old friends

I'm probably heading up to London to have a few beers with some old friends this Saturday.

We're talking really old here - these are people I went to secondary school with, so they've known me for about two-thirds of my life! I've kinda dropped out of contact with everyone from that sort of era - life gets in the way of course, but what's made it the more difficult is that my Dad moved down to Devon.

So, even though everybody else moved too, their parents were still in the same place so they had somewhere to come back to, but I don't. If I wanted to go back to that area I'd need to kip on someone's floor, and I always feel really bad about asking to do that.

However, there was that sniff of some London based work I mentioned before, so I re-connected with some of the guys who I know work in London. That job fell through, but I figured hey, why not pop up for a few beers?

It's not anything spectacular - a few drinks and a natter. Apparently there's some football on or something, but the world of men chasing inflated pig stomachs is somewhat beyond my sphere of interest, so I don't really know what that's all about.

As to what I've been up to it's all bit a bit uninteresting really. I did some walling and I watched a bit of anime and some telly. The anime wasn't anything new, though - just me continuing to watch Blassreiter and Trigun.

I continue to be unimpressed with Trigun. They've really played up the Vash-the-fool aspect in the anime and it's bloody annoying. Just as the show gets to the cusp of being interesting Vash puts on his "stoopid" face and laughs maniacally. Unfortunately, what they haven't removed is all the cod-drama that spoiled my enjoyment of the manga.

Blassreiter on the other hand has gotten a lot more interesting. It's a bit melodromatic in places and the plot has a weird sense of being made up as it goes along, but it's certainly much more interesting than the first couple of eps suggested it was goign to be. The non-cg animation also seems to have moved up from "appalling" to "fairly bad" too, although that may just be me getting used to it.

abandoned ideas 2

This ended up being more "occasional" than I initially thought it was, but I've had a slow week and so here's the second lot of abandoned story ideas. 2 today:

Devotion of Purpose

This got very close to being completed. It was quite a long short story.

The basic plot was that it's about a terrorist who is being tortured to reveal the identity of his fellow terrorists. There were three strands to it.

The present day was the main plot and involved the terrorist being tortured in a variety of ways - some psychological, some physical. It was quite brutal and this was the part I pretty much wrote all of.

The second strand was the terrorist act that had got him caught. Essentially it was an assassination attempt on the leader of the country. It never quite got finished as I couldn't really decide what was what.

Questions I ended up with included how did they get "on the inside" (it kinda involved an inside job)? Did all of his fellow terrorists die so the torture was pointless)? Did civilians die and did the terrorist regret that? Or had he gone over the edge or something?

The third strand was why it never got finished. The basic idea was that the terrorist was recruited by a woman he fell in love with. I had this strong idea about a small china cat decoration - how they met and what he thought of before he died, maybe.

Problem was I couldn't get the link of how he actually became a terrorist. I'd kinda made it so that his woman was killed with the other terrorists in their attack, and that's why he wasn't talking - he wanted to die. But how did he actually switch to being an actual terrorist who kills innocent civilians? Especially given he's meant to start normal.

I couldn't really think of anything, especially since the way I'd intended the structure to go I didn't have a lot of space. It had to be something fairly quick, but I just couldn't think of anything significant enough.

Hanger 12

This idea was on a course to non-completion from the very beginning.

Basically, I had this idea of a big passenger jet exploding on the tarmac. It was a future plane with multiple decks so the deaths were huge.

And that was it - I tried to build a story around it and just kinda failed. I seem to recall I managed to get myself tied up in knots with all sorts of conspiracy ideas, though.

I can't remember all of them, but it was like there was somebody trying to stop the explosion and it wasn't clearly going to be terrorists blowing it up or the terrorists were really government people, or... I dunno, I remember it got really messy :/.

it's that fine rain...

...that soaks you through.

Weather's miserable here again today - drizzling away. Plus it's not getting any warmer. I'm getting a bit fed up of all the cold weather, tbh. Not least of all because it's costing me an absolute fortune in electricity - just at a time when I'm being serious about trying to clear down some debt.

Really I should move. It's a bit of a false economy where I am at the moment as, although the rental is cheap, my heating is electric (which is always more expensive) and I'm also on a key-meter, which is much more expensive than regular electricity. Also, I've not got a washing machine, so I have to get my stuff laundered. Plus I live some distance from work, so I get through a tank of gas every two weeks (even though my new car is super efficient).

