those.
I didn't even do something useful like watch anime DVDs. I did set my new telly up, although even that was in a half-arsed, quick-fix way - I've not unplugged and removed the old one, just put it on a chair :/.
So what did I do?
I gamed. I must have spent about half of all my waking hours across the bank holiday playing computer games.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the gaming, I just kinda feel a bit regretful that that's all I did.
To be fair, I did get some stuff done. for example, there was a risk I could have failed to watch Eurovision or the GP, and that would have caused me some severe scheduling problems. I mean as it is, despite them totalling something like 10 hours of viewing and me watching several other things recorded I've still come out with more recorded telly that I went in.
The good thing on this front is that more than half of the shows I've been following are on their last episodes this week and next. Given that the world cup starts in a fortnight that bodes very well for my hope that I'll be fully able to engage in catch-up over the summer.
I'd been hoping going into the weekend that I would do some scanning. That was the plan - I would start to tackle the New Types after the kick-start I had doing loads of animedias the other week.
My backup plan, for if and when I got really bored of scanning was I'd continue sorting my room a bit. I've not really progressed the room sorting very much, because I've had all sorts of stuff that needed to go down the recycling centre.
Well, one thing that was fixed on the schedule for early Saturday morning was a second trip to the recycling place to dispose of most of the rest of the stuff. This was fixed because I also wanted to get a haircut and I was desperate to clear some space at least (I can now see my settee for the first time in months!).
Well I did neither of those.
I didn't even do something useful like watch anime DVDs. I did set my new telly up, although even that was in a half-arsed, quick-fix way - I've not unplugged and removed the old one, just put it on a chair :/.
So what did I do?
I gamed. I must have spent about half of all my waking hours across the bank holiday playing computer games.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the gaming, I just kinda feel a bit regretful that that's all I did.
To be fair, I did get some stuff done. for example, there was a risk I could have failed to watch Eurovision or the GP, and that would have caused me some severe scheduling problems. I mean as it is, despite them totalling something like 10 hours of viewing and me watching several other things recorded I've still come out with more recorded telly that I went in.
The good thing on this front is that more than half of the shows I've been following are on their last episodes this week and next. Given that the world cup starts in a fortnight that bodes very well for my hope that I'll be fully able to engage in catch-up over the summer.
Friday, 28 May 2010
telly turn-off
This summer I'm sincerely hoping that there is absolutely nothing of note on television.
That's from my perspective of course. If you're a reality TV fan, general sports fan or more specifically a fan of football or tennis then your opinion will differ drastically.
What I'm basically saying is that this year appears to be something of a planetary alignment of TV I'm not interested in:
And then I'm sure there's various other reality crap on too - X-factor, strictly arse biscuits, I'm a celebrity, stove my head in with a pipe... clearly I don't actually know what's on, but the point is I'm fairly sure there's other reality crap that runs across the summer. Even if there isn't the above three will hopefully fill the schedules for a good few months.
Of course the reality is that with the BBC's extensive coverage of F1 and their reasonable coverage of MotoGP my sport quota does rise dramatically over the summer, but the main point is that the normal lull in new and original shows should be magnified this summer.
So why is this a good thing?
Because if there's nothing for me to watch/record then I will have even fewer reasons to avoid attacking my unwatched DVD pile. And this is a very good thing because the unwatched DVD pile is stupidly big and I keep avoiding it.
It's like last weekend - a big part of the reason I was able to scan stuff with reckless abandon was because I'd been really careful during the week to actually watch most of what I recorded. And there are clear signs of my recording schedule petering out - lots of shows I'm watching have only 1 or 2 weeks to go, all of which seem to coincide rather neatly with the above dates.
This next weekend is a Bank Holiday, so I'll be back on Tuesday, hopefully with even more tales of how dull and boring--er, I mean packed my weekend was with overdue box-ticking activities. And it's also Eurovision - my yearly opportunity to give my camp side an airing.
That's from my perspective of course. If you're a reality TV fan, general sports fan or more specifically a fan of football or tennis then your opinion will differ drastically.
What I'm basically saying is that this year appears to be something of a planetary alignment of TV I'm not interested in:
- - The World cup runs 11 June - 11 July
- - Wimbledon runs 28 June - 4 July
- - Big Brother runs June - August (I guess)
And then I'm sure there's various other reality crap on too - X-factor, strictly arse biscuits, I'm a celebrity, stove my head in with a pipe... clearly I don't actually know what's on, but the point is I'm fairly sure there's other reality crap that runs across the summer. Even if there isn't the above three will hopefully fill the schedules for a good few months.
Of course the reality is that with the BBC's extensive coverage of F1 and their reasonable coverage of MotoGP my sport quota does rise dramatically over the summer, but the main point is that the normal lull in new and original shows should be magnified this summer.
So why is this a good thing?
Because if there's nothing for me to watch/record then I will have even fewer reasons to avoid attacking my unwatched DVD pile. And this is a very good thing because the unwatched DVD pile is stupidly big and I keep avoiding it.
It's like last weekend - a big part of the reason I was able to scan stuff with reckless abandon was because I'd been really careful during the week to actually watch most of what I recorded. And there are clear signs of my recording schedule petering out - lots of shows I'm watching have only 1 or 2 weeks to go, all of which seem to coincide rather neatly with the above dates.
This next weekend is a Bank Holiday, so I'll be back on Tuesday, hopefully with even more tales of how dull and boring--er, I mean packed my weekend was with overdue box-ticking activities. And it's also Eurovision - my yearly opportunity to give my camp side an airing.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
mu continuation
I walloped my head last night and have a big ol' bruise for my troubles. Rather embarrassingly, I managed to bash my head whilst sitting down on the toilet. It's a manoeuvre I've executed perfectly and without injuries millions of times before, but yesterday I managed to bang my head on the damn towel rail.
See, I've noticed whenever I injure myself, it's always got an embarrassing element to it. It's like when I did my back in - I trapped a nerve whilst bending down to clean the wheel of my car. Even I'm embarrassed at that and I'm the one that suffered the weeks of constant agony and sleep deprivation that went with it.
Anyway, here's the rest of the summaries for the fansubs I watched:
11eyes
What was surprising about 11eyes wasn't so much what it was and what it was about, it was that I quite liked it.
If I had to guess while I was watching it, I would have said this was adapted from a light novel. Having now had the opportunity to look it up on Google, it actually turns out to be based on a visual novel.
Visual novels are a kind of half way house between properly interactive games and novels. Basically you click through loads of dialogue and events and stuff and then generally there are one or two decision points that allow the game to branch in a particular direction.
The reason I'd have said Light Novel is that 11eyes has that old problem of feeling like a bunch of cool stuff the writer/artist likes thrown together and draped across an overly-familiar plot.
However, where usually this really turns me off, here I found myself enjoying it. Perhaps it's because it's a visual novel so there were subtle differences to the way light novels go about their business. Perhaps I'm simply being worn down by all the adaptations of these types of things there have been recently.
Or perhaps I was simply coming off the back of two really disappointing shows to find something vaguely okay-ish so I didn't hate it.
Hyakko
I wasn't expecting much going into Hyakko. I'd already sampled the OVA that came after this and while it was somewhat amusing it was also a bit of a non-event. I appreciate that this is a slice of life type show, but throughout the entire OAV two characters basically just sat in a shop eating cakes.
Rather pleasantly then, the series has a bit more variety of scenery with more characters at the very least. It's also still definitely a slice of life show set in high school and we've seen loads of them over the years, but Id' say this was a fairly reasonable example of the genre.
I mean, it's not earth-shatteringly good, but equally it's not utterly awful.
Konnichiwa Anne
I've never read Anne of Green Gables. Indeed, I know next to nothing about it.
And confusingly this is not an adaptation of it, although I understand there is one.
According to wikipedia, the original Anne book also had several sequels and this isn't an adaptation of those either. This is an adaptation of a prequel book. A prequel not written by the original author.
Yeah, I'm scratching my head too, but really, that doesn't matter, because you don't need to know anything about those books or who wrote them to watch the show.
I think if I was a child I would really have liked this show. As a very old person I liked what it was trying to achieve but found the actual presentation/style a bit simplistic.
Which isn't to say the stories where simplistic, just that the show has a feeling of being aimed at younger children. Though to be fair, the content is somewhat adult in places - Anne's alcoholic adoptive father hits his wife in several occasions, for example.
And that was the other thing - all bar one of Anne's adoptive family are so unpleasant (both towards her and generally) I kept wanted to get in there and give them a slap (or at the least a damn good talking too) myself.
Perhaps that level of engagement is a hallmark of good storytelling, but in the end I found it somewhat frustrating. Maybe it's the sort of show where the end gives you some sort of closure to those feelings, but odds are I'll never find out.
Durarara!!
And so for the big one.
I'd been kinda saving durarara until last as I'd heard a lot of really good things about it. In particular I'd heard it was similar to Baccano, one of the best shows in recent years.
Well from what I watched (and to cap off this theme of surprises) it didn't seem anything like Baccano.
Baccano does a lot of buggering about in terms of telling its stories in parallel and out of sequence. You can easily slip from 1931 back to 1930 and then forward to 1932 across a handful of scenes. For a simple western analogy it's a bit like Pulp Fiction, where there's a single story that's been chopped into bits and we're watching the bits out of sequence.
Durarara doesn't do that. What Durarara does (well, in the first 2 episodes - I've not seen beyond that) is more similar to Boogiepop phantom, where the same period of time is being covered, but from different people's perspectives. There is a recent western film analogy, but I can't for the life of me recall what it was - I seem to remember it had Matthew Fox of Lost fame in it, though.
