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| Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | | 1:38 pm |
| | Thursday, May 10th, 2012 | | 6:21 pm |
Eyestrain: The Manga Edition
There continues to be a fair bit of criticism of the manga releases of Kodansha Comics. It seems production values are sloppy enough to hint there aren't many people working on the English-language versions, and since the company has next to no online presence that just seems to back up those accusations. Something about all of this does trouble me. For some reason, I can't just brush off the whole deal and stop buying their manga as I seem to have with a number of other companies in the past; as much as I can wonder if any of the titles I buy from them are ones I really, really want to read (although that just might be the case with most of the manga I buy; the last title that seemed to really, really grab me was "Twin Spica" from Vertical), maybe I have some long-rooted attachment to what used to be the Del Rey manga releases from back when they seemed to be just about the only company that hadn't offended one particular message board I read. However, as much as this might run the risk of "joining in" at last, I do have to now admit that some of the lettering in Kodansha's new "Love Hina" omnibuses can get very small. This does seem to match the artwork, but it can be a strain on the eyes. One of the things hopefully provoking some sympathy for the character Naru Narusegawa (comedically violent and a virtual type specimen for "there's a softer side under the frightening exterior") is that she tries to hide bad eyesight developed from studying too much. With my own eyes swimming after having to take off my glasses and get close to the pages, I wondered if we're meant to sympathise with her in more ways than one... This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/164279.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | | 9:23 am |
MST3K 416: Fire Maidens of Outer Space
The most interesting thing about the movie in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode " Fire Maidens of Outer Space" ("Fire Maidens really grip the road!") might be the English accents a number of its astronaut characters have; otherwise, it might well be dismissed as just another in the string of "rocketing to another habitable world" movies the series featured. That dismissive conclusion might be easier to come by, though, because of the little story told in the episode's "host segments," one that ends up spilling into the movie itself... ( 'Is this the Hugh Hefner planet?' )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/164093.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Friday, May 4th, 2012 | | 4:51 pm |
Some "Fourthly" Thoughts
Today's of course the day when certain people start saying "May the Fourth be with you" to each other. I admit I'd headed off to work thinking I'd almost prefer one "opening day" or another later in the month to be commemorated, but at one of the start-of-the-day meetings somebody started off the phrase, and I at once completed it... The person explained his daughter was very much into Star Wars including Clone Wars right now, and when someone else said she'd never seen the movies the dual possibilities of watching in "production order" or "numerical order" were briefly touched on, with (to my private relief) no comments on sticking with just half for your own good... ( Even before that, though... )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/163766.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 | | 5:27 pm |
Anime Thoughts: My-HiME
When I put together my latest look back at the anime I'd seen in the three months before, I neglected to mention one particular series I'd already started into. As much it had been a long time getting around to, I was in a tentative and uncertain mood about just how I'd be summing it up when it was all over... As in a number of other cases, the first time My-HiME really registered on me was its licensing announcement. The enthusiasm other people showed for it did get my attention... but for some reason, I kept thinking they weren't saying enough about what the show was actually about. Because of that, I wound up thinking I'd wait for the DVDs to be released... but the accusations of diffidence in authoring and packaging (I suppose it would only get worse from there in general for the unfortunate Bandai Entertainment) sort of killed my enthusiasm. Then, the opinion seemed to build the series had one of those legendarily bobbled endings... For a while, I had something of a wild guess on what must have gone wrong. Then, that thought happened to get inverted through a not quite specific "spoiler"... ( I suppose I still had enough curiosity about the show, though... )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/163402.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, April 29th, 2012 | | 9:18 am |
MST3K 411: The Magic Sword
After taking in another episode from the latest official DVD collection with the traditionally "difficult" " Castle of Fu Manchu" (the DVD included a bonus feature about how the "Cinematic Titanic" Mystery Science Theater performers, more or less, reunited before that project to appear in an "interactive movie"; I was thinking it amounted to one of those "we might as well put something on this disc too" extras until it was mentioned how Joel Hodgson wanted to have a "Fu Manchu moustache"), I headed off to the fourth season and "The Magic Sword." ("Can slice a tomato so thin you can see through it.") It's another movie from the prolific Bert I. Gordon, and our heroes aren't pleased to see his name in the credits. As for what's brought to the screen this time, though... ( 'You guys cower over here; I'll go watch.' )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/163143.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | | 8:13 pm |
