Hmm... if you're following the gay marriage debate,
Marriage Debate is an excellent, non-partisan resource that presents *both* sides of the issue fairly.
If you read my blog veeerrrryyyyyy carefully, while I've brought up the issue a couple of times and defended those people that disagree with gay marriage against being tarred-and-feathered as "homophobes" (ignoring that some gays are against gay marriage... I wish "Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism" had their own site to link to), I've never actually taken a firm position either way. Why? Because I'm too much of a wuss to give a firm opinion, to be perfectly honest...
JUST AN OBSERVATION
(N.B. This entry pertains to anime fandom... if you're not into anime, you can skip reading this post entirely.)
Up until the DVD era, when bilingual and multilingual tracks on all but a handful of anime DVDs became the norm (yes, there had been bilingual anime LaserDiscs long before DVDs, but they were but a tiny fraction of the domestic anime market), there used to be strong "sub" and "dub" camps, with the hardcore anime purists *generally* preferring anime in Japanese with English subtitles, and the more casual fans *generally* preferring English dubs. Although all of the domestic North American anime distributors except for the now-defunct Streamline and the really long-defunct U.S. Renditions provided both subtitled and English-dubbed versions of most of their titles, generally, unless you went to a comic book store which specialized in anime or ordered from catalogues, and, later, online, it was *much* easier to find the dubbed anime tapes on the shelves of retail stores like Suncoast in the United States or HMV here in Canada. Since the domestic market for anime was a much smaller niche back in the early-through-mid 90s than it is now (still a niche, but a much larger one), anime companies didn't have all that much to spend on dubs, so the quality of the voice acting in many dubs sounded roughly "high school amateur drama club rehearsal" quality. Since subs were hard to get, and most dubs sucked, the purists came to resent dubs, leading to many a flame war on anime forums and BBSes.
Some purists realized the attitudes of the dub-haters were driving many of the more casual fans from anime discussion areas on the Internet, and they became dub advocates, lauding the quality of the better dubs. In the days since the market for anime on video shifted from VHS to DVD, a lot more people have come to appreciate dubs, since both English and Japanese language tracks are included on most disks, so you get both for the price of one. And, as the market for anime grew relatively larger and more anime got shown on television, the quality of most dubs today is greatly improved over the quality of most dubs in the mid 90s, and some dubs win near unanimous praise, especially the dub for
Cowboy Bebop (though I find the dub for
You're Under Arrest to be even better).
But, now I find the dub advocacy pendulum has swung too far, almost to the point of treating those of us that have seen the dubs and still prefer the subs as unreformed fanboys. Umm... no... I admit the
Cowboy Bebop dub is very good for a dub, and it is one of the most natural-sounding dubs out there, however, in all honesty, I still happen to prefer Kouichi Yamadera ("Ryouga" in
Ranma �) over Steve Lucas/David Blume** as Spike Spiegel, and �ber-seiyuu (seiyuu = voice actor/actress) Megumi Hayashibara ("Ranma" (female) in
Ranma �, "Lina Inverse" in
Slayers, "Atsuko 'Nuku Nuku' Natsume" in
All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, "Rei Ayanami" in
Evangelion to name just a couple of roles she's done) as Faye Valentine. As natural as some dubs sound these days, I still prefer to listen to the Japanese voices except for when I'm watching anime very late at night and don't wish to put on my glasses. It's just personal taste, and I'm happy that DVDs allow us to choose. People are free to prefer dubs, and that's fine, just don't incinuate that those of us who prefer to watch anime subbed have contempt for dubs or dub fans. If I was showing an anime to a group of people who are not more than casual fans, I'd probably turn the dub on, but, if it's for myself, I'll choose to watch it subbed 90% of the time. Just accept that some of us still prefer subs, otherwise, you are just as much of a "fanboy" as those people who you think you're decrying.
**They sound like the exact same person, but Steve is union and David is non-union, so they must be two completely different people and not just one guy using a different name for non-union work, *wink, wink*
"CUE THE KLAUS NOMI!" UPDATE
Hmm... the Formula One race is probably leaving town because of the "nanny state" anti-tobacco regulations, and the Expos are probably leaving town within the next year or two because of stupidities too numerous to chronicle over the course of the past two decades. Is there anything in the future for Montreal summer sports fans to look forward to?
Why, yes, today's
Gazette reminds us;
the Gay Games shall be here in Montreal in 2006! Yes, gay athletes shall converge on our fair city to participate in all sorts of athletic events; gymnastics, team sports, wrestling, equestrian events, bridge, dancing, weightlifitng, tennis, figure skating, cycling, and, of course, watersports! (Why is everyone snickering?) No word yet on whether the equestrian events will include "bareback riding"...
"Gay Games organizers already running hard", the headline reads. Well, perhaps, but I think it's only the male organizers that are running "hard", the women are simply running (running "moist"?).
The article mentions that the economic impact on the event will be felt even before the event starts, as gay tourists come to a city known for its "tolerance and understanding", and what better way to demonstrate "tolerance and understanding" than with a segregationist athletic event that makes what an athlete does in the privacy of
the bathhouse his or her bedroom the focal point of reference?
Because, at the Gay Games, it's not about being the best in the world, but rather, it's about being the best within the, maybe, 4% of the population that prefers sucking penis if you're a guy, and licking vagina if you're a woman. Well, it's true! Why shouldn't I point that out? (Before anyone presses the "homophobe" button, I should reiterate that my own preferences have been known to swing either way depending on circumstances.) What does sexual preference have to do with athletic ability, really? Will people with other sexual deviations (which doesn't mean "perversion") and fetishes ever get their own Olympics?
Yes, yes, I did see the part in the sidebar article wherein Gay Games spokes
man (I refuse to write "spokesperson") Mark Tewksbury mentions that there is "no gay test at the door" (aww... I can't volunteer to administer the gay test? Not even an oral exam?) and everyone is welcome to participate... then what's the bloody point of calling it the "Gay Games", really? Besides giving another soapbox for politicians to inflict politically correct, touchy-feely, fuzzy-wuzzy platitudes on "tolerance" upon us all?