The other big surprise is that Baccano is quite high energy. It's got quite a lot of funny stuff in and generally the presentation is an upbeat, brightly coloured one, which contrasts beautifully with the extreme violence and sinister undertones that pervade the story.
Durarara is more straight out dark and moody.
But the thing is I still liked it. Indeed, I think I liked it more because it wasn't simply "Baccano: the remake".
See, I've noticed whenever I injure myself, it's always got an embarrassing element to it. It's like when I did my back in - I trapped a nerve whilst bending down to clean the wheel of my car. Even I'm embarrassed at that and I'm the one that suffered the weeks of constant agony and sleep deprivation that went with it.
Anyway, here's the rest of the summaries for the fansubs I watched:
11eyes
What was surprising about 11eyes wasn't so much what it was and what it was about, it was that I quite liked it.
If I had to guess while I was watching it, I would have said this was adapted from a light novel. Having now had the opportunity to look it up on Google, it actually turns out to be based on a visual novel.
Visual novels are a kind of half way house between properly interactive games and novels. Basically you click through loads of dialogue and events and stuff and then generally there are one or two decision points that allow the game to branch in a particular direction.
The reason I'd have said Light Novel is that 11eyes has that old problem of feeling like a bunch of cool stuff the writer/artist likes thrown together and draped across an overly-familiar plot.
However, where usually this really turns me off, here I found myself enjoying it. Perhaps it's because it's a visual novel so there were subtle differences to the way light novels go about their business. Perhaps I'm simply being worn down by all the adaptations of these types of things there have been recently.
Or perhaps I was simply coming off the back of two really disappointing shows to find something vaguely okay-ish so I didn't hate it.
Hyakko
I wasn't expecting much going into Hyakko. I'd already sampled the OVA that came after this and while it was somewhat amusing it was also a bit of a non-event. I appreciate that this is a slice of life type show, but throughout the entire OAV two characters basically just sat in a shop eating cakes.
Rather pleasantly then, the series has a bit more variety of scenery with more characters at the very least. It's also still definitely a slice of life show set in high school and we've seen loads of them over the years, but Id' say this was a fairly reasonable example of the genre.
I mean, it's not earth-shatteringly good, but equally it's not utterly awful.
Konnichiwa Anne
I've never read Anne of Green Gables. Indeed, I know next to nothing about it.
And confusingly this is not an adaptation of it, although I understand there is one.
According to wikipedia, the original Anne book also had several sequels and this isn't an adaptation of those either. This is an adaptation of a prequel book. A prequel not written by the original author.
Yeah, I'm scratching my head too, but really, that doesn't matter, because you don't need to know anything about those books or who wrote them to watch the show.
I think if I was a child I would really have liked this show. As a very old person I liked what it was trying to achieve but found the actual presentation/style a bit simplistic.
Which isn't to say the stories where simplistic, just that the show has a feeling of being aimed at younger children. Though to be fair, the content is somewhat adult in places - Anne's alcoholic adoptive father hits his wife in several occasions, for example.
And that was the other thing - all bar one of Anne's adoptive family are so unpleasant (both towards her and generally) I kept wanted to get in there and give them a slap (or at the least a damn good talking too) myself.
Perhaps that level of engagement is a hallmark of good storytelling, but in the end I found it somewhat frustrating. Maybe it's the sort of show where the end gives you some sort of closure to those feelings, but odds are I'll never find out.
Durarara!!
And so for the big one.
I'd been kinda saving durarara until last as I'd heard a lot of really good things about it. In particular I'd heard it was similar to Baccano, one of the best shows in recent years.
Well from what I watched (and to cap off this theme of surprises) it didn't seem anything like Baccano.
Baccano does a lot of buggering about in terms of telling its stories in parallel and out of sequence. You can easily slip from 1931 back to 1930 and then forward to 1932 across a handful of scenes. For a simple western analogy it's a bit like Pulp Fiction, where there's a single story that's been chopped into bits and we're watching the bits out of sequence.
Durarara doesn't do that. What Durarara does (well, in the first 2 episodes - I've not seen beyond that) is more similar to Boogiepop phantom, where the same period of time is being covered, but from different people's perspectives. There is a recent western film analogy, but I can't for the life of me recall what it was - I seem to remember it had Matthew Fox of Lost fame in it, though.
The other big surprise is that Baccano is quite high energy. It's got quite a lot of funny stuff in and generally the presentation is an upbeat, brightly coloured one, which contrasts beautifully with the extreme violence and sinister undertones that pervade the story.
Durarara is more straight out dark and moody.
But the thing is I still liked it. Indeed, I think I liked it more because it wasn't simply "Baccano: the remake".
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
crank 2: high voltage
Last week I reviewed (or randomly dribbled about, whichever you prefer) Lesbian Vampire Killers.
My main thought was that it had gotten a critical panning, but that I'd actually kinda enjoyed it.
This week's movie kinda follows the same pattern. I remember there being quite a few bad reviews, most especially I remember comments along the lines of it being not as good as the first.
Those reviews are wrong.
I loved the first Crank - it was delightfully and wilfully bonkers, but not in a comedic sense, although it was plenty funny. No, the bonkers-ness was in the pacing - the film absolutely pelted along, barely giving you any time to stop and think.
The basic feel of the first film was that of a video game. I'm not unique in thinking this, indeed, the game actually has bits of computer animation in it. But it's the nature of these bits of computer animation that really clued you in as to what Crank was.
Back in the early days of home computing the games were more anarchic and bonkers. Modern day gaming is a huge multi-billion pound business and a lot of the games tend to focus on being realistic and are horribly complicated to make. Back then, when computers were low on power anyone could make a 'state of the art' game.
And that led to some truly daft ideas. I remember one game where your mission was essentially to go around being a bastard, playing tricks on people.
And that's what Crank was - it was the movie equivalent of that old computer game spirit.
Crank 2 then cranks this basic idea up (ho ho ho, I'm a comic genius) and expands it. Crank 2 is not only a bonkers video game, but it's also throwing in all sorts of other stuff that was around in my youth too.
And some of it is bizarre - I mean, there's one scene that apes the men in rubber suits antics of the Godzilla movies. The characters wear caricature masks of themselves and do battle, destroying the miniature set by falling on it in the process.
But there's also an element of taking things up a gear (whoops, missed another opportunity for a cranking gag). Think of it this way - with the first film they were trying to make a full-on 18 certificate film.
And they succeeded with this. However, imagine they hadn't and they'd actually ended up with a 15 certificate. So they then make Crank 2 and so the thought process is something like "let's make it as extreme as we can so that it can't possibly end up with a 15".
And this they do - there's more violence, more swearing, more sex and nudity. About the only thing it doesn't push is drug abuse.
So yeah, I'd recommend you watch the first film if you haven't and if you like that then this is a very worthy sequel.
My main thought was that it had gotten a critical panning, but that I'd actually kinda enjoyed it.
This week's movie kinda follows the same pattern. I remember there being quite a few bad reviews, most especially I remember comments along the lines of it being not as good as the first.
Those reviews are wrong.
I loved the first Crank - it was delightfully and wilfully bonkers, but not in a comedic sense, although it was plenty funny. No, the bonkers-ness was in the pacing - the film absolutely pelted along, barely giving you any time to stop and think.
The basic feel of the first film was that of a video game. I'm not unique in thinking this, indeed, the game actually has bits of computer animation in it. But it's the nature of these bits of computer animation that really clued you in as to what Crank was.
Back in the early days of home computing the games were more anarchic and bonkers. Modern day gaming is a huge multi-billion pound business and a lot of the games tend to focus on being realistic and are horribly complicated to make. Back then, when computers were low on power anyone could make a 'state of the art' game.
And that led to some truly daft ideas. I remember one game where your mission was essentially to go around being a bastard, playing tricks on people.
And that's what Crank was - it was the movie equivalent of that old computer game spirit.
Crank 2 then cranks this basic idea up (ho ho ho, I'm a comic genius) and expands it. Crank 2 is not only a bonkers video game, but it's also throwing in all sorts of other stuff that was around in my youth too.
And some of it is bizarre - I mean, there's one scene that apes the men in rubber suits antics of the Godzilla movies. The characters wear caricature masks of themselves and do battle, destroying the miniature set by falling on it in the process.
But there's also an element of taking things up a gear (whoops, missed another opportunity for a cranking gag). Think of it this way - with the first film they were trying to make a full-on 18 certificate film.
And they succeeded with this. However, imagine they hadn't and they'd actually ended up with a 15 certificate. So they then make Crank 2 and so the thought process is something like "let's make it as extreme as we can so that it can't possibly end up with a 15".
And this they do - there's more violence, more swearing, more sex and nudity. About the only thing it doesn't push is drug abuse.
So yeah, I'd recommend you watch the first film if you haven't and if you like that then this is a very worthy sequel.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
animu splosion
As mentioned yesterday this last weekend was hugely productive and every spare minute was basically crammed with me scanning animedias and watching fansubs. Indeed, I've now managed to sample all of the shows available via fansub from the 2009/10 season, which is a very good thing.
I also managed to do this without completely ignoring normal telly or not doing other stuff I needed to do. So it probably points to a flaw in my character that I was slightly disappointed I didn't get to watch any anime on DVD.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, here's the roundup of all the fansubs I watched and my brief opinions on them:
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra
If I was to summarise my feelings on all the fansubs I watched I could basically use one word - surprising. I think just about every show was a surprise - sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
With Book of Bantorra I wasn't expecting much, but I was rather surprised to find it seemed quite interesting.
One of the reasons for my surprise was that the first couple of episodes did a lot of info dumping. This is one of those shows with a made-up, mumbo-jumbo setting that throws mystical and other powers around like they're bouncy balls.