I'm pretty sure it would be much cheaper for me to rent somewhere decent in Alton. It'd cost more for the rent and council tax, but my outgoings would be much reduced. Trouble is, since I'm trying to clear this debt I've not got a lot of spare cash to pay a deposit with.

All this in a year when I'm going to the Monaco GP for an (expensive) holiday, my sister turns 30 (so I have to get her an expensive gift) and my Dad turns 65 (so again, expensive git time)!

Plus I'm pretty sure my tyres will need doing when I have my car serviced. Sigh...

pirates of the caribbean dead man's chest

I watched this on DVD over the weekend.

I can't honestly say I was impressed. Where the second one failed because of the overly-complicated jiggery-pockery plot shenanigans but at least had plenty of action and comedy, this one seemed to pretty much do away with the action and comedy, leaving... well, leaving a turd.

I mean classic example of what was wrong: Captain Jack doesn't even appear in the film for the first 20 minutes. The hero is absent for a good chunk of the film.

Now that chunk of 20 minutes should have made it easy for me to say a "quarter" or a "fifth" of the film but there you have another problem - it was way, way too long. It was about 2hrs45mins long - nearly 3 hours! That's just silly length for a film like this.

And what's worse is they seemed to stick in a whole load of Chinese characters that added absolutely nothing to the film, but did still pad it out.

I mean I can sort of see some of the problems they had. On the commentary for the second film the writers complained about how they struggled to make these two seem like part of a proper, planned trilogy. That means they had to introduce all sorts of stuff and spend ages doing exposition to explain it all.

Trouble is that decision was utterly flawed - they should just have made 3 separate films which just happened to have the same character in. At the very end of this one there's a sort of thing about the search for the fountain of youth.

I don't think it was a direct set-up for a sequel - more sort of a "here we go again" moment. And that's what all 3 of these films should have been like - just some random adventure. There was no need to tie everything together with an overarching plot, just have it be "well here we go again".

The DVD was rubbish too - literally the only extras were some bloopers, no commentaries or anything.

micks of the trind

This last weekend I started reading Tricks of the Mind, which is by Derren Brown.

How I came to buy this book is a little convoluted. Over Chrimbalo there was a Derren Brown special which was a recording of his recent live show. I think I mentioned it on the blog before - I was puzzled a big nervous tick he seemed to have where he rapidly nods his head.

Anyway, I was intrigued by this tick and tried to look it up online. I found some bits and stuff about him, though not much about the tick. It was mentioned on a forum that he explained it in his book.

The mention of a book intrigued me and I searched for it on Amazon and made the purchase. Perhaps the old mind-mongler was influencing me into making the purchase, who knows?

Anyway, the book is quite interesting, but it's weirdly undirected. It's part auto-biography, part introduction to becoming a conjuror, part explanation of what he gets up to on stage, part explanation of why there's no God and, most unusually, part self-help book (ish - the memory stuff especially is intriguing).

One thing it does have is some very humorous anecdotes. I suspect that were he ever to turn his hand to writing proper he'd be rather good at it. The style is very interesting. As a fan of Robert Rankin it chimes quite well with me. There's a lot of overly-ostentation wordage, which kinda plays into the cocky persona he's created for the magic but also hints at Derrens' devilish wit.

There's also an undercurrent as with all his stuff of self-deprecation. For example, it's clear the cocky persona is entirely a construct for the act and he plays with it a fair bit. He also lets it ease down when he gets more serious with relaying the teaching stuff and then brings it right back up when he's doing more entertaining stuff.

Anyway, I've certainly enjoyed reading it and am more than a third of the way through. I'm saying that because I'm not a quick reader by the way - it means I "couldn't put it down" as they say.

bimble

Well the whole writing thing has held up a bit. Admittedly at the moment I'm kind converting stuff I've already written into scenes. This seems a little too easy in some regards, but in others it almost confirms my suspicion that this is what I should have been doing from the beginning.

I've always tend to think quite visually and it's easy for me to plot stuff out in my head as if I was watching it on-screen. The struggling has always come in converting that into interesting prose.

But the thing about scripts I've read is you don't really seem to need interesting prose - in fact just the opposite, it needs to be basic and clear what the action should be. You need interesting dialogue and I think I'm okay at that. Certainly whenever people have commented on my stuff over at urbis if they've mentioned my dialogue it's generally been complimentary.

