I lost $100.00 ;_; (and a review of the Death Note movie part 1)!
AUGH! I was going to post a little review of the Death Note live action movie PART 1 which I saw Tuesday night yesterday, but I spent most of yesterday panicking and running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I LOST my spare car key ;_;! Somewhere somehow, I LOST my spare car key while running around Tuesday. Because I have this habit of locking myself out of my own car while the keys are IN the car (once while the engine was RUNNING with the car key in the ignition), I started carrying 2 separate car keys whenever I go out. Now, this was not a problem with any of the older cars I drove because those car keys were the usual cheapo keys you could duplicate at any hardware store, and those keys always had some heavy keychain attached to them. My new car, however, has this big fat plastic head which is difficult to loop around a normal keychain without the help of another metal loop to make it easier to attach. I had 2 sets: 1 with the car's remote thingy attached to it and 1 loose by itself with no keychain or anything else attached to it. The loose key has been floating around in my pocket and has fallen out on occasion, but usually, it falls out when I put my keys back into my pocket by my desk or at home. This is the first time it has totally gone missing 8(!
I retraced almost all my steps on Tuesday including going back to the movie theater where I saw the live action Death Note movie and scrounging around on my hands and knees looking under 3-4 rows of seats searching for my key for 20-30 minutes. It's still missing ;(! These new fangled car keys cost ~$100.00 to duplicate because of that stupid fat plastic head which I think has some sort of special chip or something in it that makes it more difficult and expensive to duplicate, so I essentially LOST $100.00 Tuesday somewhere! I'm still worrying about my lost key even today. I still have the bank and post office to check later today to see if I dropped it there, but it could be anywhere on the road, a parking lot, or found by someone who threw it away or kept it. I feel so awful about losing such an expensive thing O~O! If I ever find that key, or get another made to replace it, I'm going to weigh it down with a heavy bulky keychain like my older keys, so it won't 'float' so loosely in my pocket ever again >8(! WHERE ARE YOU, KEY?!
As for the live action Death Note movie, I guess it was okay for the most part. I was surprised Viz DUBBED the LIVE action movie into English using the voice actors for the anime. I know English dubbing is kind of an art form for anime now, but it still looks really weird when you dub over an actual live person's mouth o~O. Mom said she was used to it though from watching Chinese dubs of English movies when she was a kid. I thought all the English voice actors dubbed their characters almost exactly as the anime except for Alessandro Juliani, who did L's voice. Juliani made L sound more childish and less serious than the way he voiced L in the anime, and that kind of threw me off a bit. When I saw the documentary of the English dubbing and the behind-the-scenes footage afterward, I guess Juliani wanted to match the Japanese actor's movements as a more playful L in the movie when voicing him.
Both Mom and I thought that the actors who played Light and L looked very weird o~O. Yeah, I know that 'bishie' feminine look for young male actors is the norm for Asian audiences and anime, but it looked really strange on a real person. Mom and I think both of them probably had some plastic surgery, especially around the nose, to make them look the way they do (sort of like Michael Jackson although not so extreme). Mom also thought they plucked their eyebrows too ;b. The CGI animation for Ryuk looked very unnatural as well. I know they used a human actor's movements for Ryuk, but he still looked and moved quite stiffly compared to the CGI characters I've seen in American movies. Whenever Ryuk laughed, it looked like some awkward puppet being jerked by the shoulders. Overall, the live actors were pretty bad as far as movements and expressions go. They sort of reminded me of the acting I saw for the live action Sailor Moon series, especially the heart attack dying scenes. I think I can act a better heart attack then they did, and I'm HORRIBLE X6! Mom recognized Iron Chef Chairman Kaga instantly as playing Light's dad. He was probably the best actor in the whole movie.
This was also Mom's first experience watching with a bunch of otaku. She thought the audience was very silly and loud. Compared to the Naruto movie, this otaku audience was a LOT more mature, older, and quieter. Mom thought there were more women in the theater than guys, but I thought it was pretty much 50/50. Mom didn't really understand why the otaku girls were screaming when they saw either L, Matsuda, or Misa Misa though XD! Unlike Light or L, Matsuda looked very, um, natural, and his acting fit perfectly with his character. Mom also liked the actress they chose to play Misa Misa, whom she thought was very pretty unlike the male actors ^^;.
Basically, the live action Death Note movie PART 1 (2nd part to be shown later, hopefully, I think), repeated the entire plot for the first story arc except with some devious twists added. During the entire first 1.5 hours of the movie, I had to keep nudging Mom to keep her awake not because it was boring or because the movie repeated what she already saw but because she was VERY tired after a long day at work in the elementary school. The last 30 minutes of the film had almost all the variations and deviations from the anime in it which kept her awake for that part of the movie ;P! We both surmised the deviations were to help move the LONG plot of the manga and anime along faster, so they could finish the story in a shorter time frame than the anime. The movie was 2 hours LONG o~O, and I thought it was just going to be one movie. I have no idea when or if Viz will release the 2nd movie in theaters or not or if they're going to dub over the movie as well.
Finally, I was also annoyed by the fact that Viz didn't at least provide some subtitles for all the Japanese text that was strewn across the screen via newspaper headlines, TV announcements, computer output, or cellphone text messages. I think it really took away from my enjoyment of the movie because I was missing those elements. Mom could somewhat read some of what was on the screen via the Chinese characters, but not all of it. It was like seeing that episode of Paranoia where 3 people were texting each other about meeting to commit suicide WITHOUT the subtitles, which happened when Adult Swim aired that episode for the first time --;. I couldn't understand a thing until the 2nd or 3rd airing when Adult Swim finally DID put the subtitles for the text messages o~O! DUH, those text messages were part of the plot of that whole episode, and I think it would have really helped if Viz did the same for the Japanese text in this movie too.
