romic celief

Today is "Red Nose Day" - the day devoted to people engaging in hilarious antics in a bid to raise oodles of cash for Comic Relief.

I've no particular beef with comic relief. I used to watch it years ago, even did a bit of fundraising, although my general interest has waned.

I'm not a big believer in charity. It's always felt a bit wrong to me - not so much because I don't think the causes are worthy, but more because I don't think there should be any need for it. In other words, I think those things done by charity are often so important that they should be being paid for by Governments. My take on the issue is that part of the reason I pay taxes is so that the government will take care of most, if not all of that stuff.

But anyway, I did actually donate this year. Nothing huge, but I texted in a few times in support of the Kilimanjaro climb. I did this mainly because fellow lard-arse, Chris Moyles was dragging his arse up the mountain, so I thought I'd show my support.

The anime mags turned up yesterday, which was nice, so I'll get to scan them in this weekend. I should also really get my hair cut - it's starting to get a bit unweildy. If I ever won the lottery one of the odder things I would do is start trimming my hair again.

I've had a variety of very bad haircuts over the years, btu the one I really liked most was having my hair trimmed "number 1" all over. That's a bit like a longer skin-head type cut if you've never seen one. I just foudn it so much easier not having hair, but the problem was it made me look "evil" or "like a thug" (the words of my friends) and since that's not a good thing when you're having business meetings, etc, I basically try to maintain a 'short, side-parting' type cut.

I splattered a lot of ant powder mid-week and since then I've not seen a single ant. I don't know that it's actually finished them off, so I think I'll stock up on powder just in case they find some other way in. I've still no actual idea how they're getting in or if they've nested somewhere close by, so I'll just have to maintain vigalence.

My other plan for the weekend is to sort out my computer desk. Since I got the big LCD monitor I've freed up a lot of desk real-estate so I can have a re-arrange. But also it's exposed a lot of nooks and crannies so I need to give it a good dust around as well.

more mu

I've been watching Red Garden this week. I'm about half the way through - interestingly, the show is only about 22 eps, although there's also an OAV which is thankfully on the disks too.

Red Garden was one of those shows that got poxed up by ADVs implosion a while back: the last disk was unreleased when it all happened and initially funimation weren't going to put it out - they were fixed on doing half season box sets. Luckily they relented so I was able to get the last disk.

The other show that happened on was Welcome to NHK, which I'll probably watch next.

Anyway, RED Garden is pretty good.

It's firmly a horror show with just a smidge of fantasy thrown in. There are very few laughs and it's better for it. The show is really quite brutal, to be frank. Not in a gory way, though - it's more of a psychological brutality that these girls go through.

I have to admit for about the first six or so episodes I was a bit unsure about the show. In a way it's a bit difficult to love.

A good, obvious example is that the character designs are quite unappealing, if I'm honest - big bulbous noses, sharp angular, too-skinny bodies and horrible clothes are just a few of its crimes on this front. But after a whole you do get used to them. I'm not sure I'll ever like them as such, but I can certainly accept them.

I'll stop there as I'll start doing a full review, which would rob trismugistus.com of content - let's just say I've grown to enjoy it more than I initially did.

I'm expecting the anime magazines to turn up sometime this week - they may even be waiting for me when I get home. That should mean a weekend of scanning, so I should tackling the shows from January mid-season. Predictably I've got a bit behind with these - not least because of my determination to clear my unwatched anime DVDs, of course!

And speaking of DVDs I've been buying some more (eek). Baccano disk 2 has turned up. Can't wait to have all of the disks so I can watch it - I really liked that show when I sampled it on fansubs.

I've also been collecting Claymore and Darker than Black and they're about half way through the disks. But I also bought Rocket Girls, which is another show I really liked on fansub.

Plus I recently got the last disks for Code Geass (the error the company made was swiftly rectified, as I knew it would be) so I'll have to make sure I watch that too. I've not heard anything about the second series coming out yet, but I'm sure it must be pending.

the unbearable lightness of being

It's a title and a half is that isn't it? The Unbearable Lightness of Being. You could get half a dozen regular titles out of it. I'm going to call it TULB.

The film itself is long - the best part of 3 hours. I'm not sure that entirely endeared me to it. I have to admit it seemed a bit too long if I'm honest.

Y'know, the problem here is I'm a little worried I'm going to come across as something of a philistine. You see TULB is a proper film.

I don't tend to think of myself as a snob. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy low-brow entertainment as much as I am high-brow. I'm not one of those people who will dismiss an action film simply because it is an action film.

But then equally I wouldn't hesitate to criticise it either, and the same goes for higher art as well. To be frank I both enjoyed TULB about as much as I didn't enjoy it.

The film is mostly set in Prague atthe end fo the 60s. If you know anything of history you'll realise that's when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. However, the film isn't really about that, as such.