Now usually I don't like this sort of thing, but was surprised to find two things of interest. First off the main character is not a heroic character or even, based on initial impressions either one of the good guys or particularly special.
The other thing of interest was the head of the hero characters was actually something of a bitch. She was unpleasant to her subordinates and seemed to revel in the violence she dished out, yet she's presented as being the head of the forces of good. She'd actually have slotted right into Black Lagoon.
So yeah, not necessarily a sophisticated premise, but some surprisingly interesting characters.
Natsu no Arashi!
The surprise with Natsu No Arashi was that I didn't really like the first episode, but I quite enjoyed the second.
The problem was that the second episodes was set well after the second and involves time travelling and people walking through walls and all sorts of random stuff. It did have some funny moments and the time travel was quite cleverly done, but it also felt like you were being dumped into the middle of a bunch of storylines and no-one was helping you understand them, which made it really frustrating.
However, the second episode jumped back to the beginning of the story and made a lot more sense, so I enjoyed it a lot more.
Which isn't to say I thought it was great. I didn't particularly take to the character designs, for example, and it didn't really give any impression of having an overarching plot. But still, I'd probably buy it and it was made by SHAFT whose stuff is always worth a look.
Katanagatari
Now Katanagatari was the first of two shows where the surprise was not a pleasant one. I'd fully expected going into this that I'd enjoy it.
It seemed to have some quirky character designs and artwork and I'm all up for a bit of that. It seemed to have some sort of feudal Japan thing going on and I wouldn't be a bit of a Japanophile if that didn't appeal. There was even a hint that it was basically a love story from what I'd heard and I'm a sucker for a bit of a love story.
The big surprise was how tedious it turned out to be.
The first episode was about 50 minutes long (presumably an hour when broadcast), but it didn't seem like they'd given them twice as much money to animate it. Indeed, it looked more like they'd give them half the normal amount of money, because there were huge stretches of people just talking.
And while they were talking it often didn't even show faces - there were loads of slow panning shots across random static things like tea pots. What made this worse was that the dialogue was often kinda dull - there was a bucket load of info dumping and even when the bad guy turned up I thought they were going to try and talk each other to death, rather than fight.
And then they did fight you got very little actual action.
It was terminally dull. Perhaps the second episode is shorter and more action-oriented. The file size would suggested not and I just couldn't be bothered to find out.
Winter Sonata
And it's a similar story with Winter Sonata.
Now to be fair, this one didn't have any suggestion that it was going to have action so the fact it didn't wasn't any sort of a let down. Also, this one definitely was intended to be a straight up romance.
My problem with it was that it was that it was so melodramatic it was almost comical. Except it wasn't comical, it was annoying.
It was like a soap opera, only one of those Mexican soap operas where everything is stupidly high drama. Only where those have a wide range of emotional over-exaggerations, Winter Sonata was entirely fixated on maudlin and melancholy.
Blimey, this is eating through words - I'll continue tomorrow.
Actually, no, tomorrow is movie rental review day, so make that Thursday!
I also managed to do this without completely ignoring normal telly or not doing other stuff I needed to do. So it probably points to a flaw in my character that I was slightly disappointed I didn't get to watch any anime on DVD.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, here's the roundup of all the fansubs I watched and my brief opinions on them:
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra
If I was to summarise my feelings on all the fansubs I watched I could basically use one word - surprising. I think just about every show was a surprise - sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
With Book of Bantorra I wasn't expecting much, but I was rather surprised to find it seemed quite interesting.
One of the reasons for my surprise was that the first couple of episodes did a lot of info dumping. This is one of those shows with a made-up, mumbo-jumbo setting that throws mystical and other powers around like they're bouncy balls.
Now usually I don't like this sort of thing, but was surprised to find two things of interest. First off the main character is not a heroic character or even, based on initial impressions either one of the good guys or particularly special.
The other thing of interest was the head of the hero characters was actually something of a bitch. She was unpleasant to her subordinates and seemed to revel in the violence she dished out, yet she's presented as being the head of the forces of good. She'd actually have slotted right into Black Lagoon.
So yeah, not necessarily a sophisticated premise, but some surprisingly interesting characters.
Natsu no Arashi!
The surprise with Natsu No Arashi was that I didn't really like the first episode, but I quite enjoyed the second.
The problem was that the second episodes was set well after the second and involves time travelling and people walking through walls and all sorts of random stuff. It did have some funny moments and the time travel was quite cleverly done, but it also felt like you were being dumped into the middle of a bunch of storylines and no-one was helping you understand them, which made it really frustrating.
However, the second episode jumped back to the beginning of the story and made a lot more sense, so I enjoyed it a lot more.
Which isn't to say I thought it was great. I didn't particularly take to the character designs, for example, and it didn't really give any impression of having an overarching plot. But still, I'd probably buy it and it was made by SHAFT whose stuff is always worth a look.
Katanagatari
Now Katanagatari was the first of two shows where the surprise was not a pleasant one. I'd fully expected going into this that I'd enjoy it.
It seemed to have some quirky character designs and artwork and I'm all up for a bit of that. It seemed to have some sort of feudal Japan thing going on and I wouldn't be a bit of a Japanophile if that didn't appeal. There was even a hint that it was basically a love story from what I'd heard and I'm a sucker for a bit of a love story.
The big surprise was how tedious it turned out to be.
The first episode was about 50 minutes long (presumably an hour when broadcast), but it didn't seem like they'd given them twice as much money to animate it. Indeed, it looked more like they'd give them half the normal amount of money, because there were huge stretches of people just talking.
And while they were talking it often didn't even show faces - there were loads of slow panning shots across random static things like tea pots. What made this worse was that the dialogue was often kinda dull - there was a bucket load of info dumping and even when the bad guy turned up I thought they were going to try and talk each other to death, rather than fight.
And then they did fight you got very little actual action.
It was terminally dull. Perhaps the second episode is shorter and more action-oriented. The file size would suggested not and I just couldn't be bothered to find out.
Winter Sonata
And it's a similar story with Winter Sonata.
Now to be fair, this one didn't have any suggestion that it was going to have action so the fact it didn't wasn't any sort of a let down. Also, this one definitely was intended to be a straight up romance.
My problem with it was that it was that it was so melodramatic it was almost comical. Except it wasn't comical, it was annoying.
It was like a soap opera, only one of those Mexican soap operas where everything is stupidly high drama. Only where those have a wide range of emotional over-exaggerations, Winter Sonata was entirely fixated on maudlin and melancholy.
Blimey, this is eating through words - I'll continue tomorrow.
Actually, no, tomorrow is movie rental review day, so make that Thursday!
Monday, 24 May 2010
tired but not knackered
As the heading suggests, today I feel tired, but not knackered.
This is a little odd, because the weekend was intensely knackering, and I'd normally expect that sort of thing to carry over.
The knackering bits started with me having to clean bed-sit, having not cleaned it in several weeks. I've spent most of the last few weekends trying to sort stuff and that's not left a lot of time to do any cleaning, so things were rather grimy - I had to Hoover the floor twice, for example.
I then decided to take the bull by the horns and do some scanning. Something my sorting out again highlighted was the huge pile of un-scanned magazines, which keeps growing. I realised that my heroic trudge through all the megamis was so long ago that I'd actually received two new issue of megami since then.
The result of this horn-bull paradigm thingy was that I ploughed through 8 or 9 (I actually lost track :/) issues of animedia. Now animedia of course is the famously light anime mag, generally having the fewest scannable images, but we're still taking what must have been the best part of 10 hours of scanning across the weekend.
That also means I watched a heck of a lot of anime on fansubs - I'd do the summaries tomorrow - which is all rather mentally exhausting.
And on top of that I went for another walk on Sunday! Now I can't speak for the entire country, but down here in southern England is was a veritable scorcher yesterday (supposedly it'll be even hotter today).
For some reason, although this made me slightly trepidatious about the walk, I still went out wearing my jeans. I dunno why I did that - I have plenty of shorts I could have worn that I'm sure would have been cooler.
In the end the walk wasn't as bad as I'd feared, even with the unsuitable attire. I think what helped was that there was quite a lot of shade and the bit that's up the hill had a nice breeze.
I still can't walk up that hill without a couple of pauses to catch my breath, but I guess the point is that it was not much worse given the elevated temperature. Also, it didn't seem to take me as long to recover when I got back as it has done in the past, which I hope is a good sign.
The last entry on the list was the temperature last night. As is often the way when the temperature suddenly goes up I haven't had a hair cut in ages, which is never a help. Of course the new thinner duvet I bought in Friday's spending spree is not here yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't turn up until the end of the week
I therefore decide to take matters into my own hands a bit and I used some ice packs to pre-cool my bed and to cool my pillow especially (think hot water bottle but in reverse). It was pretty successful as I got off fairly quickly.
The ultimate solution of course is to get the air conditioner out, but there are two problems there. First off the temperature is apparently going to drop for later in the week, but also with my sorting out still ongoing, it's going to be something like a logistical nightmare to get it out.
I therefore put down the fact that I'm tired to the fact that I did a lot of stuff over the weekend and the fact that I'm not knackered to the fact that you tend to sleep better if you've tired yourself out.
This is a little odd, because the weekend was intensely knackering, and I'd normally expect that sort of thing to carry over.
The knackering bits started with me having to clean bed-sit, having not cleaned it in several weeks. I've spent most of the last few weekends trying to sort stuff and that's not left a lot of time to do any cleaning, so things were rather grimy - I had to Hoover the floor twice, for example.
I then decided to take the bull by the horns and do some scanning. Something my sorting out again highlighted was the huge pile of un-scanned magazines, which keeps growing. I realised that my heroic trudge through all the megamis was so long ago that I'd actually received two new issue of megami since then.