"Liberal MP Liza Frulla, named "godmother" of the Games, said the event will be a welcome antidote to the "misunderstanding and prejudice" that has surrounded the recent debate over the recognition of gay marriage."
Yes, it's absolutely impossible that people that oppose gay marriage (including, apparently,
many of your fellow Liberal MPs) couldn't possibly have arrived at that opinion after careful consideration, weighing the pros and cons. No, anyone that has a differing opinion than you on that particular issue has it because of "misunderstanding and prejudice". Wait a minute... isn't using blanket terms like that to paint all opponents of gay marriage with a single brush itself a form of prejudice? Oops... I forgot it's impolite to point out the intolerance of the self-professed "tolerant". Also, I'm not actually too sure what an event 3 years down the pike really has to do with the gay marriage debate we're having in Canada (and with other people are talking about around the world) right now, but it is nice to know that, if there are still any people with eeeeeevvvviiiillll differing opinions on the subject 3 years from now, that a single athletic event will make them see the light and bring their opinions in line.
Speaking of gay marriage... anyone hear what Australian Prime Minister John Howard had to say about it in
no uncertain terms?
"Traditional marriage is one of the bedrock institutions of our society and I don't want anything to occur that further weakens it.
Marriage, as we understand it in our society, is about children, having children, raising them, providing for the survival of the species."
Hmm... gee, one thing you can say is that he didn't pussy-foot around the issue like
President Bush did. And, just to rub it in,
this article says he made the statement in the northern Australian city called "Darwin".
This article in The
Hill, the Congressional paper, about
how Bloggers will never replace Rush Limbaugh is frankly just silly. I've never read a blog that even remotely pretends that it has the same amount of influence as Rush Limbaugh... I read blogs the most while I'm listening to Rush over my computer speakers (since I can't pick him up too well on the radio in Montreal); for me,
Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds and
Little Green Footballs are supplements to Rush, something to keep my eyes busy while my ears are occupied. Claiming that the bloggers want to replace Rush is frankly about as silly to me as TTI's infamous
"Johnny Turbo" series of advertisements for the flailing Turbo Duo (Turbografx 16 + CD rom drive) video game system wherein they claimed that Sega (using the ingenious pseudonym "FEKA" to avoid legal trouble) was going around claiming that the (underrated) Sega CD system was the first CD system when the CD drive for the TurboGrafx 16 had been around for two years prior. Except... Sega never really said that (and, in any event... so what if the TG-CD/Duo had been around first? Make the point that the Sega CD system isn't an improvement over your own system... don't make straw men. Not that this has anything to do with my subject, I just wanted to bring up the "Johhny Turbo" ads at some point because they were so unintentionally hilarious!).
I'm not a narcissist; I know there's zero chance he's talking about my blog, since I'm no Glenn Reynolds, and also since this is a Canadian blog (but written by a Canadian who would always vote Republican, should I ever get the right to vote in American elections, barring a major shift to the left in the party). But I feel like seeing how the four main points the guy makes about blogs are relevant to mine.
First, most bloggers don�t match what Rush calls �show prep.� Rush is almost always armed for his shows with reams of data and analysis from a wide variety of news and information sources. His commentaries indicate that he has actually read his sources, thought about their meaning, and prepared his own in-depth analyses before trying to persuade audience members during his three on-air hours each day.
By comparison, many bloggers� preparations for their stream-of-consciousness commentaries seem limited to reading the ruminations of other bloggers and scanning Internet news. Because some bloggers, even prominent ones, spend so much time writing throughout the entire day, they don�t research their own ideas well enough to be persuasive.
Actually, sometimes it is "on the spot" streams of consciousness, but I do put a lot of thought into some of the things I post... sometimes I write them out not all at once but over time in
Word or a simple text window before I post them. Sometimes I think about them so much, I never get around to writng them because my thoughts get too complicated for me to convey efficiently.
Second, Limbaugh is a master of production technique. Rush started in the radio business as a record-spinning disc jockey and understands the value of using punchy �bumper music� to open his segments, for example. Though Rush cares most about the message, he understands that the packaging is essential to the communication process.
By comparison, most bloggers seem oblivious to the production details that might polish their communication efforts. Few seem to care about the principles of effective Web design. Some even seem to consider the primitive style of their blogs a badge of honor.
Well, you know, the main reason this doesn't look as spiffy as
Little Green Footballs is that... they're professional Web designers and I'm... not, and, anyhow, I don't have my own dedicated server and I can't afford the premium version of BlogSpot that lets you store images. I don't really consider the look of this page to be a "badge of honour" (heh... Canadian spelling), but I'm not that bothered by the Utilitarian look... at least it's quick to load even on the smallest modem.
Third, Limbaugh understands that entertainment value is essential to building a mass audience for political communication. His use of highly produced song parodies and other irreverent spoofs keeps a segment of his audience entertained that would desert him if he were �serious� 100 percent of the time. Some bloggers use humor effectively to punctuate their commentaries; few exhibit Limbaugh�s comedic skill, timing and wit.
I certainly hope some people out there think this web page has some entertainment value... I'll even take "unintentional". Well, I like to think I'm funny. Everything that sounds like an opinion on this page is my actual opinion, though I do admit that sometimes I exaggerate for comedic effect. Obviously, some of what he's saying here isn't too relavant to this particular blog since I never had any intention of being the next Glenn Reynolds... I always intended this to be roughly one-third political/current affairs (but only things I feel like commenting on), one-third related to movies and other entertainment (but only entertainment things that interest me... I write nothing on celebrity couples or most current popular music because I have zero interest in that sort of thing), and one-third on just my life, mainly if anyone from my past is searching for information on "Steve Brandon" (Macdonald High, Class of '92) using Google. I know I'm probably not as funny as Rush, but he gets the big bucks and I don't. I'm not too sure how one would determine the quality of my comedic timing through just words, though some people have audio blogs, where that would be a factor?