Next month, I plan on seeing the dubbed Bleach movie, Memories of Nobody. I hope the audience for that film is at least mature as the one for Death Note.
Finally, some good news for 80s Hasbro cartoon fans! Hopefully, now I can finally get the rest of the Transformers G1 series and the last season of Jem on DVD!
I retraced almost all my steps on Tuesday including going back to the movie theater where I saw the live action Death Note movie and scrounging around on my hands and knees looking under 3-4 rows of seats searching for my key for 20-30 minutes. It's still missing ;(! These new fangled car keys cost ~$100.00 to duplicate because of that stupid fat plastic head which I think has some sort of special chip or something in it that makes it more difficult and expensive to duplicate, so I essentially LOST $100.00 Tuesday somewhere! I'm still worrying about my lost key even today. I still have the bank and post office to check later today to see if I dropped it there, but it could be anywhere on the road, a parking lot, or found by someone who threw it away or kept it. I feel so awful about losing such an expensive thing O~O! If I ever find that key, or get another made to replace it, I'm going to weigh it down with a heavy bulky keychain like my older keys, so it won't 'float' so loosely in my pocket ever again >8(! WHERE ARE YOU, KEY?!
As for the live action Death Note movie, I guess it was okay for the most part. I was surprised Viz DUBBED the LIVE action movie into English using the voice actors for the anime. I know English dubbing is kind of an art form for anime now, but it still looks really weird when you dub over an actual live person's mouth o~O. Mom said she was used to it though from watching Chinese dubs of English movies when she was a kid. I thought all the English voice actors dubbed their characters almost exactly as the anime except for Alessandro Juliani, who did L's voice. Juliani made L sound more childish and less serious than the way he voiced L in the anime, and that kind of threw me off a bit. When I saw the documentary of the English dubbing and the behind-the-scenes footage afterward, I guess Juliani wanted to match the Japanese actor's movements as a more playful L in the movie when voicing him.
Both Mom and I thought that the actors who played Light and L looked very weird o~O. Yeah, I know that 'bishie' feminine look for young male actors is the norm for Asian audiences and anime, but it looked really strange on a real person. Mom and I think both of them probably had some plastic surgery, especially around the nose, to make them look the way they do (sort of like Michael Jackson although not so extreme). Mom also thought they plucked their eyebrows too ;b. The CGI animation for Ryuk looked very unnatural as well. I know they used a human actor's movements for Ryuk, but he still looked and moved quite stiffly compared to the CGI characters I've seen in American movies. Whenever Ryuk laughed, it looked like some awkward puppet being jerked by the shoulders. Overall, the live actors were pretty bad as far as movements and expressions go. They sort of reminded me of the acting I saw for the live action Sailor Moon series, especially the heart attack dying scenes. I think I can act a better heart attack then they did, and I'm HORRIBLE X6! Mom recognized Iron Chef Chairman Kaga instantly as playing Light's dad. He was probably the best actor in the whole movie.
This was also Mom's first experience watching with a bunch of otaku. She thought the audience was very silly and loud. Compared to the Naruto movie, this otaku audience was a LOT more mature, older, and quieter. Mom thought there were more women in the theater than guys, but I thought it was pretty much 50/50. Mom didn't really understand why the otaku girls were screaming when they saw either L, Matsuda, or Misa Misa though XD! Unlike Light or L, Matsuda looked very, um, natural, and his acting fit perfectly with his character. Mom also liked the actress they chose to play Misa Misa, whom she thought was very pretty unlike the male actors ^^;.
Basically, the live action Death Note movie PART 1 (2nd part to be shown later, hopefully, I think), repeated the entire plot for the first story arc except with some devious twists added. During the entire first 1.5 hours of the movie, I had to keep nudging Mom to keep her awake not because it was boring or because the movie repeated what she already saw but because she was VERY tired after a long day at work in the elementary school. The last 30 minutes of the film had almost all the variations and deviations from the anime in it which kept her awake for that part of the movie ;P! We both surmised the deviations were to help move the LONG plot of the manga and anime along faster, so they could finish the story in a shorter time frame than the anime. The movie was 2 hours LONG o~O, and I thought it was just going to be one movie. I have no idea when or if Viz will release the 2nd movie in theaters or not or if they're going to dub over the movie as well.
Finally, I was also annoyed by the fact that Viz didn't at least provide some subtitles for all the Japanese text that was strewn across the screen via newspaper headlines, TV announcements, computer output, or cellphone text messages. I think it really took away from my enjoyment of the movie because I was missing those elements. Mom could somewhat read some of what was on the screen via the Chinese characters, but not all of it. It was like seeing that episode of Paranoia where 3 people were texting each other about meeting to commit suicide WITHOUT the subtitles, which happened when Adult Swim aired that episode for the first time --;. I couldn't understand a thing until the 2nd or 3rd airing when Adult Swim finally DID put the subtitles for the text messages o~O! DUH, those text messages were part of the plot of that whole episode, and I think it would have really helped if Viz did the same for the Japanese text in this movie too.
Next month, I plan on seeing the dubbed Bleach movie, Memories of Nobody. I hope the audience for that film is at least mature as the one for Death Note.
Finally, some good news for 80s Hasbro cartoon fans! Hopefully, now I can finally get the rest of the Transformers G1 series and the last season of Jem on DVD!