The result of this horn-bull paradigm thingy was that I ploughed through 8 or 9 (I actually lost track :/) issues of animedia. Now animedia of course is the famously light anime mag, generally having the fewest scannable images, but we're still taking what must have been the best part of 10 hours of scanning across the weekend.
That also means I watched a heck of a lot of anime on fansubs - I'd do the summaries tomorrow - which is all rather mentally exhausting.
And on top of that I went for another walk on Sunday! Now I can't speak for the entire country, but down here in southern England is was a veritable scorcher yesterday (supposedly it'll be even hotter today).
For some reason, although this made me slightly trepidatious about the walk, I still went out wearing my jeans. I dunno why I did that - I have plenty of shorts I could have worn that I'm sure would have been cooler.
In the end the walk wasn't as bad as I'd feared, even with the unsuitable attire. I think what helped was that there was quite a lot of shade and the bit that's up the hill had a nice breeze.
I still can't walk up that hill without a couple of pauses to catch my breath, but I guess the point is that it was not much worse given the elevated temperature. Also, it didn't seem to take me as long to recover when I got back as it has done in the past, which I hope is a good sign.
The last entry on the list was the temperature last night. As is often the way when the temperature suddenly goes up I haven't had a hair cut in ages, which is never a help. Of course the new thinner duvet I bought in Friday's spending spree is not here yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't turn up until the end of the week
I therefore decide to take matters into my own hands a bit and I used some ice packs to pre-cool my bed and to cool my pillow especially (think hot water bottle but in reverse). It was pretty successful as I got off fairly quickly.
The ultimate solution of course is to get the air conditioner out, but there are two problems there. First off the temperature is apparently going to drop for later in the week, but also with my sorting out still ongoing, it's going to be something like a logistical nightmare to get it out.
I therefore put down the fact that I'm tired to the fact that I did a lot of stuff over the weekend and the fact that I'm not knackered to the fact that you tend to sleep better if you've tired yourself out.
Friday, 21 May 2010
wallet ouchies
I've just been on something of a spending spree.
Some of what I've bought it necessary. Other stuff I've kinda convinced myself is necessary but probably isn't.
First thing I bought was a new TV. This is not necessary in so far as I have a perfectly functional telly already. But there are a couple of problems.
First off it's a 15" CRT. This means it's quite small and I'm getting sick of not being able to make out some details very well. It's also not widescreen, and basically now I have freeview everything is output in widescreen, which means that even though it was 15 inch it wasn't really, because of letterboxing.
The second thing is at some point in the relatively near future I want to step into the High Def world. This will likely mean buying a Blu Ray player, but could also involve HD-freeview or a game consoles.
The only real downside is that I've had to buy an LCD. The main reason I've held back was that in my opinion CRT is still a better display technology than LCD or plasma. And while OLED is clearly awesome and the future, it's also really early in its development and incredibly expensive.
My next purchase is a new duvet. This is definitely necessary now that it's starting to look like summer may actually happen this year. I can't sleep without a duvet of some kind and my big thick one I got for Christmas would probably end up killing me.
To go along with this I bought another bed sheet cover thing, which should be useful with the summer months and my increased sweating.
I also bought some new socks. This is another of those probably not necessary as I have socks, but at least a third of them have whacking great holes in and it's starting to make me look like a tramp.
The last purchase was some new writable DVDs and two new portable hard drives. These are another borderline thing. I am rapidly running out of burnable DVDs, but not to the extent that I need them now; however, I thought I might as well since I was blowing my cash and like I say I will need them imminently.
The portable HDDs are a little more tricky to justify. I realised a while back that the portable HDDs that I'd bought solely for the purposes of backing up have actually become regularly used things. Now I try my best to subscribe to the whole multiple independent back-ups thing, but I've kinda realised that I'm just not doing that in practice, hence me buying some new drives.
See, I can convince myself of anything if I try hard enough.
Some of what I've bought it necessary. Other stuff I've kinda convinced myself is necessary but probably isn't.
First thing I bought was a new TV. This is not necessary in so far as I have a perfectly functional telly already. But there are a couple of problems.
First off it's a 15" CRT. This means it's quite small and I'm getting sick of not being able to make out some details very well. It's also not widescreen, and basically now I have freeview everything is output in widescreen, which means that even though it was 15 inch it wasn't really, because of letterboxing.
The second thing is at some point in the relatively near future I want to step into the High Def world. This will likely mean buying a Blu Ray player, but could also involve HD-freeview or a game consoles.
The only real downside is that I've had to buy an LCD. The main reason I've held back was that in my opinion CRT is still a better display technology than LCD or plasma. And while OLED is clearly awesome and the future, it's also really early in its development and incredibly expensive.
My next purchase is a new duvet. This is definitely necessary now that it's starting to look like summer may actually happen this year. I can't sleep without a duvet of some kind and my big thick one I got for Christmas would probably end up killing me.
To go along with this I bought another bed sheet cover thing, which should be useful with the summer months and my increased sweating.
I also bought some new socks. This is another of those probably not necessary as I have socks, but at least a third of them have whacking great holes in and it's starting to make me look like a tramp.
The last purchase was some new writable DVDs and two new portable hard drives. These are another borderline thing. I am rapidly running out of burnable DVDs, but not to the extent that I need them now; however, I thought I might as well since I was blowing my cash and like I say I will need them imminently.
The portable HDDs are a little more tricky to justify. I realised a while back that the portable HDDs that I'd bought solely for the purposes of backing up have actually become regularly used things. Now I try my best to subscribe to the whole multiple independent back-ups thing, but I've kinda realised that I'm just not doing that in practice, hence me buying some new drives.
See, I can convince myself of anything if I try hard enough.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
well that was... fun?
Some people are walking disaster areas.
On Tuesday we received an invitation to submit a proposal and the guy running it is a complete and total numpty. Almost everything he did or asked for was either stupid or contradictory.
For example, the ITT turned up and they'd changed the title, but didn't tell us. We'd previously done an expression of interest for it and it was called something else then. So when my boss got this she thought it was something new and wasted a day before she realised.
Then the deadline for the ITT was Thursday. By post. They'd given us less than 3 days to put together an entire ITT. My boss had to basically bully the guy into excepting an electronic version, even though all of our other customers are happy to take electronic versions with hard copy to follow.
And it wasn't a simple ITT, it had all sorts of little bits and bobs and nauseating, un-necessary crap to it. The best example of this is that it required that the document have 3 sections, 2 of which contained pricing information.
Fair enough, because what you normally end up doing is producing a priced and un-priced version, where you blank out the pricing information. However, they didn't want a priced version. That's right - we put these things in the ITT only to blank them out. They then wanted the bits with the price on separately!
It's just been ridiculous, and all basically caused by this guy.
On Tuesday we received an invitation to submit a proposal and the guy running it is a complete and total numpty. Almost everything he did or asked for was either stupid or contradictory.
For example, the ITT turned up and they'd changed the title, but didn't tell us. We'd previously done an expression of interest for it and it was called something else then. So when my boss got this she thought it was something new and wasted a day before she realised.
Then the deadline for the ITT was Thursday. By post. They'd given us less than 3 days to put together an entire ITT. My boss had to basically bully the guy into excepting an electronic version, even though all of our other customers are happy to take electronic versions with hard copy to follow.
And it wasn't a simple ITT, it had all sorts of little bits and bobs and nauseating, un-necessary crap to it. The best example of this is that it required that the document have 3 sections, 2 of which contained pricing information.
Fair enough, because what you normally end up doing is producing a priced and un-priced version, where you blank out the pricing information. However, they didn't want a priced version. That's right - we put these things in the ITT only to blank them out. They then wanted the bits with the price on separately!
It's just been ridiculous, and all basically caused by this guy.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
lesbian vampire killers
When Lesbian Vampire Killers (LVK) came out I seem to remember it got a mauling from the critics.
And if I'm being totally honest I can sort of understand that, but I also think that in time-honoured critic fashion, slating it seems to miss the point somewhat. LVK is, in essence, an exploitation movie very much in the Hammer Horror vein. The clue to this really is in the title.
What makes it work is that it's a very modern take on this genre. How to put this? It never actually breaks the fourth wall, but when the main characters played by Horne and Corden find themselves in the middle of a Hammer Horror film there's a degree of self awareness to it.
I mean, it's not that they behave unrealistically, it's more like they behave as if they expect the late Jeremy Beadle to suddenly pull off his fake beard and for a cameraman to walk out. It's difficult to explain - it's a tonal thing. It's like all the other characters are living in a Hammer Horror film and a couple of outsiders have wandered into it and they're not quite so sure.
The director makes an interesting point in the commentary that at no point did he think he was making a scary film. He was always making a comedy film that just happened to have a horror setting. But not like the Scary Movie films - this isn't a parody, it's more like a comedy homage to Hammer.
The reason that's particularly interesting is that the film presents itself like a straight horror/exploitation movie just like Hammer used to make, but it isn't - it's full of jokes and by playing it straight I think it works.
I'm kind of working this round to saying something fairly simple: I wasn't expecting to, but I quite liked it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was a work of genius, the comedy bowls almost entirely at the lowest common denominator and it doesn't make any bones about its exploitation shtick - the film is veritably dripping in hot chicks in skimpy clothes kissing each other. But what I'm getting at is that there's a degree of self-awareness to it all.
The only thing I think I'd really criticise is it flirts with a degree of misogyny that it doesn't properly acknowledge.
I mean, the film is about a lesbian queen of vampires who, in stereotypical lesbian fashion hates men and, when biting women not only turns them into vampires, but also turns them into lesbians as well. The only way to defeat her is with a special sword. A sword that, if you didn't already pick up the on penis/sword thing, has a cock for a handle.