Fourth, Limbaugh builds bonds with his audience. He provides enough details about his personal life that loyal listeners know something about his parents, brother, wife, their cats, his golf game, his diet, his hearing problems, etc. Those revelations allow listeners to have a �friendship� relationship with Rush that solidifies their place in his daily audience. Though some nonpolitical bloggers write much about their personal lives, the most influential political bloggers reveal few intimate details about their personal lives, making it more difficult for their readers to bond with them.
I think if you read this blog enough, you'd get a good idea as to what I'm like since I do talk about myself plenty, but, like I said, I'm not Glenn Reynolds and this ain't a purely political blog. Some things, like why I didn't blog much for over two months, I can't quite talk about, but only because there are other people involved who would not like it if I talk about them too much.
Yeah, all I can say is I'm no Rush Limbaugh, and I don't even think I'm a Glenn Reynolds... Rush or Glenn would have a better idea how to end a piece like this than I would.
Hmm... you know, since I installed the
Site Meter, I've actually been quited surprised, not with the number of hits per day, which is better than I would have guessed but still modest, but rather the calibre (Canadian spelling) of people that seem to be reading this. I've had visitors from the servers of pretty much every major American Ivy League university and technical institute, and now I notice that I've had a visitor from none other than
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or, for those of you in Rio Linda, the Oscar people. Hmm... I guess they were doing a Google search for "Best Animated Feature", which appears a lot in these pages because of my unabashed cheerleading for
Lilo & Stitch over
Spirited Away. (I knew all along
Spirited Away would win, but the simple fact is that the enjoyment I got out of
Lilo & Stitch is worth a lot more to me than whatever I got, or was supposed to get, out of
Spirited Away, which I also like, I just wasn't floored by it like a lot of people were.) Hmm... well, even if they're mostly Hollywood liberals, I hope whomever it was at the Academy got some enjoyment from what they read here. I also hope they don't particularly care that I don't put the (TM) after each and every mention of the Oscar(TM) or the Academy Awards(TM) like we're supposed to. That's just cumbersome, both to write and to read... is there at least an ASCII keyboard code for the little "TM"? (I'm using a PC.) It's not on the chart I use...
THE "SPIRITED AWAY IS OVERRATED" WORLD REPORT
Well, I don't really have anything new; it's more like an update on a past "T
SAIOWR" story.
Remember how
I talked about Mark Morford, the guy at the San Francisco
Chronicle that wrote
that column, ostensibly about Spirited Away, that went on ridiculous tangents attacking Bush as well as the politics and beliefs of the bulk of the people in "flyover country"?
I don't really follow what he writes, but the fine people at
the Little Green Footballs blog do, and they have
an entry about his latest column, and, indeed, the
Spirited Away/Bush-bashing column was just "par for the course" as far as this guy is concerned. If anything, the
Spirited Away/Bush-bashing column was relatively logical and slightly-less-nonsensical and slightly-less-non-sequitur than what this guy usually writes, if the current column is any indication. I love how they call the guy a "barking moonbat", heh heh.
CANADIAN GRAND PRIX UP IN SMOKE
Well, it's official. There will be
no Canadian Grand Prix next year because of the bans on all forms of tobacco advertising including on the "wings" (rear spoilers) of Formula 1 cars.
That's it! The anti-smoking Gestapo has gone too far. Although I'm a non-smoker myself, I am a firm-believer in
smokers rights, being a consistent part of my overall position against "nanny-state nincompoopery", the people that want the government to tell us which foods we shouldn't eat, which television programmes (and, here in Canada, American cable channels) we shouldn't watch, and which videogames we shouldn't play. And, honestly, when I was a kid, I didn't mind the pleasant ambience of second hand smoke in certain situations.
The Canadian Grand Prix was a huge tourist draw for Montreal, and, as someone who has been to four Canadian Grand Prix races in person myself, I can honestly tell you that they really are a lot of fun, with lots of fun things to do in Montreal in the week prior to the event, with all the rich folks from hundreds if not thousands of miles around infusing Montreal streets with the glorious colour of red and yellow Ferraris, and I love the electricity of the crowd in the grandstands or spread out having picnics in the park on Ile N�tre-Dame and the noise you can feel in your bones when the F1 cars are out on the track, not to mention the great photo opportunities you get with, not just the F1 cars, but the cars in the supporting events like the Ferraris (mostly 360 Modenas, in racing colours), and other more esoteric classic racing cars of all types. But now all this has been taken away from me because some pussy activists get their panties in a knot over seeing the word "Marlboro" on the tail-fin of Michael Schumachers vehicle.
So, if any teenagers, preferably in Canada, are reading this, I strongly advise you that, if you aren't yet smoking, start! Really... you think you're being such a rebel by wearing black clothes and black lipstick and listening to Marilyn Manson albums? Please... that's *so* 1997! These days, there is no better way to shock the authority figures and other do-gooders at whom you wish to "flip the (figurative) bird" than the sight of a lit cigarette between the lips of your teenage mouth. If you ever watch
Cowboy Bebop (which we have to watch on DVD in Canada, since the "big-nanny" CRTC won't let us watch Cartoon Network), what do all the "cool" characters have in common? They smoke! So, light up and be as cool as Spike Spiegel or Faye Valentine! And, at school, nothing proclaims you as being the trendsetter that everyone else wants to follow as the telltale square indentation in the back pockets of your jeans. So, remember, kids, that smoking cigarettes gives you an aura of individuality and mystery and shows disdain for the authorities that want to butt into your life.
THE MIDDLE EAST NEEDS AN ENEMA UPDATE
(Well, okay, it's the Far East this time, but you know damn well what sort of countries I mean when I say "Middle East"...)
