I heard that Christmas day is one of the days in which people watch a lot of movies at the theatre. Although, we caught it on the day after,True Grit (2010) was our Christmas movie. And while it wasn't packed at all, it was more people than I expected given that a snow storm was coming and the movie was a Coen brothers film.
Ahh, Coens! Their last film was serious so this one has to be a comedy. You wouldn't know it from the commercials that play up the fact that this is a western. And you wouldn't know it that the last time the book was filmed, it had John Wayne in his only Oscar winning role as Rooster Cogburn, one of the protagonists. Jeff Bridges will make you forget John Wayne. But not The Dude.
The young lady playing the lead is pretty good. She would get an Oscar nomination if she wasn't the lead but the supporting actress. She was good. Very serious as a character and whose seriousness brings out some of the hilarity of her situation.
Jeff Bridges is good too. Somewhat dudish, but only in some of his locution as he sounded more like the dude than a old-timey US Marshall.
I liked the movie for the simple fact that it was funny at times. It made watching it during my Christmas break enjoyable, and the mirth in the movie overshadowed some of the more gruesome parts of the story. It was good enough for 2 young kids to watch as well, as long as they don't mind the dialog.
We're nearing the end of another year and the end of the holiday season. I've survived and so have you. It is a weird thing to think about, but the holiday season hasn't been the holiday season in a long while for me.
I've given up on religion for at least four years now. No church, no belief in an afterlife, no God, and does this affect how this part of the year plays out.
In my younger days and in the days before giving up on religion, I've always felt this to be the best time of the year, because of the connection you get from serving your fellow men with greetings of good tidings and holiday wishes. The giving of gifts extended these feelings; an extension of freely giving of yourself to others, in service to others. The selflessness that this season aroused in me was welcome.
But lately, I haven't felt that way. I doubt it is the loss of religion as I don't believe having religion as a precondition to being selfless and caring. It's more that the last couple of years, the Decembers have swept by and the holidays get up and get down. Before you know it they're upon you. You spend hectic days shopping, but never contemplating what it all means.
I find that only a few things can get me out of the funk and into a holiday mood. It's A Wonderful Life is one, but sadly, it is no longer shown on every channel, every where. The Charlie Brown Christmas album is another, but iTunes is evil and splits it into 2 albums so I can't listen to it completely on iPhone. These two, any time I catch them during December, it instantly becomes the holiday season.
Yet, I still wish I could get that feeling back. Christmas is gone. Maybe next year.
It's been awhile since the last post under this heading, but what better way to kick off a quiet week at the office. No one's around. Just me in the lab. No one to see that you're slacking off. Let's write a blog post about something!
I figure that this one should be about the year that passed, 2010. While nothing spectacular happened, there are some highlights and lowlights to assess. Overall, another mediocre year in the life of BrowserMetrics.
The best things to happen where the vacations with cousin Bob. It's a good time whenever he's around, but an ever better time when that time is spent in magical places: Disneyland and Hawaii. O, those were vacations to remember. Fun and sun. Surf, sand, and more. Lots of good things, good times, and good eats.
Terrible things that happened this year. I never rode my bike. A good friend went back home. We had a couple of blizzards and I never made it to the slopes. My inaction on a lot of these issues was disturbing. Maybe I should get out more?
Movies? Didn't watch too many. My Netflix queue is not getting serviced too much. Nothing is playing on TCM. I'm just waiting for something good.
Books? Manga! Manga! Manga! From Uresawa to Uresawa: Pluto to 20th Century Boys. Lots of scifi in there: Saturn Apartments, Twin Spica, 7 Billion Needles. It's seems that I've run full circle to my reading habits although it's now manga. As for traditional books, not too much read.
Anime! Too much torrenting, and not enough buying. K-ON! ended which makes me sad. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and Summer Wars anime movie were both released which makes me happy. Other anime to have watched: Oreimo, Amigami SS.
There were lots of things I did this year. Just nothing spectacular. Have you done your year end retrospective as well?
Christmas Eve and if you don't have that Christmas spirit then "Bah, humbug!" I'm home wrapping presents and doing last minute online shopping. It's past midnight on the other side of the world, so it's the 25th and Santa should be visiting those boys and girls of non-christian countries.
This has nothing to do with Christmas, but everything to do with Christmas. It is the opening theme to the Haruhi movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. It takes place in December right around Christmas. The SOS Brigade would've had a nabe Christmas party unfortunately developments happened that side tracked the holidays. You just got to watch it. Of course, I've been telling you this for years now, but no one listens to me, because I have a blog. First, watch the two seasons of Haruhi and then watch the movie. I swear to kami-sama that you'll enjoy! I think.
A scene from Toradora anime during a school fest/Christmas dance. I haven't seen Toradora in a while, but since I was searching out videos on youtube and found plenty of anime, I thought I would post this in the spirit of the season.