So the only way to beat a lesbian is with the power of a man. Or, the insinuation is that penis is the only thing that can turn a lesbian.
To some extent I'm over-egging this and such an undertone probably would appear in an exploitation-horror film, my problem is more that it's not really acknowledged in the film. Where you've got an element of that 'knowing wink' to everything else, this isn't really even brought up.
And if I'm being totally honest I can sort of understand that, but I also think that in time-honoured critic fashion, slating it seems to miss the point somewhat. LVK is, in essence, an exploitation movie very much in the Hammer Horror vein. The clue to this really is in the title.
What makes it work is that it's a very modern take on this genre. How to put this? It never actually breaks the fourth wall, but when the main characters played by Horne and Corden find themselves in the middle of a Hammer Horror film there's a degree of self awareness to it.
I mean, it's not that they behave unrealistically, it's more like they behave as if they expect the late Jeremy Beadle to suddenly pull off his fake beard and for a cameraman to walk out. It's difficult to explain - it's a tonal thing. It's like all the other characters are living in a Hammer Horror film and a couple of outsiders have wandered into it and they're not quite so sure.
The director makes an interesting point in the commentary that at no point did he think he was making a scary film. He was always making a comedy film that just happened to have a horror setting. But not like the Scary Movie films - this isn't a parody, it's more like a comedy homage to Hammer.
The reason that's particularly interesting is that the film presents itself like a straight horror/exploitation movie just like Hammer used to make, but it isn't - it's full of jokes and by playing it straight I think it works.
I'm kind of working this round to saying something fairly simple: I wasn't expecting to, but I quite liked it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it was a work of genius, the comedy bowls almost entirely at the lowest common denominator and it doesn't make any bones about its exploitation shtick - the film is veritably dripping in hot chicks in skimpy clothes kissing each other. But what I'm getting at is that there's a degree of self-awareness to it all.
The only thing I think I'd really criticise is it flirts with a degree of misogyny that it doesn't properly acknowledge.
I mean, the film is about a lesbian queen of vampires who, in stereotypical lesbian fashion hates men and, when biting women not only turns them into vampires, but also turns them into lesbians as well. The only way to defeat her is with a special sword. A sword that, if you didn't already pick up the on penis/sword thing, has a cock for a handle.
So the only way to beat a lesbian is with the power of a man. Or, the insinuation is that penis is the only thing that can turn a lesbian.
To some extent I'm over-egging this and such an undertone probably would appear in an exploitation-horror film, my problem is more that it's not really acknowledged in the film. Where you've got an element of that 'knowing wink' to everything else, this isn't really even brought up.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
monaco
So last weekend it was the Monaco Grand Prix.
It was a reasonable race by Monaco standards that was probably helped out by Fernando Alonso crashing in Saturday practice. This meant he had no car for the Qualifying, so had to start from the pits, putting him stone-dead last.
This therefore meant he could take his mandatory pit stop very early and then blast his way up the pack. In Monaco tyre wear is normally quite slight and so this didn't hamper him, but also meant when others eventually took their stops they would have ended up behind him. although many of the teams realised and so brought their guys in early.
It also meant Alonso had to do lots of overtaking (very difficult in Monaco's narrow streets), giving the cameras something to watch.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about it was that last year I was at the Monaco GP. This gave the viewing experience a little extra something I think - seeing on telly the bits I actually saw myself a year ago.
One of the things you really don't grasp on telly is the elevation changes of the circuit. At one part of the race they're driving past the harbour so are literally at sea level, but the famous Casino Square is actually at the top of a small mountain. There's therefore a long section where they drive up this steep incline that you just can't appreciate on telly - it has to be a 45% angle they go up.
Something that also occurred to me is that the Monaco GP is probably best watched from the in car shots. I mean, there's still no more overtaking, but you get a better appreciation of what it's like driving through the narrow streets with solid barriers just inches away.
I think this year the temperatures were a lot milder than when we were there. If I'm honest the stifling heat and humidity was the only real dampener to last year's trip.
My dad is actually going to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. Well, he's booked the trip, but it coincides with one of the BA strikes (I don't know if it's a BA flight, but I would imagine so) and there's the ever-looming threat of the volcanic ash.
Apparently the last time that volcano went up it was erupting continuously for 2 solid years or something, so it could become a permanent feature of air travel for quite a while.
And speaking of cars and... dust (yeah, okay, world's most tenuous segue ever) I cleaned my car this last weekend.
Well, I say cleaned, it was more like a very quick wipe down. It's been ages since I cleaned my car and it was getting to the stage where you couldn't tell if it was grey or brown. Also there were quite a few bird droppings on it and it's not good to leave those on for long as they damage the paint.
It still really needs a good, thorough clean, though.
My landlord was actually supposed to have gone on holiday this week and last and it was my original plan to give it a good clean during that time. However, in the end he wasn't well so has postponed it and I think this is good as in reality I don't think I'd have had the time - as I say, I only really found time to give it a quick wipe down on Sunday, so Id' never have fit in a full clean.
It was a reasonable race by Monaco standards that was probably helped out by Fernando Alonso crashing in Saturday practice. This meant he had no car for the Qualifying, so had to start from the pits, putting him stone-dead last.
This therefore meant he could take his mandatory pit stop very early and then blast his way up the pack. In Monaco tyre wear is normally quite slight and so this didn't hamper him, but also meant when others eventually took their stops they would have ended up behind him. although many of the teams realised and so brought their guys in early.
It also meant Alonso had to do lots of overtaking (very difficult in Monaco's narrow streets), giving the cameras something to watch.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about it was that last year I was at the Monaco GP. This gave the viewing experience a little extra something I think - seeing on telly the bits I actually saw myself a year ago.
One of the things you really don't grasp on telly is the elevation changes of the circuit. At one part of the race they're driving past the harbour so are literally at sea level, but the famous Casino Square is actually at the top of a small mountain. There's therefore a long section where they drive up this steep incline that you just can't appreciate on telly - it has to be a 45% angle they go up.
Something that also occurred to me is that the Monaco GP is probably best watched from the in car shots. I mean, there's still no more overtaking, but you get a better appreciation of what it's like driving through the narrow streets with solid barriers just inches away.
I think this year the temperatures were a lot milder than when we were there. If I'm honest the stifling heat and humidity was the only real dampener to last year's trip.
My dad is actually going to the Canadian Grand Prix this year. Well, he's booked the trip, but it coincides with one of the BA strikes (I don't know if it's a BA flight, but I would imagine so) and there's the ever-looming threat of the volcanic ash.
Apparently the last time that volcano went up it was erupting continuously for 2 solid years or something, so it could become a permanent feature of air travel for quite a while.
And speaking of cars and... dust (yeah, okay, world's most tenuous segue ever) I cleaned my car this last weekend.
Well, I say cleaned, it was more like a very quick wipe down. It's been ages since I cleaned my car and it was getting to the stage where you couldn't tell if it was grey or brown. Also there were quite a few bird droppings on it and it's not good to leave those on for long as they damage the paint.
It still really needs a good, thorough clean, though.
My landlord was actually supposed to have gone on holiday this week and last and it was my original plan to give it a good clean during that time. However, in the end he wasn't well so has postponed it and I think this is good as in reality I don't think I'd have had the time - as I say, I only really found time to give it a quick wipe down on Sunday, so Id' never have fit in a full clean.
Monday, 17 May 2010
still a bit rubbish
Guess what I did on Saturday?
No, not that, you filthy degenerate...
Having read through my own pathetic dribblings on Friday after posting them I got a grip and took some rubbish down the recycling place.
You may recall that I'd investigated the Alton recycling centre as a possible option given I work just down the road from it and as part of my investigations I'd discovered it actually opens at 8am on Saturday as well.
My local one in Farnham doesn't open until 9am at weekends, which is just getting into that zone where most people are becoming active. One of the advantages of my body-clock being fixated on an early start is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to go and do stuff like shopping really early at the weekend.
So what I did was load the car up on Saturday and take it all to Alton recycling centre. This turned out to be slightly scarier than I'd thought it would be, because it seemed the police where doing a speeding check thing on the A31 in Farnham. That meant I had to drive past a load of coppers with my car dodgily full of boxes and stuff.
I'm never sure if loading your car in this was is quite legal. I think it probably comes down to one of those it should be "safe" things, which essentially means a judgement call. Anyway, they didn't stop me so I pootled on down there and unloaded my stuff.
The Alton place is a lot better designed than the Farnham one. At Farnham you have to climb stairs to be able to throw your stuff in the big containers (which if I'm honest didn't help with my laziness problem) but at Alton the containers are lower down so you're at the right level to just chuck your stuff in.
As it turned out, and kinda as I'd been expecting, a good chunk of my rubbish went into the 'domestic waste' bin, which basically means it was landfill and not recycling as I'd expected.
The other thing Id' suspected was that the old electrical bits and bobs don't actually go in a container at all. Instead, you basically dump them in an area close to the workers hut thing. My guess is that they go through this stuff to see what it's made of and if it still works and stuff.
And to give you some idea of just how much crap I've accumulated, even though I packed my car as full as was sensible and I've still got loads of crap to chuck. Now admittedly my car is only a micra, but that's a lot of rubbish given the size of my bedsit. And on top of that, I've still got loads of sorting out to do and there's therefore bound to be loads more of crap to chuck.
No, not that, you filthy degenerate...
Having read through my own pathetic dribblings on Friday after posting them I got a grip and took some rubbish down the recycling place.
You may recall that I'd investigated the Alton recycling centre as a possible option given I work just down the road from it and as part of my investigations I'd discovered it actually opens at 8am on Saturday as well.
My local one in Farnham doesn't open until 9am at weekends, which is just getting into that zone where most people are becoming active. One of the advantages of my body-clock being fixated on an early start is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to go and do stuff like shopping really early at the weekend.
