Well I finished gatekeepers.
I've got to say I'm mildly impressed. I don't think it's the greatest anime ever made, but it's a long way from the worst as well. There are a few niggley points I had - especially with the main bad guy - but expect a basically positive review some time in the future over on trismugistus.com.
The animu challenge of actually sitting down and watching DVDs has got off to a reasonable start then. I guess I averaged 2 disks a night (gatekeepers was 24 eps across 8 disks) so about 6 episodes-ish a night. That's not at all bad given all the stuff I have to do.
Now to watch the sequel - gatekeepers 21. Only, I've actually already seen it. I know, that's a bit odd, isn't it? But I kinda ended up buying without realising it was a sequel. I'm guessing now, having seen the original show it will make more sense, though :).
All this anime watching does sorta mean I lost a bit of momentum on the script I was writing. This kinda opened a slot for me to do one of the more frustrating things I do. Rather than finish the script and then think about redrafts I got suckered into reading some "how to" sites.
One is written by a very successful screenwriter so he knows what he's talking about.
The slightly odd thing is that I kinda managed to tick lots of boxes without having really read these before. However, the annoying this is I've now started to pick my work apart and find flaws with it before I've even finished it. Clearly this is bad because to be a writer, first you must write, and you can only say you've written if you finish.
Ah well, I'm sure I'll crack this one day.
I'll possibly get my hair cut this weekend. I'm also planning to have a crack at making soem carrot and pineapple muffins.
I've been on something of a cooking spree lately. I'm not sure what's inspired it, but I've been making stuff like spaghetti bolognese, liver and bacon, toad in the hole - this is rather than relying on buying pre-made / microwave meals type stuff.
It's been pretty successful, actually, so this weekend I though I might tackle some muffin recipe. I've found muffins to be tricky in the past. Cakes are pretty easy - all cake recipes rely on using a fixed 1:1:1 ratio of eggs, S.R. flour and sugar. Muffins replace the eggs with things like vegetable oil and you use plain flour but with bicarbonate of soda instead of S.R. flour. They're more complicated, in other words, so fingers crossed.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Thursday, 5 March 2009
abandoned ideas 4
Given that I've been religiously watching Gatekeepers in the evenings I've not really been up to much. And also since I can't be arsed discussing it at the mo, I thought I'd do what is probably the last of these abandoned ideas:
charlotte
This ides was abandoned for a very specific reason - it was almost plagiarism.
Not sure if you know what Chobits is - it's a manga originally by Clamp and there's an anime adaptation to. Now, I'm not actually a big fan of Chobits as it's a bit sick in the head in my opinion.
But anyway, the story wasn't really a rip-off of Chobits as much as that whole sort of area.
The main character was a scientist working for some weapons manufacturer in their R&D department. He has no real life, as such.
Anyway, one day he goes home (it's pouring with rain) and sees the police searching for something. As he gets into his apartment he sees something but then dismisses it.
He then goes home and I wasn't sure - he gets knocked out, maybe? Essentially he needed to meet a robot girl (she's a weapon, natch) that's escaped from his facility and is hiding in his apartment. He'd end up unconscious or go to sleep or something and then there would be the classic "it was just a dream" wake up sequence followed by a "omg, she's real".
The android would then continue to hide/live in his apartment and try to be his wife/girlfriend... or something like that. Basically, although he didn't work on her specifically she'd seen him do some act of kindness and fallen in love.
Which was kinda where I stopped as it was basically just ripping off about a dozen anime :/.
charlotte
This ides was abandoned for a very specific reason - it was almost plagiarism.
Not sure if you know what Chobits is - it's a manga originally by Clamp and there's an anime adaptation to. Now, I'm not actually a big fan of Chobits as it's a bit sick in the head in my opinion.
But anyway, the story wasn't really a rip-off of Chobits as much as that whole sort of area.
The main character was a scientist working for some weapons manufacturer in their R&D department. He has no real life, as such.
Anyway, one day he goes home (it's pouring with rain) and sees the police searching for something. As he gets into his apartment he sees something but then dismisses it.
He then goes home and I wasn't sure - he gets knocked out, maybe? Essentially he needed to meet a robot girl (she's a weapon, natch) that's escaped from his facility and is hiding in his apartment. He'd end up unconscious or go to sleep or something and then there would be the classic "it was just a dream" wake up sequence followed by a "omg, she's real".