Not sure if that's anything to go by, though.

Also, for the first time in a while I had something of an idea. Well it's more of a concept than a fully-fledged idea, but I think it's good that the juices seem to be flowing a bit again.

I finished off some scanning this week and I've also been watching some animu in general.

Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo - Youkoso Tsugumi Ryouhe was okay. This is actually an older show - well it's not that old, but it was before I started religiously dl'ing and sampling everything. I'd have probably liked it more if the animation wasn't so bad - it was really poor. The show itself seemed quite harem-like, but it seemed to be more about characters than tits-and-arse.

I've also been continuing with Blassreiter. I have to admit it's getting better, but mainly because of a particular storyline concerning a kid who's being bullied. The main plot seems very generic, but that part of it has been quite well done, I think. Not sure it's enough to boost my overall rating - especially the animation is shocking - but it suggests there's some hope.

And I started watching real-world animu DVD-age too (blimey!). I think partly it's because I've cleared so much stuff on my big to-do lists. Anyway, the show I've been watching is Trigun. Gotta say I'm relatively unimpressed so far. I've read some of the manga, and I dropped that as it was very badly written. There were a lot of great ideas, it's just the writing was quite poor - lots that didn't make sense or that contradicted itself.

The anime is better on that front, but the main character, Vash, seems to have become an annoyingly loud, idiot. I know there's deeper stuff to come, but lets' just say if I was watching this on fansub I'd have dropped it by now.

shooter

This last weekend's DVD was Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg.

It was okay. I'm not sure I'd go much further than that.

One thing that was really cool about it was that Wahlberg was playing a sniper and they'd clearly done a lot of research about sniping and that whole thing. I mean there was obviously a lot of pure movie stuff in it, but they'd also definitely had a good crack at making it pretty accurate.

But there seemed to be a lot of things that didn't quite work too.

One thing that was odd was everybody seemed to be growling or mumbling, which made it really difficult to hear what they were saying. I think the effect was supposed to be one of making them seem menacing and moody, but instead it just came off as a kind of disinterest.

In the commentary the director kept talking about making a movie like they had in the 70s. I've heard a few people say that of recent films and I'm kinda on the fence as to whether it's a good thing.

Certainly here it didn't really seem to work - it was like everyone was too conscious of that fact. Like they were all thinking "yeah, I'm in the 70s - gotta act like the 70s". So it seemed more like a pastiche of the 70s, rather than a subtle thing.

Another problem was that Wahlberg's character seemed very dull. I don't think this was as a result of bad acting, as such, it was just that that's how Wahlberg had chosen to play him. But because he was the central character that meant I got a little bored of him.

Another major problem was the "bad guys." The bad guys kinda devolved into a bit of a "lol capitalism is evilzors and we likes it!" thing that just didn't seem to sit well. Not that having capitalism (and capitalist pig-dogs) as the bad guys is necessarily a bad thing, it just came across as slightly too obvious, but also as a little simplistic and childish.

They didn't earn it, in other words. If there had been more of Wahlberg's character actively discovering that it was evil capitalist pigs doing it and it had come as a revelation of some sort that may have worked better. But as it was we were just told - especially at one point where you had an almost bond-like bad guy speech.

Which was contradictory - if this is meant to be a gritty 70s chase film, what's with the OTT baddy speech?

Still, as I say, the snipery/actiony bits were entertaining enough.

a writer's tale

Last night I finished reading "Doctor Who: A Writer's Tale."

It's a big book - it's about 500 pages long and the text is tiny. To put that in context, during the course of the book we get to read several (3-ish) Doctor Who scripts. Now a Doctor Who script is going to be the best part of 50 pages long if you were to read it as a script.

Admittedly scripts have a lot of white space, but still, when you consider the text of scripts includes all sorts of rewrites and when you look at it only accounts for 20% of the words in the book, you'll get a feel for how big the book is.

Anyway, what the book is is a collection of e-mails (and a few text messages for good message) sent between the head writer and executive producer of new Doctor Who, Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook, a young journalist and friend of Russell's.

It's a little difficult to explain the format of the book, but it's obvious when you actually read it. The e-mails last the course of year and during them Davies writes a handful of his own scripts for Dr Who, which is mainly the point of the book, so we get to see those scripts develop.