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
Although, you have to wonder what type of Christmas spirit occurs in Japan, a mostly non-Christian nation.
At work, I had to take a training class on writing good requirements. Although, not directly involved with writing requirements, my software functional manager believed that it would help us lowly software engineers to identify terrible requirements that make our lives difficult. Once done the training class, I am now able to identify good requirements.
Good requirements are succinct, feasible, and unambiguous. Tron: Legacy makes a case for good requirements. Flynn says to CLU, "Let's make the perfect world!" Those are terrible requirements. And from there, you have the downfall of the Grid.
Like the seed, I too am not totally bowled over by Tron: Legacy. The seed notes that the narrative was thin at times. It's like they had the idea of making Tron 2, but never got around to understanding they needed a story for it. If you've seen the original, you've seen most of the latest iteration. Get sucked into the Grid. Check! Play games to the death. Check! Ride light cycles. Check! Hot computer chick. Check! Go to i/o! Check!
Lots of story beats from the original movie showed up in this movie. Problems arose when it tried to find its own way to tell the story. Is this an adventure film? Is this a father-son reunion film? Is this the Matrix? It's all and none and the audience is left to marvel at awesome action set pieces, but can't fathom the main story line. In the original, Tron there was a thread of a plot: get out of the Grid while attempting to find out the mysteries of Encom power. This movie pulled at one too many threads and didn't place one in the forefront. Is this about the Grid or about the younger Flynn finding his father. Is this about father Flynn and his creation? Is this about playing Grid games? It's all and none.
I am a fan of the original. This one gives us something short. Its not as innovative as the original. It needed a better story. I wish we had gotten one.
I sent in my latest Netflix DVD yesterday and remembered that I have only a couple of movies in my queue. I decided to fill it out to the minimum 6 movies. Hitting up the Netflix site I am greeted with all their recommendations. I find some movies look interesting. I like the fact that the genres and categories it shows me are super specifc. I hate the fact that the major action you can do with each recommendation is to instantly stream a movie.
Listen, Netflix, you know that I am on the cheapest plan and that plan limits my streaming to one movie. Why would I want to stream when I just want to add DVDs to my queue? I just want DVDs. Two a month if I can watch them.
So I have to click on the movie title to get the "add to queue" feature back. Too many clicks. I may have to just cancel.
Alright! A spinning record for you and some rocksteady. Or can we call this reggae? Perhaps, but it still a little bit too fast for reggae riddims. Totally, digging it, but The Selecter do a cover that Pauline Black sings sweetly.
"Why? Why? 'Ow me goin' home tonight?"
Sway to the songs rhythm while at your desk. You'll thank me later.
I entitle interesting links I find while surfing the web, "Links of the Day," because it makes it easier to email links. If I came up with a clever title for each link of the day or as a regular post, then I would have to be able to log into blogger and use their posting functions. Sadly, when at IniTech, I am blocked from social networking sites, so I can't use blogger from work. And that app I bought for iPhone is good, but typing on iPhone is tedious.
Today's link takes you to a maid café in Tokyo. It's a detailed description of the shenanigans that occur as a guest in a maid café. I laughed at some of this, and I cried at some of this. A great point was made that the clients are also being exploited for their need of love and affection. She pointed out that visiting a café is akin to visiting a strip club, but where the latter feeds off your sex drive, a maid café taps into your need for flirty, kawaii (cute) affection.
Now would I visit a maid café if I ever went to Japan? I do sometimes crave some kawaii affection, but like going into a strip club here, I don't think I would enter one. It's just not my cup of tea. I'd be too embarrassed to admit my need for kawaii affection, and the need to spend money on it. Although, I just did.
Anyway, the writer's experience fascinates and scares me. I always wondered what goes down in a maid café. Finding out what happens is the scary part. Does it make me want to go or to stay away?
Let's get some music up in this place starting with a little bit of Pauline Black and the Selecter covering The Specials AKA's "Racist Friend." If you search youtube for the title you'll also get the original, but also They Might Be Giants' song as well. They are not the same song.
More ska please. Less racism.
Get up and dance at your desk if you enjoy this...
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 opened while I was on the Hawaiian vacation and I couldn't leave paradise for the three hours it takes for this movie to finish. And after three hours, there is still probably another 3 hours to come.
The problem with the later Harry Potter films (the Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows) is the novels. The books after Goblet of Fire had a lot of exposition of when, where, and why of Voldemort that needed to be explained. Reading of such is a more natural experience with the story and history of Voldemort. Unfortunately, the last few films tried to condense these stories into two and a half hour movies. Plot points were lost and sacrificed for the sake of movie telling. Threads that made sense in words didn't when filmed, because of the missing information.
