I picked up a copy of Howl's Moving Castle today. Wow. Incredible movie. Much better than Spirited Away, and it seems to have more in common feel-wise with Miyazaki's other more mature works. (Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and Laputa) It almost seems like a children's story for grown-ups, kind of like Pratchett's recent books for "children of all ages". ( Read more... )

Strangely, watching badly subtitled anime makes me think more about how English sentences are structured during ordinary conversation.

Arjuna is really, really well-done. It's well-written, the mix of themes is excellent, the themes are well-handled, and the animation is absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure if it's hand-drawn or CG or what, but it looks amazing. Oh, and the music's by Yoko Kanno. I am, of course, downloading the soundtrack as I type this. It very definitely lives up ( Read more... )

Strange mental picture for the day: Londo Mollari saying "That word... I do not think it means what you think it means."

Okay, yeah, I'm insane. Also, Eureka 7? So much awesome.

While talking with cheyinka about our aggravation with philosophy professors who persist in treating the Matrix as some kind of serious philosophy, I stumbled upon a very interesting observation. The Matrix canon would have you believe: The Matrix is a simulated reality, constructed by machines who, after winning a Pyrrhic victory in an epic war against ( Read more... )

Strangest idea my brain's come up with in about a week:

A Shadow of the Colossus music video set to "Go Go Godzilla".

I make the following New Year's resolutions:

1. To deal with my FPs gracefully and diligently,
2. To help others with their FPs as I am able, and
3. Not to be the FP.

FP = Fucking Problem, not First Post or Flower Power.

Also, Sense and Sensibility is even stranger than Love Actually with Snape lines randomly inserting themselves into the dialog. ( Read more... )

Curse you, Harry Potter. I'm now unable to watch a movie with Alan Rickman in it without Snape's lines inserting themselves into inappropriate places.

Though I will say that Love Actually is greatly improved by one of the characters saying things like I am Snape... The Potions Master, 50 points from Gryffindor, or 50 points for Slytherin.

I ( Read more... )

Just watched Zeta Gundam: Heirs to the Stars. OMG awesome. The reanimated footage is absolutely beautiful, and the retouched classic footage looks pretty good. The editing has made it much tighter and given it a much better flow than the original anime, especially since Tomino appears to have trimmed out quite a lot of filler material, and replaced ( Read more... )

Additionally, I spent the early part of this week (working the last of the allergy crud out of my system, I think) re-watching the last 3/4s or so of Gundam SEED Destiny. It improves significantly upon additional viewing. Many of the characters' actions - especially Athrun's, Cagalli's Lunamaria's, Shinn's, Rey's, Meyrin's, Djibril's, and Dullandel ( Read more... )