But also, because he's head writer, we see him rewriting other people's scripts. And because he's one of the Executive Producers he has to do all sorts of show-running stuff. On top of that it's like Cook is conducting an extended interview as well as being a friend.

What we mainly get, therefore, is something of an insight into the mind of a writer. Now Davies is always quick to stress that it's only his mind and how he works and this is what works for him and his own personal take on things, so the fundamental point is it's an exploration of his writing process.

And it's really warts and all.

There are literally pages dedicated to self-doubt and anguish. Davies sometimes spends ages procrastinating and avoiding writing, making himself miserable. We get to know about ideas that failed and bits that didn't work as well as stuff that did.

It's very interesting stuff and I'd highly recommend it... although with a little bit of coveting. If you don't know about new Doctor Who (or, indeed, old Doctor Who) it does try to explain stuff to you, but really you'll be struggling. If you don't like Doctor Who or Davies this won't do anything to convince you otherwise.

The other biggy is I dunno how a non-writer would take to it. I'm guessing quite well as there's plenty in it that's just generally entertaining, but it did feel more directed at those who've considered or actually tried to write, rather than just the general public.

mehness

I'm a bit meh today - I kinda can't really get going on anything. I even kept coming here, starting a new entry and then quitting out :/.

I think this is because I pushed myself a bit hard to get a report done and I've sort of burnt my brain out a bit.

The reason I wanted to get it done is there's the potential I may be working on a contract over the next month or so up in London. Problem is it's all a bit p in the air. I've never seen such twoddling about in all my life :/.

Not much else to say, really. Well, there is, but I can't be arsed to type any of it out - that's kinda my point.

clean-cleany

Well I did all of that cleaning I mentioned on Friday, including the car.

I was kinda lucky to some degree, as there was rain on Saturday morning which looked like it was going to confirm the less good forecasts. But it brightened up for the afternoon and the rain held off until the evening, when it was properly stormy.

Sunday actually turned out to be a pleasant day, so I could have done cleaned the car then, but all the forecasts were terrible for Sunday so I got it done Saturday. Sunday I was knackered, obviously, but all I needed to do was a bit of tidying up.

I also watched quite a few telly shows I'd recorded. One was Derren Brown's latest. I like Derren - he does tend to do "psychic" stuff, which is a bit low rent, but he does it freely admitting (even outright telling you) it's all bunk and it's just a magic trick.

One thing I did notice though is he seems to have a bit of a nervous tick, where he nods his head. I'd seen it before, but in this last show he was doing it a heck of a lot.

On Sunday I did more scanning and obviously watched some anime as I was doing it. It was a bit of a random selection though as I've now pretty much finished all the fansubs for previous season. Since I normally like to wait until I have 3 or 4 shows I can watch it'll be a while before the new January shows are options, so it was all odds and sods.

Here are my thoughts:

• Blassreiter was okay. This is one of the shows I've bought on Bost TV, so I'll end up watching all of it eventually. It was okay, but I dunno that anything about it really grabbed me. The main problem was the animation was really poor - there's a lot of CG stuff that looks like it's absorbed the budget, so the rest of it is really clunky.
• Zettai Shougeki ~Platonic Heart~ was okay. IT comes from the Ikki Tousen school, where girls fight and when they punch each other their clothes explode. So it's fan-service heavy in other words. Problem is that appears to be all it is - there's nothing else to really recommend it.
• Strike Witches (OVA) was all right. I downloaded this as a sampler, but didn't watch it before buying on Bost, but I thought I'd clear it out before starting on Strike Witches proper. I'm kinda hoping this OAV is like a sampler/trailer to the series as it didn't make a whole lot of sense and seemed to jump big stretches of the plot. Hopefully the series is a lot better. Animation was good, though.

clean cleanliness

Well I did all of that cleaning I mentioned on Friday, including the car.

I was kinda lucky to some degree, as there was rain on Saturday morning which looked like it was going to confirm the less good forecasts. But it brightened up for the afternoon and the rain held off until the evening, when it was properly stormy.

Sunday actually turned out to be a pleasant day, so I could have done cleaned the car then, but all the forecasts were terrible for Sunday so I got it done Saturday. Sunday I was knackered, obviously



Blassreiter http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=9069 ???

weekend of super-cleaning

I'm going to do loads of cleaning this weekend.