So what I did was load the car up on Saturday and take it all to Alton recycling centre. This turned out to be slightly scarier than I'd thought it would be, because it seemed the police where doing a speeding check thing on the A31 in Farnham. That meant I had to drive past a load of coppers with my car dodgily full of boxes and stuff.
I'm never sure if loading your car in this was is quite legal. I think it probably comes down to one of those it should be "safe" things, which essentially means a judgement call. Anyway, they didn't stop me so I pootled on down there and unloaded my stuff.
The Alton place is a lot better designed than the Farnham one. At Farnham you have to climb stairs to be able to throw your stuff in the big containers (which if I'm honest didn't help with my laziness problem) but at Alton the containers are lower down so you're at the right level to just chuck your stuff in.
As it turned out, and kinda as I'd been expecting, a good chunk of my rubbish went into the 'domestic waste' bin, which basically means it was landfill and not recycling as I'd expected.
The other thing Id' suspected was that the old electrical bits and bobs don't actually go in a container at all. Instead, you basically dump them in an area close to the workers hut thing. My guess is that they go through this stuff to see what it's made of and if it still works and stuff.
And to give you some idea of just how much crap I've accumulated, even though I packed my car as full as was sensible and I've still got loads of crap to chuck. Now admittedly my car is only a micra, but that's a lot of rubbish given the size of my bedsit. And on top of that, I've still got loads of sorting out to do and there's therefore bound to be loads more of crap to chuck.
Friday, 14 May 2010
why i'm rubbish
This morning was the perfect example of one of the many ways in which I'm rubbish.
I tend to get in to work very early. Officially my work day doesn't start until 9, but I'm usually in just after 8. Well this morning I used that earliness in order to pop over to Sainsbury's and drop off some recycling at their recycling place.
This is fair enough, you may think. I mentioned how over my holiday I was furiously sorting through boxes and had identified loads of stuff to chuck away or send to recycling.
But what makes me rubbish is that I've been carrying around the bits and bobs I recycled this morning with me all week.
Now the reason I've had them in there all week are as follows:
I put them in my boot on Monday morning. My thought was I'd put them in the recycling bins at Tesco that lunch time when I went shopping. I didn't do that because there just wasn't the time. By the time I'd got my bits and eaten my lunch it was time to head to work again.
On Tuesday I went to Homebase to buy some more crates to hold stuff in, and that's not near Sainsbury's. Of course I could have gone to Sainsbury's as well, but I couldn't be arsed.
Wednesday there is literally no excuse - I could easily have gone to Sainsbury's and dropped it off, but I just couldn't be arsed.
Thursday is washing and shopping day. I drop my washing off at the laundrette and pick up last weeks load and then I go and buy a few bits of shopping. Guess where I buy these? Yup - Sainsbury's. Did I drop the recycling off? Nope.
I did go and have a look at the recycling place, but the door was closed and I couldn't see a way to open it. However, after I'd bought my bits I happened to see someone else open it (bizarrely the opening push-thing is on the inside, so you have to reach your hand in through the bars :/). However, by that time I had to go back to work.
Also, it had actually occurred to me that what I had thought was simply a tip down the road from where I work was actually a proper recycling centre. A quick Google also revealed that its opening time was 8am. Perhaps therefore I should just drop it off as I come in to work?
Well then this morning I had two options and in the end I went for Sainsbury's. So all that fannying around and I did what I should have done earlier in the week anyway.
You see when you think about it, even though I'd gone to Tesco on Monday I could easily have dropped the recycling off after work. Or before work like I did this morning. But I didn't, because I'm rubbish.
See mainly this was because I'm very lazy, but the other part of the problem I think is an issue I have over being embarrassed. I absolutely hate being embarrassed and of course if you've never done something before then the possibilities for getting it wrong and therefore being embarrassed are endless.
I mean, what if I went to this community recycling centre and they told me actually they won't take the things I had? Or if I put them in the wrong bins? Or if something is really heavy and I drop it? These would become excruciatingly embarrassing if one of the people that work there had to somehow fix my mistake or tell me off or something like that.
This is the thing that really tends to hold me back - my mind gets stuck thinking of all the things that could go wrong and that will therefore lead to me being embarrassed and so it's far easier for me to keep being too lazy. And so my entire bed-sit ends up so full of stuff that needs throwing away I can't see the carpet any more :/.
I tend to get in to work very early. Officially my work day doesn't start until 9, but I'm usually in just after 8. Well this morning I used that earliness in order to pop over to Sainsbury's and drop off some recycling at their recycling place.
This is fair enough, you may think. I mentioned how over my holiday I was furiously sorting through boxes and had identified loads of stuff to chuck away or send to recycling.
But what makes me rubbish is that I've been carrying around the bits and bobs I recycled this morning with me all week.
Now the reason I've had them in there all week are as follows:
I put them in my boot on Monday morning. My thought was I'd put them in the recycling bins at Tesco that lunch time when I went shopping. I didn't do that because there just wasn't the time. By the time I'd got my bits and eaten my lunch it was time to head to work again.
On Tuesday I went to Homebase to buy some more crates to hold stuff in, and that's not near Sainsbury's. Of course I could have gone to Sainsbury's as well, but I couldn't be arsed.
Wednesday there is literally no excuse - I could easily have gone to Sainsbury's and dropped it off, but I just couldn't be arsed.
Thursday is washing and shopping day. I drop my washing off at the laundrette and pick up last weeks load and then I go and buy a few bits of shopping. Guess where I buy these? Yup - Sainsbury's. Did I drop the recycling off? Nope.
I did go and have a look at the recycling place, but the door was closed and I couldn't see a way to open it. However, after I'd bought my bits I happened to see someone else open it (bizarrely the opening push-thing is on the inside, so you have to reach your hand in through the bars :/). However, by that time I had to go back to work.
Also, it had actually occurred to me that what I had thought was simply a tip down the road from where I work was actually a proper recycling centre. A quick Google also revealed that its opening time was 8am. Perhaps therefore I should just drop it off as I come in to work?
Well then this morning I had two options and in the end I went for Sainsbury's. So all that fannying around and I did what I should have done earlier in the week anyway.
You see when you think about it, even though I'd gone to Tesco on Monday I could easily have dropped the recycling off after work. Or before work like I did this morning. But I didn't, because I'm rubbish.
See mainly this was because I'm very lazy, but the other part of the problem I think is an issue I have over being embarrassed. I absolutely hate being embarrassed and of course if you've never done something before then the possibilities for getting it wrong and therefore being embarrassed are endless.
I mean, what if I went to this community recycling centre and they told me actually they won't take the things I had? Or if I put them in the wrong bins? Or if something is really heavy and I drop it? These would become excruciatingly embarrassing if one of the people that work there had to somehow fix my mistake or tell me off or something like that.
This is the thing that really tends to hold me back - my mind gets stuck thinking of all the things that could go wrong and that will therefore lead to me being embarrassed and so it's far easier for me to keep being too lazy. And so my entire bed-sit ends up so full of stuff that needs throwing away I can't see the carpet any more :/.
Thursday, 13 May 2010
so it's dodgy dave then
I know politics is boring, but it looks like we finally have a government.
I can't claim to be happy about the result, but it's actually been quite fascinating watching it all unfold over the last week or so.
I think the most important thing that's come out of the hung parliament and the wrangling is that finally more people are starting to realise that our current system does not produce results that are fair on the people doing the voting.
There's actually an interesting summary of the different electoral options on the BBC news site. The system they're going to have the referendum on is the Alternative Vote System.
While this is a very mild version of PR, it would certainly address one of the biggest problems of the current system. If you look at last Thursdays vote, nearly a quarter (23%) of all the people that voted voted for the Liberal Democrats. And yet they ended up with just 57 seats, which is only 9%.
How can that possibly reflect the true feelings of the electorate?
I know there are lots of arguments for the 'strong' governments that tend to be formed under 1st past the post, but lets face it - giving total power to one party just gives them a mandate to ride rough-shod across the feelings of the majority of the UK population. How can that possibly be considered fair?
And isn't the whole point of democracy that it's fair - that it reflects the balance of opinion of the entire population?
I mean look at the Lib-Con coalition. The Lib Dems are, generally speaking, a centre-left party. The current incarnation of the Labour party is also broadly centre-left. A total of 52% of the electorate voted for these centre-left parties, and yet even combined they fell a long way short of %0% of the MPs.
It gets even worse if you look at the other party votes - many of these other parties are also either leftist or centre-left, so when you start adding their votes in, the proportion of left-leaning votes gets close to 60% and yet we've end up with a right wing government!
If you look at AV then while it still wouldn't even things up properly, it would likely have gone some way to redressing the balance. And yes this still would have produced a coalition government, but at least that represents the balance of the electorates feelings.
And at the very least it would stop this tendency we have to veer from one set of extreme policies to the complete opposite, which in my opinion can be more damaging than what the actual policies are.
I've actually felt this way for a long time, but I think finally people are starting to really get the point that the current electoral system does not produce results that truly representative of the British electorate.
Of course the irony is that, even with all the complaining people have done, given the innate conservative-ness of the British people the referendum will probably fail and we'll end up with the same old first past the post bollocks we've always had.
I mean look at al those opinion polls that said the Lib Dems were doing to do better than ever and what actually happened? People voted for the Tories :/. I actually remember the same thing happening in 1992 - all the opinion polls said labour would win, but people lied to the pollsters because they were embarrassed about voting Tory. Bizarre.
I can't claim to be happy about the result, but it's actually been quite fascinating watching it all unfold over the last week or so.