The android would then continue to hide/live in his apartment and try to be his wife/girlfriend... or something like that. Basically, although he didn't work on her specifically she'd seen him do some act of kindness and fallen in love.
Which was kinda where I stopped as it was basically just ripping off about a dozen anime :/.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
the wintersmith
So I finished The Wintersmith. It's a good read.
I think if I was criticising, I would pick on two things. First off, it starts with a later event in the narrative and then the next three quarters of the book are effectively flashback.
The trouble with this is it kinda robs it of tension. I mean, the book still has it because the bit it starts with isn't the end, but it is close. If you know up-front that characters are alive and well at the end, then you also know they're not going to die in a flashback. That's a bit extreme, but you see what I mean.
Also there was a bit of a lack of Wee Free Men. I guess that's sensible in the fact that this is the third novel, so there's not much left in the way of surprises, but they're so entertaining it could have done with a bit more of them.
A bit more of them on there own, I mean - they were present in a lot of scenes, but didn't really do much of anything.
However, saying that, what had replaced them was all good stuff. It was a lot more 'witchy' than the previous books, as Tiffany had grown up a bit and done more training, etc. It was especially nice to see plenty of the elder witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, etc - as they're such great character.
The book did leave a few sort-of loose ends that could be carried over into new books, but equally don't really matter or could easily be explored by your own imagination.
The plan to watch some anime has got off to a good start. I started on Gatekeepers.
For some reason I thought this was a very old anime, but it seems it was only broadcast in Japan in 2000. If you allow the normal couple of years for it to make it across from Japan it's not that old at all.
It's a good show as well - I was kinda unsure what to expect. It's basically a shounen action / monster-of-the-week show with some harem type elements so it's not hugely innovative in that sense, but there's a mean streak of wit and imagination runnign through it. Some of the monster designs are particularly clever, for example.
I think if I was criticising, I would pick on two things. First off, it starts with a later event in the narrative and then the next three quarters of the book are effectively flashback.
The trouble with this is it kinda robs it of tension. I mean, the book still has it because the bit it starts with isn't the end, but it is close. If you know up-front that characters are alive and well at the end, then you also know they're not going to die in a flashback. That's a bit extreme, but you see what I mean.
Also there was a bit of a lack of Wee Free Men. I guess that's sensible in the fact that this is the third novel, so there's not much left in the way of surprises, but they're so entertaining it could have done with a bit more of them.
A bit more of them on there own, I mean - they were present in a lot of scenes, but didn't really do much of anything.
However, saying that, what had replaced them was all good stuff. It was a lot more 'witchy' than the previous books, as Tiffany had grown up a bit and done more training, etc. It was especially nice to see plenty of the elder witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, etc - as they're such great character.
The book did leave a few sort-of loose ends that could be carried over into new books, but equally don't really matter or could easily be explored by your own imagination.
The plan to watch some anime has got off to a good start. I started on Gatekeepers.
For some reason I thought this was a very old anime, but it seems it was only broadcast in Japan in 2000. If you allow the normal couple of years for it to make it across from Japan it's not that old at all.
It's a good show as well - I was kinda unsure what to expect. It's basically a shounen action / monster-of-the-week show with some harem type elements so it's not hugely innovative in that sense, but there's a mean streak of wit and imagination runnign through it. Some of the monster designs are particularly clever, for example.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
the simpson's movie
This week's rental was The Simpson's Movie.
I totally avoided this at the time it was released in the cinemas. The Simpson's kinda stopped being funny about 4 or five years ago, if not longer. The real problem was that they ran out of jokes. When a comedy show has been going for something like 20 years that's pretty much inevitable.
They've been repeating and recycling the same things for a good while now. And worst of all they seem to have taken their own format to a point beyond ridiculousness.
When the Simpsons started it was actually fairly standard in terms of its storytelling. For example it often tended to have "morals". Now I don't mean that in terms of it having morality - a sense of right and wrong - I mean that in the sense of having a bit at the end where someone goes "and the moral of the story is".
I've nothing wrong with cartoons educating, but I've always hated when they deliberately explain the point. It smacks of very poor story telling for one thing.