The main one to do is the car - it's been months seen I cleaned my car. It needs a total going over - inside and out. The problem has been the weather - you can't really clean your car when the temperature is constantly sub-zero.

When it's not been sub-zero it's been raining, which is actually the big risk this weekend - the forecasts don't seem to be able to decide on if it's going to rain or not. The only thing they seem to have been agreeing on is that it won't be sub-zero temperatures (those return later next week :(), so that's all I'm banking on.

I've sort-of started writing again. I don't want to curse it, but I've started on a script. Well, also generally I’ve got my juices flowing a bit, but mainly I’ve started a script for my most-developed idea, Man in the Loop.

It actually occurred to me that what I've always wanted to try to write is TV stuff. Now the slight thing that makes me worry a bit here is that I've been reading "Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale" (which is awesome - I'll go into more detail when I finish it) and I'm worried I'm doing this simply because I like the book.

However, the other side to it is that when I started writing I did actually want to write telly, but sort of got distracted, I guess, into trying to do novels.

Dunno, we'll have to see if I don't just flake out again.

I've been doing a bit of scanning over the week, trying to get back up to date. The shows I've watched are:

• Tentai Senshi Sunred (Astro Fighter Sunred) was quite good. I didn't have a clue what to expect going into it, but it turned out to be a parody comedy type show. The parody is quite wide-ranging, but the most humorous aspect is that the hero is actually a bit of a jerk, whereas the evil villains are actually quite nice. The animation is a little crude, but deliberately so - think inspired by South Park.
• Tales of the Abyss was just about bearable. It's a fantasy job and it's adapted from an RPG. It was quite pretty and nicely animated, but the problem was in the story-telling - it was crammed full of info dumps and expositional speeches which were totally dull. I'm guessing it livens up later, but the poor story telling (and the general generic nature of the show) annoyed me so much I can't be arsed to even think about finding out.

That basically means I'm now almost up-to-date with the new January shows. There are some odds and sods left, about the only major ones being the Gonzo shows that were made available legally via Crunchyroll and Bost and I've started one of those – Blassreiter.

Speaking of Bost, it looks like it's died a death, without any new shows added in, well, years. Which is a real shame as I liked the Bost service. It's certainly way, way better than Crunchyroll, which I've decided is an abomination of a site.

final destination 3

This was on over the weekend and since I was a bit knackered on Sunday, as I've mentioned, I gave it a watch.

I was quite surprised actually. I mean, it's not really brilliant, as such, but it was certainly more entertaining than I thought it was going to be.

Unlike the second one which is more of a direct sequel, in a way this was almost a complete re-hash of the first Final Destination. But generally all three have essentially followed the same format.

One of the characters gets a premonition of his and a group of his friend's deaths (usually it's a bizarre set of events that leads up to the disaster). He then panics and as a result they get out of the way when the disaster does indeed happen and loads of people die.

After that, the people who survived start to die, but crucially they do so in the order they did in the original disaster. As such, the one who foresaw the deaths works out that "Death" is out to get them. This is how it explains the bizarre accidents that caused both the original disaster, as well as the subsequent deaths.

Essentially that doesn't really matter - what the Final Destination films are really about are the bizarre deaths, which are often quite brutal and fairly violent and gory. Often they're quite darkly humorous as well and on that front 3 delivers in spades and that's why I enjoyed it.

As a film it's quite poor, but as a "watch the good-looking kids get butchered" way to spend 90-minutes it's quite entertaining.

On thing that did annoy me was that there was a whole thing about a bunch of photos that were predicting the kid's deaths. To me, this seemed un-necessarily complicated and a bit abstract for the film, tbh.

magicians

This week's rental DVD was magicians.

It stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who are a double act. They've had their own show on BBC, which I have to admit was a little disappointing, but they're also the stars of Peep Show on Channel 4, which is one of the best sitcoms ever.

Mitchell and Webb don't write Peep Show, but Magicians was written by the people who do. It was also directed by a guy who used to be a Magician (in fact, I think the premise for the film was his idea). It also had Jessica Stevenson in it (off of Spaced), who actually probably gave the best performance.

If I'm honest, however, the film was a little disappointing. Trouble is I've kinda been thinking through as to why and I can't work it out. I think it was more about a combination of little things, rather than anything major.