I think the most important thing that's come out of the hung parliament and the wrangling is that finally more people are starting to realise that our current system does not produce results that are fair on the people doing the voting.
There's actually an interesting summary of the different electoral options on the BBC news site. The system they're going to have the referendum on is the Alternative Vote System.
While this is a very mild version of PR, it would certainly address one of the biggest problems of the current system. If you look at last Thursdays vote, nearly a quarter (23%) of all the people that voted voted for the Liberal Democrats. And yet they ended up with just 57 seats, which is only 9%.
How can that possibly reflect the true feelings of the electorate?
I know there are lots of arguments for the 'strong' governments that tend to be formed under 1st past the post, but lets face it - giving total power to one party just gives them a mandate to ride rough-shod across the feelings of the majority of the UK population. How can that possibly be considered fair?
And isn't the whole point of democracy that it's fair - that it reflects the balance of opinion of the entire population?
I mean look at the Lib-Con coalition. The Lib Dems are, generally speaking, a centre-left party. The current incarnation of the Labour party is also broadly centre-left. A total of 52% of the electorate voted for these centre-left parties, and yet even combined they fell a long way short of %0% of the MPs.
It gets even worse if you look at the other party votes - many of these other parties are also either leftist or centre-left, so when you start adding their votes in, the proportion of left-leaning votes gets close to 60% and yet we've end up with a right wing government!
If you look at AV then while it still wouldn't even things up properly, it would likely have gone some way to redressing the balance. And yes this still would have produced a coalition government, but at least that represents the balance of the electorates feelings.
And at the very least it would stop this tendency we have to veer from one set of extreme policies to the complete opposite, which in my opinion can be more damaging than what the actual policies are.
I've actually felt this way for a long time, but I think finally people are starting to really get the point that the current electoral system does not produce results that truly representative of the British electorate.
Of course the irony is that, even with all the complaining people have done, given the innate conservative-ness of the British people the referendum will probably fail and we'll end up with the same old first past the post bollocks we've always had.
I mean look at al those opinion polls that said the Lib Dems were doing to do better than ever and what actually happened? People voted for the Tories :/. I actually remember the same thing happening in 1992 - all the opinion polls said labour would win, but people lied to the pollsters because they were embarrassed about voting Tory. Bizarre.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
twilight
DVD rentalage got a bit confusing while I was on holiday, but one of the things I watched was twilight.
Obviously I, like everyone else, have heard all sorts about twilight. This has ranged from it being the worst abomination ever to the best thing since sliced bread. As you might expect, the reality is somewhere in between.
The film is an adaptation of a book that I understand is immensely popular with young women. I knew it was essentially about a young human girl and a vampire falling in love and that there has been a lot of talk that the whole thing is a gigantic allegory/metaphor for pre-marital chastity.
Clearly I'm not reviewing the book, so I can't really comment on that, but I would say those sentences pretty much sum up the film version. Girl meets vampire. Girl falls for vampire while vampire tries to reject her. Vampire caves, admitting the rejection was to protect her. Vampire has to save girl from other vampires.
I guess from that point of view the film works - you don't really ever doubt the characters motivations and their feelings are tangible and on the whole understandable and relatable.
I have to say though that from my point of view the whole thing did seem a bit daft. It also felt very long - the film has a two hour running time, but dawdles through most of it. It actually reminded me of a gawky teenager, shuffling its feet in the corner of the room at a family do, not quite knowing what to do with itself.
Also, if that teenage is dressed as a Goth - pale white skin, dyed black hair, black, ill-fitting clothes, then weirdly, that would match the film too. There's an odd artificiality to the look of the film - the images seem artificially de-saturated in an overly obvious way and while lots of the characters are perfectly normal people, they don't quite fit in the film.
It's almost like an exploration of a psychosis. The heroine Bella inhabits the real world, but she's also experiencing a series of fantasy-fulfilling delusions and visions involving Sebastian and his vampiric family. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if it had been revealed at the end that Bella was experiencing some sort of breakdown.
And in a way that stylistic stuff and fantasy world thing worked better for me than the story itself, which I have to admit I found a little turgid and predictable.
As for the whole chastity allegory, it's certainly got a strong feel of that. I mean, vampires have always been wrapped up in sex, and so you can sort of understand it, but in a way it means they're like anti-vampires in twilight. To be frank, I personally don't think it works. Certainly there's absolutely no back-story or explanation as to why they're like that - introducing something like Angel from Buffy's soul would have helped no end.
Obviously I, like everyone else, have heard all sorts about twilight. This has ranged from it being the worst abomination ever to the best thing since sliced bread. As you might expect, the reality is somewhere in between.
The film is an adaptation of a book that I understand is immensely popular with young women. I knew it was essentially about a young human girl and a vampire falling in love and that there has been a lot of talk that the whole thing is a gigantic allegory/metaphor for pre-marital chastity.
Clearly I'm not reviewing the book, so I can't really comment on that, but I would say those sentences pretty much sum up the film version. Girl meets vampire. Girl falls for vampire while vampire tries to reject her. Vampire caves, admitting the rejection was to protect her. Vampire has to save girl from other vampires.
I guess from that point of view the film works - you don't really ever doubt the characters motivations and their feelings are tangible and on the whole understandable and relatable.
I have to say though that from my point of view the whole thing did seem a bit daft. It also felt very long - the film has a two hour running time, but dawdles through most of it. It actually reminded me of a gawky teenager, shuffling its feet in the corner of the room at a family do, not quite knowing what to do with itself.
Also, if that teenage is dressed as a Goth - pale white skin, dyed black hair, black, ill-fitting clothes, then weirdly, that would match the film too. There's an odd artificiality to the look of the film - the images seem artificially de-saturated in an overly obvious way and while lots of the characters are perfectly normal people, they don't quite fit in the film.
It's almost like an exploration of a psychosis. The heroine Bella inhabits the real world, but she's also experiencing a series of fantasy-fulfilling delusions and visions involving Sebastian and his vampiric family. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if it had been revealed at the end that Bella was experiencing some sort of breakdown.
And in a way that stylistic stuff and fantasy world thing worked better for me than the story itself, which I have to admit I found a little turgid and predictable.
As for the whole chastity allegory, it's certainly got a strong feel of that. I mean, vampires have always been wrapped up in sex, and so you can sort of understand it, but in a way it means they're like anti-vampires in twilight. To be frank, I personally don't think it works. Certainly there's absolutely no back-story or explanation as to why they're like that - introducing something like Angel from Buffy's soul would have helped no end.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
failed
Continuing on from yesterday, the big disappointment area of the holiday was getting stuff done.
Where I made fairly good inroads into the sorting out of boxes, it took far longer than I'd thought it would and so I didn't even look at doing half the stuff I'd hoped I could.
One of the main things was I'd hoped I could do a bit of scanning, but I didn't do any at all. I therefore didn't watch any anime fansubs, as I generally do that so I'm way behind on that too.
Well, I say that - just before my holiday I did sample a couple of new shows:
Kimi Ni Todoke
Well this was a surprise.
I had absolutely no expectations when starting this and what I found was a sweet and charming romantic show.
The basic gist seems to be something along the lines of a misfit finds her place type of show. This is a theme I've always had a soft spot for, probably because I am a total misfit.
If I was being brutally honest, the show does have a slightly benevolent inevitability to it. By that I mean that, despite the main character basically being picked on (bullied is probably going to far), she isn't too badly affected by it and the whole show has an air that things aren't ever going to get worse for her.
I suppose you could say that the story starts with her at the low point and charts her breaking through that, but it's more that you get the feeling the writer wants to tell a warm, affirming story, rather than a dark one.
Kiddy Girl-and
One of the big problems with the original Kiddy Grade was its structure. The first half of the series was very light and fluffy - sort of like a more modern Dirty Pair. However, about half way through it suddenly developed a proper plot. And I don't mean it was one of those shows were you realised there was a plot underpinning the early episodes - you could easily have started watching half way through and missed almost nothing.
The difficulty with Kiddy Girl-and then is that this sort-of sequel, sort-of spin-off also starts in a very light and fluffy way. Indeed, it' possibly more light and fluffy than the original. My problem then is that because I only sample the first few eps on fansub, I've no idea whether it will also develop a substantial plot.
There are hints given in the prologue, but they're not very useful hints. My default position is that if it were ever licensed I'd probably pick it up, but it would be more due to the fact that I quite enjoyed the original than because the eps I watched blew me away.
But those are from a while ago and I was simply to lazy write them up for the blog before now.
I also didn't read any manga until Sunday, when I was basically taking the day to rest and recuperate. The manga I read was the latest volume of Ikki Tousen, so nothing interesting. I did read a lot of manga before the holiday - I'm now totally caught up with Oh My Goddess, but I've talked about that before
I also didn't get the chance to do any sorting out of files or backing up, which are things I usually take the opportunity to do when I'm on holiday.
So yeah, in terms of getting the usual stuff done, it was a bit of a failure. The consolation is I did make a lot of progress with non-usual stuff.
Where I made fairly good inroads into the sorting out of boxes, it took far longer than I'd thought it would and so I didn't even look at doing half the stuff I'd hoped I could.
One of the main things was I'd hoped I could do a bit of scanning, but I didn't do any at all. I therefore didn't watch any anime fansubs, as I generally do that so I'm way behind on that too.
Well, I say that - just before my holiday I did sample a couple of new shows:
Kimi Ni Todoke
Well this was a surprise.
I had absolutely no expectations when starting this and what I found was a sweet and charming romantic show.
The basic gist seems to be something along the lines of a misfit finds her place type of show. This is a theme I've always had a soft spot for, probably because I am a total misfit.
If I was being brutally honest, the show does have a slightly benevolent inevitability to it. By that I mean that, despite the main character basically being picked on (bullied is probably going to far), she isn't too badly affected by it and the whole show has an air that things aren't ever going to get worse for her.