Just two words I need to say about the
terrorist attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta which blew out the entire first floor of the hotel, killing 14 and injuring scores more:
ISLAMOFASCIST SAVAGES.
It just goes to show that the War on Terror is off to an admirable start, taking out two terror bases (though bending over backwards to assist another terror supporting pseudo-state, "Palestine", into gaining some degree of legitimacy, but oh well), but the bulk of World War IV remains to be fought.
And, honestly, with this and the Bali bombing, I don't think they are primarily targetting foreigners, but, rather, other mainly-Islamic Asians that freely choose to join the modern world and not live life like it's still the 14th Century, since, in this bombing at least, that's mainly who they killed.
Why do I get the horrible feeling that the Americans will have to take out the House of Saud sooner or later, if they want to take out the heart of Al-Qaeda? What is it exactly that the CIA doesn't want us to know about the
Saudis? Well, it's not like the Americans need the Saudi airbases anymore, having all of Iraq as a nice staging area...
Unfortunately, Marriott seems to have endured more than its share of terrorist attrocities these past couple of years; let us never forget that the building known as 3 World Trade Center was (and hopefully will be again when they rebuild what ought to be rebuilt; accept no substitutes) a Marriott hotel.
Ya know, even if I was paying for the deluxe version of BlogSpot for this blog, which I am not, I don't think I'd *want* to get rid of the BlogSpot ad bar... it's an endless source of free material and/or odd links.
Now what's showing up last time I *reloaded* (no pun intended) is
"Need An Exit", a Christian outreach for
Matrix fans.
I'm not enough of a
Matrix fan to be able to endorse or blow apart the arguments made on that site, but it certainly is interesting reading...
I wonder how it got in my ad bar, though? I haven't exactly been talking about
The Matrix a lot lately... I never even got around to seeing
The Matrix Reloaded in theatres, though I will certainly rent it when it comes out on DVD...
Ooh... neat!
In the BlogSpot ad bar at the top of the screen, there's a DVD-related link, and, for a bloody change, it's not a disreputable online anime store selling only Chinese bootlegs!
It's a new site called
MoviesForMe.ca and it appears to be, finally, a Canadian equivalent of online DVD rental sites in the States like Netflix. Is this the first one in Canada? I don't know, but it's the first one I have heard of. Maybe I'll give it a try one of these days, though I'd only bother for more obscure things that I can't get at the local Pincourt Blockbuster... though that would include an awful lot of anime titles...
Oh... mine's back... so that last post looks completely ridiculous now... sorry.
Feh... BlogSpot.com is down as I write this, so I can't read my own blog. Yet I can write to it. How is that? The actual writing of the blog is done at
Blogger, BlogSpot.com is just the site it's written to.
But, assuming it's all the same server computers with the same Internet connection, how can one be up and the other down?
ANIME ON CANADIAN TV NEWS
Well, I noticed this on AnimeNewsNetwork.com the other day, but I was waiting for
Jesse Betteridge to mention it before I mentioned it here: the CRTC once again denied the Canadian version of Tech TV the right to air the dramatic and animated programming that the American version of Tech TV airs in the States, depriving Canadians of the
Anime Unleashed programming block, with Japanese cartoons meant for an older audience than what YTV airs. The whole justification for the ban on most American cable channels is that the best of what is shown on American cable makes it onto the Canadian channels sooner or later (often "later", much later), but here's yet another situation that proves that this is indeed not always the case, and makes me want to say to the CRTC bureaucrats even more than before, "Why don't you just piss off, Fischer, you dotty wee skid mark?" ("Is that Latin?") Also, it makes me wish even more that it could be legal again for Canadians to subscribe to American satellite TV services. While I believe that American satellite TV services should be avaialble to anyone who wants them in a totally unfettered free market situation, if I had to accept some sort of compromise, perhaps they could let Canadians subscribe to the American services, but put on a 15-20% surcharge to support Canadian programming. That would be far more acceptable than the situation we have now, where CRTC bureaucrats essentially decide for Canadians what they should and shouldn't watch.
I knew that YTV getting
Inu Yasha was an isolated piece of good news for Canadian anime fans.
Also, Betteridge notes that
Knights of the Zodiac, the DiC TV edit of
Saint Seiya, will be coming to YTV in the fall, but he warns us not to get excited: "the fact that ADV is releasing an entirely different dub on their DVD's doesn't bode well for DiC staying true to the original story. Expect heavy butchering." Well, in the situation with Nelvana and
Cardcaptor Sakura, my attitude was always that I didn't give two whits either way about what changes Nelvana made with
Cardcaptors, the TV dub for little kids, since Nelvana was kind enough to sublicense a subtitled and intact version of
Cardcaptor Sakura for the anime purists on DVD through Pioneer (I wish those DVDs were easier to find in Canada, though). In this instance, though, while I won't give two whits about what changes DiC makes to the
Knights of the Zodiac for kiddy TV, I also won't give two whits about the subtitled and intact version of
Saint Seiya either, as I saw a handful of the movies back when I was in my now-defunct anime club and it's got to be the most boring anime series I have ever seen... well, maybe the "benefit of the doubt" position would be that it's something you have to watch from the beginning to appreciate.
(Incidentally, the French-translated version of the
Saint Seiya manga is called
"Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque", which does translate *exactly* to
"Knights of the Zodiac" in English, leading me to think that is the "international title" the Japanese licensor specifies when foreign distributors pick up the rights.)
WE'LL GET THE KNIGHT BUS BUT THE KNIGHT BUS NEVER CAME!