I mean on one level it is, but on another level it isn't. The events affect the characters, but I dunno, it almost seemed like the characters didn't quite engage properly with the events. It's like sometimes they seemed really involved in the politics, but at other points it was reduced to a backdrop.

I was reminded a lot of Dr Zhivago actually, which is set during the whole tumultuous period of the first world war and the Russian revolution. But at it's heart it's a complicated love story - a romantic story; a tragedy.

But in Dr Zhivago the events of the time genuinely seemed to actually impact the character, whereas here that was less apparent.

Also, Dr Zhivago doesn't have a lot of tits and ass.

I'm not sure how I felt about the tits and ass. I mean on one level it's real, and realistic, and makes an important point, but on the other it gave the whole film a sort of artificial European-ness. The film isn't European - it was made by an American studio and is in English, etc, but it seemed to adopting a faux-European style.

Not wanting to be harsh, but it was like someone had watched a lot of European films and tried to mimic them without quite 'getting it'.

But then to be fair I could almost level the same criticism at European cinema. It can be quite pretentious at time. "We're showing you these nipples, because this is totally serious 'art'... phwoar, look, nipples!"

I'm being over-critical - a lot of the film worked. The characters were wonderfully deep and complex, for example. They felt quite real a lot of the time. The ending is particularly poignant, and the whole storyline with the dog was beautifully realised.

It just felt a bit too disconnected from the whole soviet invasion = bad and communism = bad things, I think. Like they were more of a boorish imposition than genuinely scary things.

return of the ants

Worrying sign yesterday - there were a few ants running along the floor.

It seems a bit early in the year for them to have appeared, as it's still pretty cold, but I guess it is spring now.

I put down these "ant trap" things that I bought a while back. They're supposed to have stuff in them that they take back to nest and it kills the queen or something. I couldn't see much evidence of the ants taking much interest in them, though.

I had a really difficult time trying to find anything to deal with the ants last year - everywhere I thought would sell ant powder didn't for some reason. I've a few more ideas now and may try looking on the interwebs.

Part of the problem is I have no idea where the nest is or how they're getting in. Every time I see them they seemed to be in a different place, and what's more it was illogical where they were. It's like at one point they were in a particular cupboard. They'd obviously got in because my tin of golden syrup was there and they were after the sugar.

But when I looked around the edges of the cupboard I couldn't see a trail of them going in or out. However, the cupboard is attached to the wall, but it's not an external wall - it's an internal wall. Does that mean the nest is in the wall? That seems bizarre - how the hell would they have got in there?

Bloody things.

I watched Gatekeepers 21 last night.

It's pretty good. I mentioned I've seen it before, but I hadn't watched the original gatekeepers, so I don't think I really understood it. Gatekeepers 21 is a short 6-part OAV and is set closer tot he present day, so it actually stars the descendents of the original gatekeepers.

My only real criticism is that they did bugger about with some aspects of the original. Some of these meant the show made more sense, but others just seemed a bit random. It's a bit more adult - if Gatekeepers is basically a Japanese shounen action show, then gatekeepers 21 shares more in common with dark American superhero comics. The hero is a bit maladjusted and dislikes the world around her.

The animation was pretty good, but then you tend to get that with OAVs. Overall I quite enjoyed it, and it's a good sequel.

goggle box

So this weekend I watched telly.

Seriously - that's pretty much all I did all weekend.

As I mentioned last week the problem with watching anime at the exclusion of everything else is that it means I get a PVR jammed with stuff. I easily had more than 20hours of stuff recorded and this weekend I watched all of it. It didn't help that this weeks rental DVD was 3 hours long (!) and also had a commentary track (so six hours total!).

I did manage to watch some anime, though. I watched Koharu Biyori (Indian Summer). It's actually a really quick turn around - the show only came out in Japan at the end of 2007, and it's a 3-part OAV with the last part coming out March 2008, so that's less than a year for the US DVD coming out.

It lacks a dub, but that's no great loss as I don't really care about dubs, but there are no extras to speak of. That doesn't make it great value as there are only 3 eps at about 30 minutes each.

It was also not quite as good as I remembered it from fansubs. I think partly it was my own fault - I was clearly knackered from watching all that telly, and it's a high energy, slightly zany show, so I perhaps wasn't in the best mood to watch it. It was okay, though.

It's a fan-service packed comedy, btw. Perhaps the most annoying thing was the female voices - they were very high pitched (another thing I didn't really remember from watching it on fansubs). They were also really fast talking (again, maybe it was more me being a bit goggle-eyed from all the telly, though) and it was difficult to read the subs... especially when stuff was jiggling.

Dunno - "okay" is my verdict, I think.

I'll be trying to watch lots more anime this week too. Luckily several of the telly programs I've been watching have either ended or were 1-off documentary types. Also, comic relief is this Friday so I think a lot of shows are taking a break while they put specials on and stuff.