CRS - Us Placers

Thanks to Matt "The Farago from Chicago" Longarini for sending this my way.

Oh yeah.

Fred Van Lente's Incredible Hercules is awesome.

More drawing less writing

The Slow Torture of Being a Western Movie Lover in Japan

So I guess what, Watchmen is out in America and the UK now? Or soon? And Coraline? And all sorts of other great movies are on their way? And here in Japan... I have no idea when Watchmen will even be released. (Oh, ok, I just checked - end of March. Still, it seems to be the last place in the world it's being released, so...)

Actually, I'm having mixed feelings about that one, but I really want to see Coraline.

I've complained about this shit before, but I thought I'd hammer it home by pointing out that a lot of Japanese movies get released that look fun, that I'd like to check out, but that I have little to no hope of understanding. Okuribito (Departures) just won an Oscar for Christ's sake, but I can't see it here because it comes without subtitles, and probably the DVD won't have English subtitles either even though there are English subtitled versions available in the west. Ass.

I mean, Okuribito would be nice, but mostly I just want to see the dumb movies:

I went to see the Sushi Oji movie, and I'm glad I did, but I wish some of these would turn up with subtitles somewhere y'know? Or that I'd pull my thumb out of my backside and work on my Japanese. That would be nice too.

Movie Review: [rec]

[REC] is a simple, well-executed, Spanish zombie movie that works with a concept so catchy that an ultra-faithful American remake followed less than a year after the original. It's not at all original, borrowing heavily from any number of other movies, but it is very well done, so much so that before long you're not really comparing it to anything.

I especially liked the pacing. It's a very short movie, the cut that I saw was only and hour and fifteen minutes, which is perfect. My pet hate in almost any art form is bad editing, and people who let things run on for no good reason. Which is nothing like saying I don't like long books, movies, albums or songs; I love lengthy pieces of work when that serves the art, it's just that so often I finish a movie thinking "well, that could have been twenty minutes shorter and twice as good". The pacing in [REC] is awesome, it starts slowly, then ups the stakes with a big burst of violence, then cranks the tension, then cranks the tension some more, then cranks the tension some more, then lets it all go in a final act that seems to get faster and faster and faster before it hits the final scene like a needle hitting the run-out groove. Perfect.

Oh man, I could rant about things being too long until the cows come home. Pretty much my whole problem with Harry Potter probably comes from reading the fourth book and wondering why it couldn't have been like a whole third shorter. After that, there was no way I could've sat through another one. There's creating your world, there's adding subplots to make the structure more interesting and engage your reader, and then there's telling us a whole load of crap that we don't need to know, and describing things that you have no need to describe.

Anyway, [REC]. THUMP! That was my stamp of approval hammering down on it, so check it out.

City Snow

It was also snowing in the city.



As you can see.

Mountain Snow

Luckily I have the common sense to realise that I should favour my actual-walking-around-breathing-life over posting in a timely manner here. So I've been too busy to post for - woah! - the first four days of March. Good grief!

All I can say is that it was snowing a lot in the mountains.



As you can see.