Well,
back in February, I linked to
this (British) Sun article with cool pics of the triple-decker Knight Bus (the pics are still there too) from the upcoming third
Harry Potter film,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which is now shooting in Britain, to be released next summer. Well, there's now
Newsweek article, on MSNBC.com, with a couple of cool pics of the now-pubescent Harry and Hermione, and, for a change, they're not in their Hogwarts robes, they're in normal street clothes. I don't think the "half-tracksuit" look is too fashionable in America these days, but these films are set in Britain, and, as someone that has spent many a July in Britain, I can tell you that the sort of clothing you see Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson wearing in those photos is the exact sort of clothing you see kids wearing on every High Street or "shopping arcade" in England; that look never went out of style there.
I have to say that, while I did enjoy the first two films a fair bit, I do have to say that the medieval-with-only-a-few-token-modern-conveniences atmosphere of Hogwarts does get mighty claustrophobic after a while, so it is really nice to see the kids in a different setting. So after seeing these pics, the pics of the Knight Bus, and the pics of Gary Oldman as "Sirius Black", I am mighty pumped to see this. At this point, I can't think of any summer film next year I'm more excited to see, except for maybe Disney/Pixar's
The Incredibles, or, outside chance, Dreamworks'
Sharkslayer.
However, this
Newsweek article also added a big-ass fly to my fucking sweet custard. ("Fly in the ointment" doesn't really make much sense; what do I care if a fly landed in there, as long as I'm not taking it internally?) Even though this is an interview about a silly-but-fun kids' fantasy movie that takes place an ocean and an alternate plane away from the Muggle United States of America, director Alfonso Cuaron had to open his big fat mouth and tell us what he thinks of President Bush:
Cuaron�s outspokenness is also new to the franchise. Does the evil wizard Voldemort still remind him of George W. Bush, as he said recently? �In combination with Saddam,� he says. �They both have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people. I read books four and five, and Fudge��Rowling�s slippery Minister of Magic��is similar to Tony Blair. He�s the ultimate politician. He�s in denial about many things. And everything is for the sake of his own persona, his own power. The way the Iraq thing was handled was not unlike the way Fudge handled affairs in book four.� Cuaron�s scrappiness is either refreshing or worrying, depending on your stock portfolio.
Shut up! This is an interview about a silly kids' movie. It is neither the time nor the place to be speaking such things. You want to rant about Bush, go do it in some left-wing rag, preferably in Mexico, where I don't have to read it.
Well, I'm still hoping to see
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakban on opening day late next spring, but now I'm also hoping to see Alfonso Cuaron on the
Celebrity Liberal Blacklist Whine List... I'm surprised that
Celiberal.com hasn't added him yet, actually.
WHAT THE SMEGGING HELL?
Okay, although it's probably killing many brain cells just by virtue of being in the same room as it, I have this FOX special called
Stupid Behaviour Caught On Tape on TV in the background. And one of the things they showed was "Jamaican pop star Danny John-Jules" shooting a video but looking at the camera instead of where he's going and smacking into a tree. I know damn well who
Danny John-Jules is, but I don't recall him ever being a Jamaican pop star... he's "The Cat" on
Red Dwarf (he also had a bit part in
Blade II) and he was born in Britain! But that sure was him, alright, except without the fangs and with a rasta hat and dreadlocks....
Hmm... alright. Kick ass! According to my "recent visitor details", someone from IKEA just checked out this blog. Were they interested in my little
review of this year's IKEA catalogue or perhaps just
my anecdote about my brother's birthday experience at the new IKEA in Vaughan, Ontario, I wonder?
Hmm... weird.
The police, or rather, a pretty young policewoman from the S�ret� du Qu�bec (a.k.a. the SQ) was at my door...
(We used to have our own Pincourt police force, but the Quebec government got rid of a lot of the municipal police forces in the Montreal area outside the cities of Montreal, Laval and Longueuil a year or so back.)
Something about a truck hitting a telephone wire. I didn't hear a bloody thing, since I think I must have been in the shower when it happened. Well, anyhow, I still had to give a witness statement... pretty much just my name and date of birth.
I don't see anything visibly wrong with the wires outside... nothing seems to be down.
In June, when I didn't feel like writing in my blog much at all, we did have a wacky fun experience with the power lines outside our house. I heard a boom, and didn't know what it was, then another boom, and the power flickered, and then, a few seconds later, I saw a shower of sparks reflected in the picture window of the house across the street, and the lines came right on down, and we got the cops here and a bunch of firetrucks and they put the tape cutting off the street outside our house (which is a little complicated, since out house faces a T-junction) and there was a lot of excitement and running around, though I pretty much stayed inside, taking pictures through the picture window. But, to the credit of Hydro Quebec, they got the lines back up within about 4 hours, so I think the power was on in time to watch Conan O'Brien.
Geez... this is depressing.
I was watching the absolutely brilliant Royksopp music video "Remind Me", which is the video with all the charts, cutaway views and other infographics telling the story of a day in the life of a young London office worker, and, this time, I noticed a glaring typo.
For the chart showing the 4 main ways London workers commute to work by percentage, the headline of the chart says in bold letters "COMUTER TRANSPORT". I checked it on Dictionary.com and
"Comuter" is not a valid alternate spelling of "Commuter". For all the care the animators put into the video, which won "Best Video" at the European MTV Awards last year, I'm surprised they didn't use a decent spellchecker.
You can watch a poor resolution version of the video
here, but really, you should go use WinMX or something and download a higher resolution version of the video since there's so much text onscreen.
LINKS ABOUT THE IKEA CATALOGUE
You know, I have this weird desire, IKEA catalogue fan that I am, to show up on the first page when someone does a Google search for "IKEA catalogue". But I'm not there yet, so, to increase my position for that particular search on Google, I'm going to introduce a once-a-week feature called, "
LINKS ABOUT THE IKEA CATALOGUE".
This week:
"The Bible vs. the Ikea Catalogue � Which is Winning Hearts?"
I'm not actually going to provide commentary for these links, unless I feel like it...
And, yes, "catalogue" is the proper spelling in Canada. "Catalog" just looks wrong to me.
