animu holiday (well, not really)

As I noted I didn't get anywhere near doing all the stuff I wanted to over the holidays.

I did manage to get a bit of scanning done - I did the two megamis that I had, but I still have a newtype, animage and animedia left and the new ones will be arriving pretty soon.

The anime bits I watched while I scanned were:

• Nodame Cantabile: Paris was really rather good. This is actually a sequel, and I'd not seen the other series, so I only watched the first episode to get a flavour. I liked what I saw and may well look to see if it's purchasable (though obviously once I clear some other stuff).
• Jigoku Shoujo Mitsugane was also surprisingly good. Like Nodame this was also a sequel (in fact I actually thing it's a part 3 :/) to a show I'd not watched so I only took in the first episode. It seems quite dark and rather harsh in that eastern ghost story style, but then I've no problems with that. I know the first season of this is available, so I'll definitely be picking it up.
• One Outs was another one that was surprisingly good. Weirdly it reminded me of a show called Kaiji but it's not really got any real relationship to that manga/anime. It was more just the story style: heavy on the exposition, but in a thoughtful way. I was also surprised because it was about baseball (well, it's set in the world of baseball - it's not really about baseball, as such) and I don't really like baseball, but I still enjoyed this.

I also watched Maburaho over my holidays. It was, quite frankly, poor, but I'll do a proper review at some point, so I won't go on about it too much here.

I've also had two good pieces of news on the anime front. Firstly, a series I loved when it came out called Oh! Edo Rocket is going to be released by Funimation and secondly Baccano! is coming out on DVD this month, also from Funimation.

Both shows are really great and I'd recommend checking both out if you get the chance.

sunshine

The last rental I had from last month's lot was Sunshine, which is directed by Danny Boyle.

Boyle has done lots of great films - Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later - and this is no exception. It really is a good film.

Interestingly, it's a proper sci-fi film as well. The plot is a little hokey - it's about them restarting the sun with a bomb, which is wrong on so many scientific levels, but apart from that is was pretty accurate, scientifically.

One of the unfortunate things with doing proper science fiction nowadays is that you have some true giants in the field - Solaris and 2001AD come to mind as particular example here, but also things like the first Alien and Bladerunner ride a cusp of respectability too. How Boyle deals with this is quite interesting - he essentially ploughs on regardless.

In other words, rather than fret over how something might be "a bit like 2001AD", or make it a homage or try to do something completely (self-consciously) different, he just does it - if it's the same/similar or reminiscent then fair enough, if it isn't then that's good as well.

It makes for a much straighter film. It makes it more believable - that stuff was like that in those other films and this one too, because we've both got it right, if that makes any sense.

There are also some interesting sub-texts to the film, dealing especially with God and the meta-physical, and it kinda makes you think quite a bit, but not in a particularly brow-beating manner, the questions are just there if you want to explore them.

It's also stunningly pretty. The CGI of the spaceship is some of the best I've seen - and what's more, it was apparently a fairly low-budget film. CGI is at such a state of maturity nowadays it's almost scary.

I kinda abandoned the whole "I always prefer 'real' effects to CGI" attitude when I learnt that the end shot of Spiderman 2 was entirely artificial. Sunshine just confirms that digital is now so good you generally can't tell the difference.

the golden compass

While I was down at my Dad's over the Christmas holiday we watched this.

I've got to say it was pretty poor in my opinion. The problem - and I find this very odd given it's based on some very popular books - was that it was very poorly written.

It kept making the classic error of telling us stuff and not showing us, which is a horrible mistake for a film to make, especially. The whole ethos of show don't tell is because of movies and they effect they've had on us all.

There were some striking examples of this. In one scene the main girl, Lyra, goes and find these two young boys in a hut in the middle of a snowy-waste. Now how the hell these boys got there we don't know and the cardinal sin comes later. A nurse explains that the boys escaped, but we never see.

Okay, so maybe we didn't need to see it before Lyra finds them, but a quick flash to the boys escaping when the nurse said it would have sufficed, but we didn't get that either.

And that was just one small example - there were loads of things we should have seen (probably in cutaways) rather than characters telling us.

But there was another problem: dust. In this world, "dust" is a bit like a catch-all pseudo-religious thing. The problem is I dunno if you've ever seen Little Britain, but dust is kinda a comical word for me from that series.

It's also a bit confusing - dust is dust as well as being mythical dust :/. Couldn't they have had a better name?

The only really good part was to do with the polar bears, which was quite a well realised sub-plot. It also had some really great CGI effects. So great that, slightly ironically, the fake polar bears actually seemed a bit more real than the human characters.

Sorry, that's a bit harsh, but I have to say the cap to the poorness of the film was that the performances weren't all that great. They sort of seemed a bit pedestrian - a bit plodding where they should have been more up-beat and had more oomph.

retourney avec les work

So today is my first day back at work. *sigh*

I've been spending most of the day generally sorting out as well as trying to remember everything from where I put my coffee mug to what the heck I've been doing on the project I'm currently working on.

I did get one shock when I came in this morning - the new girl, Jane, has taken Ralph's desk. And I don't just mean she's perched there while he's away, but all of Ralph's stuff is piled up on a chair by the side of the desk.

One thing I would say is that at least she doesn't appear to tap her feet like Ralph did! But it could be a bit weird when he eventually comes back :/.

I'll put some updates later about all the stuff I got up. But in summery: 1) It's been FUCKING COLD and 2) I didn't do anywhere near as much as I'd hoped.

The second one was pretty obvious and happens every time I go on holiday. For some reason I always get it into my head that holiday days are somehow equivalent to about 3 work days, so I always plan to do way more than is actually possible. The reality is of course that holidays are only about 1/3rd that of work days, what with all the lie-ins and long lunches :).