Anyway, from about the second season on they started to play with this format a lot. They stopped having "moral of the story" bits and instead just go with the flow. If anything characterised the Simpsons it was this flexibility of the format.
Some of would follow fairly normal narrative structure, but other stories would be totally non-sequitur in nature. You'd start off with one thing (homer trashes Lisa's saxophone) then end up somewhere else (homer stopping an alien invasion).
But generally these were kept in check. However, as the show progressed and they ran out of normal narratives, they all became non-sequitur. Recent shows it's like they're coming up with random gags (that they've probably already done) and short stories and simply trying to weld these together to make 22 minutes of screen time.
My fear then was that the film would be like this too and from that standpoint they succeeded. There is a much more consistent narrative story in the film - a plot you can follow and understand.
The problem is that they've done all of those, so it also feels like a mash-up of plots they've already done.
Also, there are a lot of logical failures. The most obvious is that the town ends up under a big glass dome. How comes they don't all suffocate? They hint that they run out of food and water, but it doesn't really seem like it. Why does no-one else in the country notice?
But worst of all, the dome doesn't go underground - it's just on the surface. So why doesn't anyone think of tunnelling out? Alright there's a bit where they say to put guards on, but that's is later on. Plus the residents of Springfield rebel later on and they try to crack the glass - none of them think to tunnel under? Especially when the end part comes and they could all dies. What, they just sort of stand and watch?
This is the problem with telling a story - if that's what you're doing it needs to make sense, and this didn't.
There are lots of other problems too. A severe lack of good jokes, for example. All of the good ones are in the trailers - that can't be a good sign.
Also there seemed to be too much of a desire to shoe-horn in all of the secondary characters from the series. I guess it's okay when they're in the crowd, but having little 'bits' for some of them feels very artificial when it's a plot-driven film.
One of the mistakes I think they made was testing the movie to audiences. It's almost like the fact it was animation acted against them. In a movie you couldn't reshoot the entire thing - just bits, but with animation you potentially could.
And from the commentaries it's sounds like they did. A lot. It also sounded like this toned down or removed a lot of the jokes and if nothing else a Simpsons Movie needs to be funny.
I totally avoided this at the time it was released in the cinemas. The Simpson's kinda stopped being funny about 4 or five years ago, if not longer. The real problem was that they ran out of jokes. When a comedy show has been going for something like 20 years that's pretty much inevitable.
They've been repeating and recycling the same things for a good while now. And worst of all they seem to have taken their own format to a point beyond ridiculousness.
When the Simpsons started it was actually fairly standard in terms of its storytelling. For example it often tended to have "morals". Now I don't mean that in terms of it having morality - a sense of right and wrong - I mean that in the sense of having a bit at the end where someone goes "and the moral of the story is".
I've nothing wrong with cartoons educating, but I've always hated when they deliberately explain the point. It smacks of very poor story telling for one thing.
Anyway, from about the second season on they started to play with this format a lot. They stopped having "moral of the story" bits and instead just go with the flow. If anything characterised the Simpsons it was this flexibility of the format.
Some of would follow fairly normal narrative structure, but other stories would be totally non-sequitur in nature. You'd start off with one thing (homer trashes Lisa's saxophone) then end up somewhere else (homer stopping an alien invasion).
But generally these were kept in check. However, as the show progressed and they ran out of normal narratives, they all became non-sequitur. Recent shows it's like they're coming up with random gags (that they've probably already done) and short stories and simply trying to weld these together to make 22 minutes of screen time.
My fear then was that the film would be like this too and from that standpoint they succeeded. There is a much more consistent narrative story in the film - a plot you can follow and understand.
The problem is that they've done all of those, so it also feels like a mash-up of plots they've already done.
Also, there are a lot of logical failures. The most obvious is that the town ends up under a big glass dome. How comes they don't all suffocate? They hint that they run out of food and water, but it doesn't really seem like it. Why does no-one else in the country notice?
But worst of all, the dome doesn't go underground - it's just on the surface. So why doesn't anyone think of tunnelling out? Alright there's a bit where they say to put guards on, but that's is later on. Plus the residents of Springfield rebel later on and they try to crack the glass - none of them think to tunnel under? Especially when the end part comes and they could all dies. What, they just sort of stand and watch?