FANTASIA DIARY: SO CLOSE
On Thursday, I saw my third film at FantAsia this year (and my token non-anime film),
So Close (
Chik yeung tin sai), directed by Corey Yuen.
I don't usually like to get too Harry Knowles-ish by writing personal anecdotes prior to providing a synopsis in a review, but, in this case, I think it's warranted. This Hong Kong film stars Taiwanese beauty Shu Qi (who modeled under her birth name, Lin Li-Hua, prior to becoming an actress). I didn't really know who she was until, in the
RottenTomatoes.com forum, during a forum tournament called "Battle of the Hotties 2", I saw some rather
naughty, but tasteful, pictures of a woman I found very beautiful even for an Asian, and it was Shu Qi (inexplicably, she got voted out of the tournament). Well, I think I found a new favourite actress, and I did a little searching and found out that she was in last year's Luc Besson-written & produced
The Transporter, co-directed by Louis Leterrier and Corey Yuen, so I went out and rented it. It was a reasonably good time, with well-choreographed action scenes and car chases, and one very good gunfire & big explosion scene. I had the commentary track on, and the directors talked about Shu Qi being in the Asian version of
Charlie's Angels, and, unlike a lot of critics, I happen to adore the two
Charlie's Angels films, the most "pure silly fun" films I had seen since, perhaps, the original
Wayne's World film, so I went to the
Internet Movie Database and looked up Shu Qi, and, in the entry for
So Close, I noticed that there was something about Shu Qi being a hacker called "Angel.com", so I assumed this was the Asian
Charlie's Angels I heard about, and I was very pleased when I found a poster at Concordia advertising it, so I got a ticket for it and watched it on Thursday, as I said before. Turns out, although this film has three women kicking ass, it wasn't the "Asian
Charlie's Angels" they referred to on the commentary track; I should have done just a tad more research on Google to find out that film is actually
Martial Angels, but I enjoyed
So Close plenty, nevertheless.
The plot, being more a formality than anything in these things, opens with a virus disabling the systems of a giant computer company. However, a benevolent hacker that goes by the name of Angel.com disables the virus, and later, the hacker, a beautiful woman by the name of Lynn (Shu Qi), goes to visit the head of the company, Chow Lui. However, the virus had been a hoax, just video images, and the company's data remains intact, and the company had been involved in drug dealings and other underworldy activities. Lynn turns out to be an assassin, and, while the evil head of the company thinks he is protected from her by dropping down a bulletproof glass tube from the ceiling, around his desk, Lynn had put her glasses on the desk which shoot out cyanide gas, killing the evil boss. Lynn, aided by her younger sister Sue (Vicki Zhao) who was monitoring her progress on a surveillance system, manages to avoid much of the building security, though she still has to take out some of the lackeys they have for security with her martial arts skills, in a scene set, weirdly, to the strains of The Carpenters "Close to You" (covered here by Mai Kuraki).
Lynn and Sue are adult orphans who still live together at home. Their father had developed the World Panorama system, giving them access to all the surveillance systems in the world by satellite, but he and his wife had been murdered by gangsters who wanted the system (but who, apparently, once they murdered the father, somehow forgot to take the World Panorama computers and such, but that's a minor plot oversight). Instead of giving the World Panorama systems to the Chinese government (probably for the better), they use it themselves to carry out assassination missions, though they seem to be honourable assassins, only killing "bad guys".
There's also a pretty "hot", though innocent, bathtub scene at home where you get glimpses of Shu Qi's naked body, but nothing too explicit, mostly covered by bubbles or by a shower curtain.
Kong Yat Hong (Karen Mok), a young policewoman, and her partner Mark (Michael Wei), investigate the killing of Chow Lui, and she senses she's dealing with a very talented woman, noticing she was able to avoid her face being captured by any security cameras. Her clue is the song "Close to You", and Lynn and Sue follow Hong's investigation of their activities. During a scene at an HMV (hell yeah, an HMV scene! Like in
Bend It Like Beckham! I'm a big HMV fan...), Sue even lets Hong get a glimpse of her by putting a pair of "listening post" headphones onto Hong's head and playing the Kuraki Mai cover version of "Close to You" before Sue disappears into the crowd. How fortunate that Hong Kong HMV stores' "listening post"s seem to be equipped with every CD in the store rather than just a selection of 8 or so of the most popular CDs. Hong's investigation comes close to uncovering the truth, that Lynn was hired by Chow Lui's brother Chow Nunn to kill Lui because Nunn disagreed with Lui's business plans and because Nunn was sleeping with Lui's wife. Sensing that Hong is getting too close to finding out the truth, Nunn sends Lynn and Sue on another assassination mission, ostensibly to kill a guy at a nightclub from a sniping point at a hotel across the street. The initial hit attempt goes awry when Hong shows up at the hotel, and circumstances (movie critic code meaning "some complicated stuff happened to get them all together in one place which I forgot, but it isn't too important") lead to the assassins and Hong and her partner fighting each other in an elevator, eventually leading to a Mexican Standoff, with Lynn pointing her gun at Hong's partner Mark, and Hong pointing her gun at Lynn's sister Sue. But Nunn's thugs attack all of them, so they're forced to fight together (with Sue handcuffed to Hong) to fend them off in a long and elaborately choreographed sequence in a parking gargage.
Eventually, they get into a car, and Sue and Lynn drop of Hong and Mare at the curb and escape.
Lynn decides she doesn't want to be in the assassination business anymore, with dreams of marrying her longtime sweetheart Yen (Song-Seung Hon), so Sue decides to finish the job herself, leading her to get into a situation where she's being chased by the police and the bad guys, so Lynn has to direct her from her eye in the sky.
Then there's a rather shocking, realistic-looking bloody twist... I'd reveal it, thinking anyone that made it this far in the synopsis probably wouldn't care if I revealed all, but... nah, I'll be nice, this time. However, the synopsis on the
official site actually does reveal what happens, if you absolutely want to know. Anyhow, cop and assassin must team up to defeat Nunn's men for good, and there is some sort of vengeance involved, I can say that much.
