Category Archives: Moving Pictures

The Silence Of The Me

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I don’t write much here any more which is a shame because I liked doing it. I broke my wrist in a metaphorical way, which is to say that no bones were harmed in the production of my injury but the effect is still that I am not allowed to use a computer anymore on pain of, well, pain. It is still a problem so, unfortunately, things will likely stay this way for the foreseeable future.

Even if you can see a long way into the future.

In the meantime I wanted to share this little video I made to try out camera tracking.

Laurence Fishburne is CSI

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That’s right. Morpheus is now a CSI in Las Vegas. I did not see that comming. I am happy about it though. With Grissom leaving they need some serious gravitas to fill the hole left behind and Fishburne might just pull it off. It will never be the same show again without Grissom but it might just turn out to be another show that is just as good. Time will tell.

Hell No, Boy.

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I went to see Hellboy 2 last night and I didn’t love it. I really wanted to love it and just just because that meant getting a better deal for my money. I wanted to love it because I really love Mignola’s original Hellboy comic and after a mediocre first movie I could do with some good Hellboy movie action.

But it was no to be.

The main problem, as I see it, was that the movie was just not engaging. There were a lot of potentially interesting points; Hellboy and Liz’s relationship, the Prince trying to save his dying people or Hellboy’s struggle with finding a place in the world, but none of it ever got really real. You could see it there in the story but it never connected emotionally.

Another point that bothered me a bit was the fact that the movie felt like it had 2 very strong design directions that didn’t fit together very well.  I love Mignola’s designs and I love the Pan’s-Labyrinth-style but I don’t love them in the same movie at the same time.

Also, I don’t know it is a Guillermo del Toro thing or if it Doug Jones, but the excessive hand-gesticulation that they have going both here and in Pan’s Labyrinth is getting a bit annoying (if you don’t know what I am talking about, good for you. If you want to know take a look at the Faun in Pan’s)

All in all it wasn’t completely hopeless. I just wasn’t nearly as good as i had hoped.

Macross Frontier

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I considered saying something like “It’s good to see Macross back to form” or “After a somewhat dissapointing Macross Zero, I am happy to see…” but that all implies somehow that I am an avid follower of the series. I am not. I grew up on Robotech, loved Macross Plus and found Macross Zero ok but I haven’t seen anything else.

Now I am watching Macross Frontier and so far (6 episodes in) I am enjoying it. The first episodes felt a lot like a general rehash of the opening episodes of SDF Macross, story wise, which was a bit jarring but apart from that my recommendation would be that you watch it. It doesn’t hurt watching it in HD on a 40″ HDTV either.

Bourne Again

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I went through the Ultimate Bourne Collection on DVD during the holidays and I for got to post this little bit that I wrote about it: I like it. Good spy action thriller movies, if you are into that kind of thing. If you are not, this is still a very good collection of movies. The Ultimatum was the new movie in the collection for me, since I hadn’t seen it before and i am happy to report that it is almost as good as the second one. The bad thing is that there seems to be less focus on characters and story and more on all out action. There are some very good action sequences but sometimes they just seem too long.

Final Verdict: Get it before it gets you!

On a related note, the soundtracks to these movies are also very cool. Get them also.

Munich

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The movie, not the city.

A review:

The last 40 minutes of watching that film I spent waiting for it to end. And I stopped watching 30 minutes before the movie was actually over.

Haruhi-ism

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So, I have searched around a bit ever since I heard something about the possibility of getting the original broadcast order-dvd’s in the US and lo and behold I have found them!
Well, actually, it looks like they will be on a bundled bonus-dvd shipped with the limited edition releases of volume 2 to 4 and since I was planning on getting thosa anyway, I am happy.

What I don’t like is that axelmusic, my supplier, has added ~$15 to the price of the LE’s. But, since they are still the cheapest place I can get them, I guess there is nothing much I can do about that.

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

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I was originally going to call this post “The Joy Of Haruhi Suzumiya” or something like that, because I just got the Limited Edition of Volume 1 and boy is it nice.
The box itself is sturdy without being bulky and covered with nice colorful artwork. There is a small hidden magnet that keeps the front closed is a work of genius and the way the inside is designed logical and yet gives subtle hints of all the niceness that it will eventually contain.
The DVD and mini-soundtrack also comes in nicely designed packaging.

The DVD itself is also filled with extra material. 3 pages of it, in fact. I haven’t watched it yet but so far the amount alone outstrips most other TV shows I have seen (granted, that isn’t that many)

My problem is that Bandai decided to release the episodes chronologically as opposed to the seemingly random way the episodes were originally aired.
To someone who hasn’t seen the show yet this may seem like a perfectly fine way to do things, but it’s not really. I tell you why twomorrow.