I suppose you could say that the story starts with her at the low point and charts her breaking through that, but it's more that you get the feeling the writer wants to tell a warm, affirming story, rather than a dark one.
Kiddy Girl-and
One of the big problems with the original Kiddy Grade was its structure. The first half of the series was very light and fluffy - sort of like a more modern Dirty Pair. However, about half way through it suddenly developed a proper plot. And I don't mean it was one of those shows were you realised there was a plot underpinning the early episodes - you could easily have started watching half way through and missed almost nothing.
The difficulty with Kiddy Girl-and then is that this sort-of sequel, sort-of spin-off also starts in a very light and fluffy way. Indeed, it' possibly more light and fluffy than the original. My problem then is that because I only sample the first few eps on fansub, I've no idea whether it will also develop a substantial plot.
There are hints given in the prologue, but they're not very useful hints. My default position is that if it were ever licensed I'd probably pick it up, but it would be more due to the fact that I quite enjoyed the original than because the eps I watched blew me away.
But those are from a while ago and I was simply to lazy write them up for the blog before now.
I also didn't read any manga until Sunday, when I was basically taking the day to rest and recuperate. The manga I read was the latest volume of Ikki Tousen, so nothing interesting. I did read a lot of manga before the holiday - I'm now totally caught up with Oh My Goddess, but I've talked about that before
I also didn't get the chance to do any sorting out of files or backing up, which are things I usually take the opportunity to do when I'm on holiday.
So yeah, in terms of getting the usual stuff done, it was a bit of a failure. The consolation is I did make a lot of progress with non-usual stuff.
Monday, 10 May 2010
return
Well that would be my holiday over.
As is so often the way I achieved some things, but generally fell short of what I'd hoped to get through.
At the beginning of the holiday I popped down to see my Dad. It was my birthday and the bank holiday too and I'd not seen him since Christmas, so it seemed like a good opportunity.
It was good to see him, but it obviously absorbed three of the days.
When I got back my big plan was to go though the plethora of boxes I have and sort things out. The stuff in the boxes falls into three basic categories:
1) Junk I need to throw away, but through a combination of laziness and my pack-rat instincts I end up just sticking in a box.
2) Stuff I need to get rid of, but the bin isn't the way. This includes old electrical bits and bobs which are too big to chuck (and you're not supposed to throw away of course), and other stuff that I should take down the recycling place for example. Or there's tonnes of stuff that should go on e-bay.
3) Stuff I either need to or want to hang on to.
The idea was that I'd identify all the stuff that that fell into 1 and dispose of it in the rubbish. This I basically did, although because I didn't tackle every single box, I'm sure there's a bit more stuff.
The idea with 2 was that I'd identify it, and then take the stuff that needed recycling down the recycling place, which would free up a huge amount of space (there's a lot of it). This would then allow me more room to sort stuff that I could e-bay or whatever.
This was a partial success, in that I identified quite a lot of stuff to go down the recycling centre. But the problem was this too so long (Tuesday I did domestic stuff, and I was still sorting stuff on Saturday, and I didn't even finish then) that I just didn't have the time or energy to haul it all away.
The third group are more tricky.
My ultimate aim is to basically just be left hanging onto a handful of manga, anime and other stuff that kinda represent the 'cream of the crop'. In other words, they either quintessentially define my taste or are things I could watch/read over and over. The problem is really pinning down what these are.
The other problem is the stuff I need to hang onto. See, I seem to have ended up in a situation with manga especially where I'm collecting about 20-odd series.
The real problem with this is that the western companies tend to dawdle quite a bit when putting stuff out. There can be twenty or thirty volumes already out in Japan, but they only release three or four a year.
And on top of that, only a handful of the series I'm collecting have actually finished in Japan. This means I have a huge number of volumes of manga, many of which don't fall into the 'keep forever' pile, but it's not really going to be worth my while to sell them.
I mean, because I'm up to date, they will sell quite well - "all so far released" collections tend to do about as well as complete collection - but the problem is I don't really want to stop buying the new volumes. That means I'll end up with lots of random volumes, and those really don't sell well.
For example, I ended up with 3 random Bleach volumes, and to confirm my suspicions I put them on e-bay. I believe they finally sold for 5p each. That makes them total money sinks - it costs me money to auction them.
But the problem is there are loads of volumes now and they really take up a hell of a lot of room :/.
As is so often the way I achieved some things, but generally fell short of what I'd hoped to get through.
At the beginning of the holiday I popped down to see my Dad. It was my birthday and the bank holiday too and I'd not seen him since Christmas, so it seemed like a good opportunity.
It was good to see him, but it obviously absorbed three of the days.
When I got back my big plan was to go though the plethora of boxes I have and sort things out. The stuff in the boxes falls into three basic categories:
1) Junk I need to throw away, but through a combination of laziness and my pack-rat instincts I end up just sticking in a box.
2) Stuff I need to get rid of, but the bin isn't the way. This includes old electrical bits and bobs which are too big to chuck (and you're not supposed to throw away of course), and other stuff that I should take down the recycling place for example. Or there's tonnes of stuff that should go on e-bay.
3) Stuff I either need to or want to hang on to.
The idea was that I'd identify all the stuff that that fell into 1 and dispose of it in the rubbish. This I basically did, although because I didn't tackle every single box, I'm sure there's a bit more stuff.
The idea with 2 was that I'd identify it, and then take the stuff that needed recycling down the recycling place, which would free up a huge amount of space (there's a lot of it). This would then allow me more room to sort stuff that I could e-bay or whatever.
This was a partial success, in that I identified quite a lot of stuff to go down the recycling centre. But the problem was this too so long (Tuesday I did domestic stuff, and I was still sorting stuff on Saturday, and I didn't even finish then) that I just didn't have the time or energy to haul it all away.
The third group are more tricky.
My ultimate aim is to basically just be left hanging onto a handful of manga, anime and other stuff that kinda represent the 'cream of the crop'. In other words, they either quintessentially define my taste or are things I could watch/read over and over. The problem is really pinning down what these are.
The other problem is the stuff I need to hang onto. See, I seem to have ended up in a situation with manga especially where I'm collecting about 20-odd series.
The real problem with this is that the western companies tend to dawdle quite a bit when putting stuff out. There can be twenty or thirty volumes already out in Japan, but they only release three or four a year.
And on top of that, only a handful of the series I'm collecting have actually finished in Japan. This means I have a huge number of volumes of manga, many of which don't fall into the 'keep forever' pile, but it's not really going to be worth my while to sell them.
I mean, because I'm up to date, they will sell quite well - "all so far released" collections tend to do about as well as complete collection - but the problem is I don't really want to stop buying the new volumes. That means I'll end up with lots of random volumes, and those really don't sell well.
For example, I ended up with 3 random Bleach volumes, and to confirm my suspicions I put them on e-bay. I believe they finally sold for 5p each. That makes them total money sinks - it costs me money to auction them.
But the problem is there are loads of volumes now and they really take up a hell of a lot of room :/.
Friday, 30 April 2010
week away
Well, next week I'm on holiday, so I won't be doing any more blogging until after that.
I've decided the main job for the holiday is to try to clear out my room a bit. I discovered where the local recycling centre is and it's just down the road, so I'm planning to basically take a load of junk down there. Indeed, I'm planning to take several loads of junk, in order to clear out some crap.
I'll also be sorting through stuff generally, trying to decide what to either throw away, take down the recycling place or put on e-bay.
One of the biggest space consumers are my large collections of comics. I've had these kicking about for years with the intention of seeing if I can e-bay some of them. Problem is quite a lot of my comics are either very niche or very old and I really doubt they'll sell.
I'm also not at all sure whether it's best to whack them on as collections - issues x through y - or as single issues. If single issues, it could become a logistically nightmare to say the least. That's why I'm kinda tempted just to chuck them all out.
Next week also features the day of the general election.
The only thing I'm certain about is I won't be voting Conservative. Generally speaking, Tory ideas and views don't tend to mesh with mine, but there's also a specific reason for me not voting that way this time - the BBC.
If Cameron's mob gets in, I'm pretty sure one of the things they'll do is start the break-up and privatisation (that is to say, destruction) of the BBC. And to me, that's just not right. The BBC is one of the greatest things about this country, and I'd hate to see it go.
Imagine a world where all terrestrial TV is like ITV. It just doesn't bare thinking about.
I've decided the main job for the holiday is to try to clear out my room a bit. I discovered where the local recycling centre is and it's just down the road, so I'm planning to basically take a load of junk down there. Indeed, I'm planning to take several loads of junk, in order to clear out some crap.
I'll also be sorting through stuff generally, trying to decide what to either throw away, take down the recycling place or put on e-bay.
One of the biggest space consumers are my large collections of comics. I've had these kicking about for years with the intention of seeing if I can e-bay some of them. Problem is quite a lot of my comics are either very niche or very old and I really doubt they'll sell.
I'm also not at all sure whether it's best to whack them on as collections - issues x through y - or as single issues. If single issues, it could become a logistically nightmare to say the least. That's why I'm kinda tempted just to chuck them all out.
Next week also features the day of the general election.
The only thing I'm certain about is I won't be voting Conservative. Generally speaking, Tory ideas and views don't tend to mesh with mine, but there's also a specific reason for me not voting that way this time - the BBC.
If Cameron's mob gets in, I'm pretty sure one of the things they'll do is start the break-up and privatisation (that is to say, destruction) of the BBC. And to me, that's just not right. The BBC is one of the greatest things about this country, and I'd hate to see it go.
Imagine a world where all terrestrial TV is like ITV. It just doesn't bare thinking about.
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