While most reviews I looked at pegged the centerpiece fight as being in the parking garage, I think the most impressive sequence in the film is the bit in the end in the skyscraper. It's an absolutely vertigo-inducing structure with an large opening in each floor with a walkway across it, and the openings go all of the way from the top floor to the bottom, and it's at least a 50 storey building, so it's the same effect as me looking at people eating in the food court on the "Tunnel Level" of the Centre Eaton shopping centre in Montreal from the big glass window in the cinema some 6 or 7 storeys above, except multiplied by ten. And, yes, like all regular Chinese people, the cop and the assassin have amazing jumping powers, and, as such, they can travel up and down from storey to storey through the openings in the middle of each floor. Actually, forget "vertigo-inducing", if you have even the slightest fear of heights, what these girls do is positively vomit-inducing, though, in this case, making you throw up actually means the effects of the girls vaulting across the gaps in the floor, with, I presume, the actual floors ending only a storey or two below and everything below that being computer-generated, are seamless. And, if you're the sort of person that is afraid of elevators, there's a scene here just for you too.
The final battle with Chow Nunn using samurai swords in some sort of dojo was actually a bit anti-climactic after the gravity-ignoring wire-fu of the sequence before.
One point I have to make is that, at the centre of this film is the issue of surveillance technology and cameras invading all public spaces, but, while a Hollywood film, and, obviously, I'm thinking primarily of
Enemy of the State here, would beat you over the head with the message that all privacy is in danger of being eradicated by "Big Brother" technology, this film was interesting that the issue was never really raised, that the technology is amoral at worst, and whether or not constant surveillance is a good or bad thing depends on who is doing the watching. I don't have a problem with most closed circuit cameras in areas where the public gathers, but I admit connecting all surveillance systems in the world with one computer would make me queasy. But, since this is a Chinese film, no such issues are ever raised? I wonder if this is because Columbia's Asian film unit, Eastern Productions HK, didn't want to raise the ire of Peking... er, I mean, Beijing? Just a thought. Ah... it would have been annoying if they had gotten preach about this.
Some bits of the actual plot were very convoluted and hard-to-follow, and my difficulties following the plot were exacerbated at several points in the film by the straight white subtitles blending in with the background. Some shots of the subtitles blending into a white table ellicited laughs from the crowd. Also, the Caucasian actors playing the foreigners were laughably bad, for some reason, and their English pronounciation sounded almost as weird as that I'd heard in
Sakura Wars: The Movie the week prior. But the fights were better than anything I'd seen in ages, and I was never bored. That's almost another reason right there why I should avoid
Kill Bill... how on Earth can the fights in that possibly compare to these?
Supposedly there's also a lesbian subtext between Hong and Sue, but, honestly, I didn't see it. Like with Tomoyo's idolization of Sakura in
Cardcaptor Sakura, I think people might be reading way too much into things.
Yes, I can enthusiastically recommend this film. It loses half-a-star for the lack of a coherent plot at certain points, but, you know, I came to see Shu Qi and the other babes kick ass, and so much ass this film did kick that my ass is still sore 3 days later and I had to put on some Anusol. (This film will be released in limited release in North American theatres this fall by Columbia Pictures, but, if you can't wait and you have the equipment to play Region 3-encoded DVDs, the legitimate Region 3 release, with Cantonese soundtrack and Chinese and English subs, can be bought from
HK Flix, the Hong Kong online movie source which doesn't sell bootlegs.)
****�/*****
Onto a completely different subject...
So, I write this blog to be read by anyone and everyone, and I'll love to see the weird things people type into Google and find this blog were searching for, once I actually get some Google referrals listed on my new Site Meter, but some people's blogs are meant to be read by their friends, and their friends *only*. However, there's this group of girls whose blogs seem to have been meant to be read by each other, and I found their blogs by accident, doing an anime-related Google search one day. Somehow, I find the stories of the girls' lives to be somewhat endearing. I'm already invading their privacy; I'm not going to invade their privacy any further by giving you any sort of identifying details as to who they are. Just one thing, and I am fairly sure they aren't remotely the only girls that feel this way, so I have no difficulty telling you this, they like the film
Pirates of the Caribbean. And I saw it, and I liked it too; certainly, it was one of the best "popcorn" movies I've seen all summer. (Since I wasn't in a writing mood when I saw most of the summer films, I'm going to do one big-ass article with short thoughts on what I thought about all the summer films I've seen sooner or later.) But these girls really, really, really liked
Pirates of the Caribbean, to the point of seeing it about 10 times each last month. And they aren't the only ones, since
Pirates of the Caribbean was one of the few big movies this summer to have much in the way of "legs", with much less drop-off off the box office each weekend than everything from
The Matrix Reloaded to
The Hulk to
Terminator 3, which had big opening weekends but then fell down the charts quickly, so a lot of people must be seeing it many times each.
That, I admit, I don't quite understand. It was very good, probably good enough that I wouldn't mind getting the DVD of it for Christmas, but it wasn't *that* good that I'd watch it several times a week. I saw
The Royal Tenenbaums 8 times at the theatre, but spread out over the course of 3 months, so I certainly wasn't seeing it more than once-a-week. But it seems to me to be the new
Titanic, with girls seeing it multiple times, I guess because the girls are attracted to the character of Jack Sparrow the same way they were attracted to Jack Dawson before him. I wonder what it is exactly about Jack Sparrow that fills the girls' thoughts
when they masturbate and daydreams? As a man, women's minds are a mystery to me, but, I was thinking about it, and the best I could think of is that Jack Sparrow (the Johnny Depp character, BTW) doesn't really have a love interest in the film, which isn't a "spoiler", by the way, since the Keira Knightley character is always more interested in the Orlando Bloom character, so there is no love triangle. So, in the girls'
masturbatory fantasies sweet daydreams, I guess there is the fact that they wouldn't have to do anything to any fictional wives or girlfriends in order to sail off into the sunset with Jack. But, if it weren't a Disney film, I'm sure Jack Sparrow would have girlfriends, and, probably, children in every port, whom he's abandoned, so I don't know if he'd make that good a mate. So, in short, to any cute young Asian woman reading this, I'd be faithful to you, or, to put it another way, Steve Brandon > Jack Sparrow.