Double-density Old Computers News
A little while ago I happened on a bit of "old computer news" that did make me think a bit. I wasn't certain, though, if I was "connected" enough to it to be able to build off it and produce a little more content for this journal. A little while after that, though, I happened on another bit of news, and while I might not be that much more connected to it I did decide I could roll my thoughts together. ( The news )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/162890.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, April 15th, 2012 | | 9:30 am |
| | Thursday, April 12th, 2012 | | 8:17 pm |
Lightsabres and After
One minimal consolation in the face of seemingly too-frequent collisions with unexpected off-topic slams on the new Star Wars movies is to suspect that, for all the strident declarations about "the real movies" there's a terrible shallowness to just how the "four-plus good, one-on bad" crowd think of their chosen numbers. A mixture of "cool" design work, Han Solo, and special effects produced using old-fashioned technology does just seem a thin gruel to venerate to me; at times I've actually yearned for complaints different from flat dismissals, whether they be annoyed or just smug. However, through a twist of fate a little more elaborate than usual, not that long ago I did happen to see someone holding up "Luke casting his lightsabre aside" and in the next breath dismissing the new movies as "settled with just lightsabres." As if to prove you should indeed be careful what you wish for, I have to admit a "thrill of terror" coursed through me that maybe this criticism did have some bite... ( and then I started thinking about it. )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/162540.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Monday, April 9th, 2012 | | 4:21 pm |
| | Monday, April 2nd, 2012 | | 7:08 pm |
2012: My First Quarter in Anime
The year started off with troubling portents for anime fans (at least however many of them still cling to the middle ground of buying "domestic releases" in between streaming on one side and spending grand sums to import from Japan on the other, with the less reputable ways of watching anime lurking out there too) when Bandai Entertainment was shut down, Media Blasters laid off a good number of people, and Funimation sued Sentai Filmworks in connection to the "somebody ripped off somebody" tangle of the end of ADV Films. That treated me to a demonstration of how Sentai, assumed to be the innocent and put-upon party, is better-loved among anime fandom at the moment than Funimation, condemned as the greedy agressor taking on a company that doesn't take the Japanese text out of the opening and closing credits. With time, though, the worry seemed to fade somewhat. Interesting titles do continue to be licensed, and I kept watching. ( Back to the action: GaoGaiGar and GaoGaiGar Final )( Continuing on: Gasaraki and Aria the Natural )( Up to the minute: Bodacious Space Pirates, Waiting in the Summer, and Rinne no Lagrange )( The comparison effect: Clannad After Story and Spice and Wolf II )( 'Oldie but a goodie': Aim for the Ace! )( Feature-length experiences: Gunbuster, Redline and Mardock Scramble )( Back to the challenge: Revolutionary Girl Utena )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/161797.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, April 1st, 2012 | | 1:30 pm |
MST3K 210: King Dinosaur
Opening up the latest Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collection, I also moved one season ahead into the series with "King Dinosaur." Our heroes were dismayed to learn they'd be getting another movie from the prolific Robert L. Lippert; they'd already been through three movies he was involved with in the nine episodes previously shown in the second season itself. Just as how with "Rocketship X-M" they had started off referring to it as just a "Lloyd Bridges movie," though, they aren't so concerned about Bert I. Gordon directing it. Gordon, of course, would direct a whole string of movies tackled by the series through the third season and beyond. Before the movie itself, the series takes a new turn. After eight (and a bit) chapters of "Commando Cody and the Radar Men from the Moon," which had very much worn out their welcome among creators and fans alike by the end, and three chapters of "The Phantom Creeps," we get a more or less "educational" short... ( 'Will you guys knock it off? I can't concentrate on my own lame wisecracks.' )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/161766.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Thursday, March 29th, 2012 | | 8:17 pm |
From the Bookshelf: The Complete Peanuts 1983-1984