The Deathly Hallows novel gets the privilege of getting stretched out to two films so that all its information can be filmed. And this part was two and a half hours long but got through about two thirds of the book. Yet, the early part of this book was nothing but Hermione, Harry, and Ron wandering the wilderness. They were supposed to find Horcruxes, but did a terrible job at it. So did, Rowling as she just abandoned that thread to get to the ultimate battle.
I thought they could've gotten rid of the wilderness parts, but upon re-reading the book, it needed to be fully fleshed out so that the story can continue unabated.
These last few Harry Potter films have been slightly confusing because of all the exposition. This one isn't, but I can't wait for the second half.
I occasionally link to Jason Thompson's manga work at Anime News Network, because he writes articles that go over the history of manga, which I love reading. Today's link is Thompson's article on Battle Angel Alita.
Alita was one of the first manga I read. I still have the early print editions of the VIZ comics, which I collected in the 90s. Along with Shirow Masamune's Appleseed, Alita was my early introduction to manga and it's weird to think that I have been reading manga for this long. Back then, manga were 30 page issues of a comic book bought at the comic store and not a hundred page volume of a soft cover graphic novel bought at Barnes and Noble. A comic is a comic, and manga is a comic. I still read lots of comics, but I buy them at Barnes and Noble.
Looking over my early manga reading I find that I was into sci-fi worlds. Now, I'm into shojo, moe girls, but still find myself reading sci-fi manga. Pluto, Saturn Apartments, 7 Billion Needles are all on my reading list and they are sci-fi. I can't get enough moe girls, but it seems I can't get enough sci-fi. Thanks, manga!
Battle Angel Alita is still ongoing! I hear that it isn't that great and Thompson says so to an extent. I still have my long boxes of comics from the 90s. I should dig up those VIZ comics issues from back then. I can't remember where I stopped reading. Maybe, I should dig up the volumes of the books on Amazon....
A week before the Hawaiian Vacation, I had bought the latest American Haruhi light novel, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. I figured that it was gonna be a good beach read. When we got to the 808 state, the first few days I didn't even pick it up. Then at Ko Olina, bored silly with the fake Hawaii, I started to read it. In the trade winds it took a while to get into the story. Honestly, the first couple of Nagaru Tanigawa's light novels were not that great. The first one, The Melancholy..., is fine but The Sigh... kind of stunk and The Boredom... was 2/4 a good read. I wasn't looking forward to read this episode. I'm really waiting for the movie.
Yet, in the trade winds, on the beach, I couldn't put the book down. I had finally found out why this series rocked.
It is all about the Nagato! Yuki plays a big important role in this book. And more Yuki the better.
It starts off the week before Christmas, and the SOS Brigade is gonna throw a nabe stew Christmas party. Its what Haruhi wants. The gang just goes along. Then, the world becomes a different place. Kyon meets the deadly Asakura again. Haruhi is no longer a student at North High. There is no SOS Brigade. And Yuki is human. Yuki Nagato is the only member of the Literature club, 100% human and shy, cute as all get out. She even asks Kyon to join. Who could not? But all is wrong and Kyon must find his way back to his reality.
So I blazed through this book in another day. Spent a sunny afternoon with it and hunkered down in an evening reading. Did this all in paradise. But I didn't mind as this is the best book of the series so far.
Read it. You'll love Nagato as well.
Now, I'm just waiting for the movie, and to see the human Nagato on screen.
Someone cool please write the Harry Potter wherein Hermione is in a shojo manga.
A muggle born girl finds out that she has been accepted into the prestigious Hogwarts Academy. When she arrives she has to negotiate through a new, magical setting and new, magical friends and/or rivals. She studies real hard to become one of the best students in her class and in all of Hogwarts, but finds that that is not enough to win the admiration of the school. She is overshadowed by Harry Potter. Harry Potter who seems to not do anything to achieve his standings. Harry Potter, mediocre in his studies. Harry Potter, mediocre in his magic. Harry Potter beloved by the school. Will this rivalry last throughout school and will it turn out to be something more? And what about Harry's saucy sidekick, Ron Weasley. Quiet but friendly, Ron Weasley. Can he be the one?
Well, someone. Get started!
(I guess you really have to be into manga to understand how funny this would be. See Ouran High School Host Club, Kitchen Princess, etc.)
Love it when i get home and there's a nendoroid on the doorstep. The ever so kawaii Yuki Nagato from the anime movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzimiya. I read the book while in Hawaii. A review is forthcoming, but let me just say, it's all about Nagato. Best book so far.
Ooops. I should've written something about Morning Glory a while ago, but never got around to it before taking off for vacation. The review would've been awesome with lots of insight. Now, I can't even remember the film. All I know is Rachel McAdams is in it. She hasn't been in many films lately, but it was good to see her again.