"CUE THE KLAUS NOMI!" UPDATE
Hmm... today was the 11th annual
Divers/Cit� gay pride parade, also known as the 10th annual "Divers/Cit� Parade Not Attended by Steve Brandon". Why did I go to the first one, in 1993? Well, I had heard that Scott Thompson from
Kids in the Hall was there, though I don't recall actually seeing him. (Years later, I saw Kevin McDonald leaving the Le Parisien theatre from the world premiere of
Osmosis Jones in 2001, though...) Also, yes, you know, I was (and still am, to some degree) bi-curious and I was 18 and I wanted to see if there were any friendly-looking bi or gay guys around my age, since this was still a couple of years before there were gay Internet personals sites and I had never really been at a gay event before (and haven't really been to one since), so the prospect of seeng a large group of like-minded guys was exciting. But... meh... back then, it wasn't corporate, so you got to see all sorts of people dressed up like freaks in their fetish gear and their drag, and, while I'm sure they find that sort of thing sexy, I sure as hell didn't, and let me just say it put me off remotely admitting even a small degree of curiousity for years and years. (Note to everyone: I still like chicks a lot more than I like guys; despite what some gay activists want you to think, admitting even a small degree of fluid bisexual curiousity is not just a way for gays in denial to stick a little baby toe out of the closet, because bisexuality *does* exist and the only way I'd be in denial would be if I said I am *not* attracted to women at all.) I admit, I do find some of the Thai men in drag I've seen on TV very sexy, but the thing there is, they actually look like women, not just hairy men in disgusting eye shadow, mascara and clown-like lipstick liek i saw at the parade.
Anyhow, I think, because of the parade, CFCF ran the episode of the sex show they show at midnight on Sasturday (or Sunday morning, if you want to be technical) about the origin of sexual orientation. As I would expect, since it is the "politically correct" explanation, it pretty much took the position that sexuality is physiological, not psychological. From the things I've read, I happen to disagree; I happen to think that the "essentialists" have way too simplistic a view of the human mind, and I doubt that there is a gene for every sexual deviation and fetish; there might be personality traits, especially extreme introversion or extreme extroversion, that may have some degree of influence on the sexual orientation one develops later in life, but it's like saying that tall people are relatively more likely to become basketball players. That's genetic in that there is a correlation between tallness and basketball-playing, but it doesn't mean that there is a specific basketball-player gene.
But, even if they could, for the sake of argument, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a specific gene with the specific purpose of making one become attracted to the same sex and not to the opposite sex, I think that would explain why *some* people are gay, but it wouldn't explain why *all* people are gay, because I despise "one size fits all" explanations for complex psychological phenomenon. Genetic explanations also don't explain why some people have more fluid, changeable orientations than others (despite what most of the gay lobby and much of the media would like you to think). People are individuals with unique life experiences, and, if you find 10 men that like other men and could somehow know all the millions of variables that affected their emotional development (which is impossible unless you're God), you'll find 10 individual explanations for how they came to like men.
The "essentialists" accuse those of us who take a "constructionist" viewpoint on the development of sexual orientation as saying that the people who are "gay" just woke up one morning and decided "Duh... I think I'll be gay!", but conscious choice is a complete and total red herring. It's about influences, especially during childhood, that led them to think in certain ways, not conscious choices. But, you know, physiological explanations for homosexuality is the prevailing view at the American Psychological Association, which declassified "homosexuality" as a mental disorder from the DSM-IV in the 1970s (though some psychologists disagree with that and view it more as a
political move than one based on science), so it is to be expected. It doesn't offend me that a TV show would take that position. At worse, I can agree to disagree.
What did offend me was this seemingly innocuous statement at the end of the programme which said that people who view homosexuality as being a physiological rather than psychological tend to be a lot more open-minded towards homosexuals than those of us that still believe in psychological explanations, and then, if that wasn't enough, they made the comparison to Nazis, who thought it was psychological, and, for that, they get a big hearty "Fuck you!" I think it's psychological because I am genuiniely curious about why homosexuals are that way and looked at both sides of the issue and came to the conclusion that I thought the psychological explanations hold more water, even if it's a lot less fashionable a view to hold these days. And, if the Nazis were around today, I think they'd love it if they found a physiological, genetic explanation for homosexuality, because then they'd know for sure exactly who to kill. And, a huge, very legitimate, concern about gay activists about finding a gay gene would be that parents would be able to tell whether or not their unborn child is going to be gay, and, if they do, they might choose to murder the child in the womb with abortion solely for that reason. You can think whatever you wish to think about the origin of homosexuality based on whichever studies you wish to cite, and that's fine, but if you don't recognize that the opposition may have reasons they feel are equally valid to disagree with your position and you start name-calling, then you're the one who is "intolerant".
Just a small aside... I've read some letters to the editor over the past couple of days by people outraged towards the Vatican's stance on homosexual marriage (i.e. the traditional position of the Church, and why should they change their views just to go along with what's fashionable now?) and the refusal to bless same-sex marriages, and these people usually cite "separation of church and state" as a reason to oppose the Vatican. But these people seem to come just short of demanding that governments around the world do something to make Catholic churches hold so-called "weddings" they disagree with. Hmm... so, I guess "separation of church and state", but only to prevent the church from having any sort of influence on the state? It's bad for politicians to vote according to their conscience, if their conscience has anything to do with any unfashionable organized religion, but, when it comes to the state interfering in the church and church policies, that's super?