I suppose each volume of "The Complete Peanuts" coming out may now reach me with slight feelings of melancholic uncertainty about whether this time I won't have anything to say about it in the end. With that admitted again, though, on starting with the introduction by Leonard Maltin I was struck by a comment of his about how, while it may have been easy to pass over the strips of the first part of the 1980s then, they still reward attention with their sense of familiarity. That was worth mulling over for me, even if as I started into the volume I had the feeling of being able to remember quite a few of the strips from a reprint volume I got fairly early on (not even as a used book, which was how I saw a good part of the strip). I also had the added impression a good number of jokes had also made it into animation on "The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show," which was being made around that time. (So far as animation goes, Leonard Maltin does manage to bring in one of his interests by referring to the UPA cartoons of the 1950s as having a tangential connection to Charles M. Schulz's deliberate minimalism.) ( 'What did the teacher write on yours, sir?' )( 'Grody to the max!' )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/161411.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 | | 8:14 pm |
The Already Commented-on MST3K Collection
I was pleased to hear my copy of the latest Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collection had shipped, but as always happens right around that time I started wondering when, and if, Shout! Factory would announce another set to follow. It always seems a question to me if they'll eventually find it difficult to license another four movies. However, I checked Satellite News just today and saw the latest good news. It also turns out I've already commented on all four of the promised episodes, which leaves me to contemplate how I took a sort of holiday from pushing through the shrinking number of titles not on my list just because I had thoughts one of the discs in the latest collection "didn't have to be saved for last." With most of the "Sandy Frank episodes" recently released, I had hopes " Fugitive Alien" and " Star Force: Fugitive Alien II" might follow to complete the set, and they're being included as a double dose of chopped-down Star Wars-like action. We're also being treated to " The Sword and the Dragon," another outing in the "Russo-Finnish" vein and what seems at least one of my favourites there, and " Samson vs. the Vampire Women," in which a Mexican wrestler casually steps forward to the aid of regular Mexican people and TV's Frank ascends to "Second Banana Heaven." All in all, it should be a set to look forward to. This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/161244.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, March 25th, 2012 | | 12:45 pm |
MST3K 113: The Black Scorpion
It's been a little while since I commented on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. As the number of episodes left to rewatch dwindled, I began to indulge in grand schemes of just how to view them, "saving some for last" but watching the others in production order for one last small-scale trip through the series. However, one of those episodes to be "watched in order" just happened to be part of the upcoming offical DVD collection, and so I decided to wait until that set was almost out. While I didn't mind having a bit of time to put towards other things, it is somehow familiar to get back to trying to set some thoughts down, in this case about a movie featuring giant scorpions in Mexico... ( 'Don't run, just look unappetising.' )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/160881.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Sunday, March 18th, 2012 | | 4:36 pm |
DVD Thoughts: Planet of the Apes
Out of all the things that have managed to reach some critical mass of cultural references where it seems possible to "know about it" without actual experience of it, I just might have found myself sort of fixing on "Planet of the Apes." Primed by a good number of jokes from The Simpsons and a wide variety of references in Mystery Science Theater 3000, when a while back a cable channel showed a New Year's Day marathon of the five-movie cycle of the 1960s and 1970s I dipped in briefly "just to see how it began" and "just to see that famous last scene." I also happened to find and read the original translated-from-the-French novel, indulging in a bit of speculative contemplation about potential differences between its "how do we treat animals? how do we interpret them?" satire and the American movies that followed. One day not that long ago, though, I happened to notice a DVD of the very first Planet of the Apes at a local store, and with the thought it would be easier to get into than the five-movie collections that go on sale every once in a while I went ahead and bought it. It was at times a little hard to disentangle the movie from the jokes; I could wind up grinning not just at lines I already knew were memorable but just from terms like "Ape Law" (not quite in the context I'd always thought it would be in) and "the Lawgiver." Even so, I did find myself able to wonder about "changing interpretations"; beyond my initial thoughts about "teaching sign language" in the decade that followed the movie, hearing knowledge of the past suppressed on "religious" grounds does seem a bit more "ominous" now than it might have when the movie was being made. (By the end of the movie, though, I was thinking there might be halfway comprehensible reasons for that suppression...) It was distinctly amusing to me, though, for there to be a youthful ape resentful of "the older generation"; it did add on a feeling of the movie having been made in a particular time and place. While it's easy enough to say "it's not 2001" (although when an Academy Award for special effects was given to Planet of the Apes Arthur C. Clarke did wonder whether it was because the Academy thought 2001: A Space Odyssey had used actual apes), you could say that about pretty much every movie. This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/160545.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Monday, March 12th, 2012 | | 7:27 pm |