This is the problem with telling a story - if that's what you're doing it needs to make sense, and this didn't.
There are lots of other problems too. A severe lack of good jokes, for example. All of the good ones are in the trailers - that can't be a good sign.
Also there seemed to be too much of a desire to shoe-horn in all of the secondary characters from the series. I guess it's okay when they're in the crowd, but having little 'bits' for some of them feels very artificial when it's a plot-driven film.
One of the mistakes I think they made was testing the movie to audiences. It's almost like the fact it was animation acted against them. In a movie you couldn't reshoot the entire thing - just bits, but with animation you potentially could.
And from the commentaries it's sounds like they did. A lot. It also sounded like this toned down or removed a lot of the jokes and if nothing else a Simpsons Movie needs to be funny.
Monday, 2 March 2009
erm
Bit of a non-weekend to be honest.
Saturday I got swamped with stuff I had to do - shopping, cleaning, fill the car up with petrol, loads of ironing, etc.
I'm also trying to close down my aol account. I kept the dial-up "just in case" but never used it. Unfortunately I've had a dickens of a time changing e-mails on a lot of sites. They're often ones I only visit occasionally, if rarely, but are important.
The trouble is you forget your passwords or usernames or whatever and you need to get them sent to your old e-mail. That means you can't get rid of it just yet otherwise you'll never get the e-mail changed or access to it again :/.
The other problem was I was knackered, so most of these jobs took longer than they should as I just couldn't be arsed.
I was knackered for a very specific reason - last week I was working on a movie script. What I was trying to do was see how far I could get, see how much I could do. The answer was the best part of half of it.
The problem was it totally drained me. By the end of the week I was basically a dribbling moron with no thoughts left in my head. This wasn't good for work, let alone keeping going with the script. I may deliberately avoid working on it this week to try to get the juices refreshed.
Which feeds into my other plan. The amount of unwatched anime I've got stacking up is silly - my shelves are literally overflowing. I've therefore decided I'm going to force myself to sit down and watch loads of anime DVDs.
This probably means at the cost of watching normal telly. As I mentioned on Friday there's quite a bit I'm watching at the moment, so really I'm creating some problems for myself down the line. But really the key point is that I can't flog stuff on telly on e-bay, whereas I need to do that with the anime DVDs.
Sunday was then a non-event. I was still knackered and just watched some recorded telly and finished off the Wintersmith.
I'm really loving my new monitor, btw. Sometimes I catch myself just looking at the desktop - a good wall on a big widescreen monitor is a thing of wonder.
Saturday I got swamped with stuff I had to do - shopping, cleaning, fill the car up with petrol, loads of ironing, etc.
I'm also trying to close down my aol account. I kept the dial-up "just in case" but never used it. Unfortunately I've had a dickens of a time changing e-mails on a lot of sites. They're often ones I only visit occasionally, if rarely, but are important.
The trouble is you forget your passwords or usernames or whatever and you need to get them sent to your old e-mail. That means you can't get rid of it just yet otherwise you'll never get the e-mail changed or access to it again :/.
The other problem was I was knackered, so most of these jobs took longer than they should as I just couldn't be arsed.
I was knackered for a very specific reason - last week I was working on a movie script. What I was trying to do was see how far I could get, see how much I could do. The answer was the best part of half of it.
The problem was it totally drained me. By the end of the week I was basically a dribbling moron with no thoughts left in my head. This wasn't good for work, let alone keeping going with the script. I may deliberately avoid working on it this week to try to get the juices refreshed.
Which feeds into my other plan. The amount of unwatched anime I've got stacking up is silly - my shelves are literally overflowing. I've therefore decided I'm going to force myself to sit down and watch loads of anime DVDs.
This probably means at the cost of watching normal telly. As I mentioned on Friday there's quite a bit I'm watching at the moment, so really I'm creating some problems for myself down the line. But really the key point is that I can't flog stuff on telly on e-bay, whereas I need to do that with the anime DVDs.
Sunday was then a non-event. I was still knackered and just watched some recorded telly and finished off the Wintersmith.
I'm really loving my new monitor, btw. Sometimes I catch myself just looking at the desktop - a good wall on a big widescreen monitor is a thing of wonder.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)