For one thing it didn't really seem to actually have a stance on magicians themselves. Whilst that sort of thing is clearly just a backdrop to the story (stories are always about characters) it still came across as being partly appreciating magicians and partly thinking they're sados.

Another problem was that the jokes seemed a bit thin. Whilst you expect movies to be more focused on a core plot than perhaps a TV sitcom can get away with, doing so to the detriment of the gags seems like a bad idea.

I also found it difficult to like or, indeed, sympathise with any of the characters. In the peep show, I can understand Mitchell and Webb's characters as people, even when they behave despicably. Here they both just seemed like people I didn't really care about.

There wasn't enough establishing them as people for me to care about - just a montage of photos over the credits and a single scene where they chop a woman's head off. Why does this make me care about them? I didn't really care about her.

That last one is actually a pretty big one and may be the core story.

It certainly carries over into my frustration over David Mitchell's character and Jessica Stevenson - their relationship is all over the place and it actually got a little annoying (and confusing, to be honest).

Lastly is a bit of an odd one - it sort of seems like it's trying to be a parody of The Prestige. Unfortunately it only does the in a half-arsed way, plus The Prestige is a brilliant film and doesn't really deserve any sort of parodying.

yesterday's meeting

I was away all day yesterday for a work meeting. It wasn't the most productive. I thought I'd laid quite a good groundwork for a suggestion I made, but when it came down to it the customer didn't really seem at all keen.

I was told to give it a go, but as a 'redo' so that she could compare it to the existing one. So I've now got to do that, but I think I need to make it somewhat funky so that it's more impressive than I would otherwise have done and so wins the point.

Anyway I was a bit disheartened by that result to the meeting, so I was edging towards a bad mood. Then, when I was driving home the traffic was horrendous.

A while back some signs went up saying that they were going to be some roadwork's at the traffic lights that are just down the road from me. When the date came the workmen appeared, but the roadwork's actually seemed fairly minor.

However, I now suspect that was due to the extremely cold weather and they've only now started properly.

It's an absolute nightmare - they've turned the normal lights off and put temporary ones it. But of course the temporary ones have a completely different timing to the normal ones so that traffic quickly backs up and I got trapped in it yesterday.

I've had a look on multimap as I've always know there are some rat-run type minor roads that connect the main roads. I think I've identified an alternative route.

It kinda depends on the queue not reaching biblical proportions - if it spills all the way back on the A31 there's little I can do - but otherwise I should be able to muddle my way through.

This last weekend was a bit of an odd one. I sort of dashed around on Friday and Saturday like a blue-arsed fly. I was trying to get stuff done so I clear the decks and spend all Sunday scanning staff but I think I actually burnt myself out a bit so I only did a bit of scanning (well, it was a fair bit, but not quite what I'd planned).

Anyway, I watched some of the last stuff from the October '08 season:

• Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy) was, if I'm honest, dull. It's sort of set in England from around the Edwardian or Victorian era somewhere, though only nominally - loads of it is inaccurate/fictionalised. It's also clearly aimed at girls with a pretty boy male lead who the girl is falling in love with but he's a bit of a bad boy rogue type... blah, blah, dull.
• Inazuma Eleven was okay, I guess. It's a kid's show and as those sorts of things go it was reasonable enough. It was sort of about a football (soccer) team, but it was quickly apparent this was more fantasy than actual football.
• Mouryou no Hako was really good. It was a bit on the weird side - there seems to be a lot of hidden mystery and quite a complex plot, but then those are never bad things :).

There are only one or two more shows to go, which is quite good timing as the half-season January '09 shows are just starting to get fansubbed.

Interestingly, though, quite a few appear to be now featuring on Crunchyroll. I have mixed feelings about that, as I'm not a fan of the crunchyroll site, but it's good to see that it's starting to happen.

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 :).

chrimbalo holidays

Today is my last day of work before the holidays. Indeed, it's my last day of work for the entirety of 2008.

As such, since I actually post these blogs while I'm at work, updates are going to become a bit erratic.

I'm sure I'll post occasionally - probably as I watch films and TV and anime and stuff, but it won't be regular updates. Although if things go to plan and I watch all the stuff I'm intending too, it may actually mean more bloggage.

Anyway, the point is yay - no more work for two whole weeks!