Being "Digital"
While I can't quite remember just how it happened, I did take notice of an "indie game" called " Digital: A Love Story." My usual long-simmering interest in "interactive fiction" made me pick up on a game revolving around dialing into BBSes "five minutes into the future of 1988" using the white-on-blue Workbench interface of an "Amie" computer, but I suppose I was also mildly intrigued by it being called a "visual novel," a term I perhaps can't altogether define but which I have heard of in connection to "anime adaptations of Japanese games." Once I'd downloaded the game, though, it did take me a while to get around to playing through all of it, and once I was finished I noticed there had already been a fair deal of discussion of it... still, it was an interesting experience, if one I feel concerned about "giving too much away" of. As "novel" might imply, there wasn't quite the wide-ranging, poking under everything, trying to find just the right command of an adventure game, but clicking "reply" to messages and gauging what that unseen response must have been from the followup was interesting in its own way; in some ways, it might be a more effective form of "interaction with characters" than a good number of adventure games. I am tempted to pay for another game by its author Christine Love, " Analogue: A Hate Story." (The immediate connection doesn't seem quite as obvious as the titles imply, anyway...) This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/160269.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 | | 8:50 pm |
From the Bookshelf: Into the Silence
I might not have got it without the unfortunate spur of the closest bookstore closing, but I had taken some interest in Wade Davis's book Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest before that. While I didn't have many books on mountain climbing beforehand, I do have a general interest in "tales of exploration and adventure"... although that previous reading might have left me wondering a little just what sort of tale would be told. "British explorers," at least when it comes to the polar regions, get summed up and dismissed as too taken with their senses of superiority to use equipment and strategies that would actually work, and were doomed as a result to failure if not death. (With something of a weakness, perhaps, for "counter-counterarguments," I've taken notice of a few challenges to that conventional wisdom, though.) ( The first part of the subtitle... )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/160055.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 | | 8:26 pm |
A Dark Mirror Points the Way Out
The fourth season of Clone Wars seems to be concentrating on "action" pure and simple, and for the most part this seems to have agreed with the fans whose opinions I do follow. On what seemed very short notice, though, a sudden hand grenade was thrown into things with what itself appeared not so much "stunt casting" as "crashing straight into something for real."( Rubbernecking )This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/159916.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. | | Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 | | 7:03 pm |
Unpopular Fandom Opinion (again)
Four years ago, I decided to mark the leap day by expressing an "unpopular fandom opinion." With the three hundred and sixty-sixth day of the year rolling around again, the thought of indulging myself again returned, but it took a little while to sort through a few possibilities. In the end, I'm stepping away from any specific fandom to say "I just don't seem as interested in 'shipping' as lots of other people." By "shipping," I would say "interpreting all interaction between two fictional characters as preliminaries to them winding up in a romantic relationship." That might, of course, leave me open to the rejoinder "ah, you don't understand the term at all," but I'm still going to try and push on anyway. It doesn't seem a matter of not being interested in romance at all: I can get squishy and sentimental over "official" romances in action-oriented stories, exactly the ones that seem to get dismissed by those delving into subtext as "distraction from the real connections" or just "not well done." The way "shipping" blends into "slash" does seem to open up another potential criticism, but I have been interested in at least some "girls' love" anime and manga, and I can find mixed-sex declarations as tedious as same-sex ones. If there's an explanation, I suppose it might have to do with a mixture of "looking at what you want something to be as opposed to what it is seems a recipe for disillusionment" and "can't there be such a thing as 'friendship' (or even 'rivalry') without it winding up sexualised?" Maybe there's the feeling that the potential relationships seem so all-consuming to those promoting them that they seem to overshadow all other connections. This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/159706.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please. |
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