NEWS BRIEFS
Sorry, I've been
procrastinating busy for the past couple of days, so I want to catch up a little...
ITEM! Apparently, two punk acts cancelling their show is enough to cause
Montreal punk wannabees to riot. Yes, since
Total Chaos and
Exploited had problems getting across the border and had to cancel their show and
the Medley (which, according to my brother, is a music club which is more oriented to Francophone punkers than Anglophone ones) allegedly wouldn't refund the tickets, that's enough of an excuse to go on a rampage down Saint Denis and then along Sainte Catherine's, overturning cars and setting them on fire, attacking police officers and reporters, and smashing store windows like that of the
Archambault bookstore (it's officially a bookstore so it can get around Quebec's archaic opening hour laws, but it is as much a music and video store as it is a bookstore) at Sainte Catherine's and Berri, which has a surprisingly good anime selection for a French-oriented bookstore. Bastards! And, on
LCN, the French-Canadian headline news channel, they kept on showing this clip of a young punk that the reporter was trying to interview, but all he was doing was emitting an unintelligible stream of
joual, laced with "chalice", "tabernacle", and "hostie"** while making faces at the camera.
I agree with what Rush Limbaugh said himself ten years ago, when talking about the 1993 Stanley Cup Riot on his television programme... the police should declare martial law in these situations. That'll make 'em think twice.
ITEM! Speaking of crossing the border, this weekend marked my tenth anniversary of the last time I crossed the border into the United States (and that was just a day-trip to visit WCFE-FM - Mountain Lake Public Radio in Plattsburgh NY). Obviously, as a fan of
National Review and Rush Limabugh, I haven't exactly been avoiding the United States, just, it seems, everytime I'm about to go somewhere within the lower 48, something happens that keeps me at home (like my wisdom teeth needing to come out). I gotta go sometimes... there's just someone special in San Antonio whom I'm longing to visit.
ITEM! Well, it looks like
the Canadian Grand Prix may be held next year after all, since Montreal does appear on the revised preliminary schedule of races next year. To compensate for the loss of tobacco advertising revenue due to the ridiculous ban on the word "Marlboro" appearing on tailfins, Quebec Premier Jean Charest is prepared to "invest" money. Well, I'd certainly be happy for the Formula One to be back as usual in town next year, but I can't say I approve of corporate welfare keeping it here (okay, more corporate welfare than they already get, I know). Better to just rescind the draconian legislation preventing companies from advertising a legal product, or at least make exemptions for international sporting events; that won't cost taxpayers a cent. (The next thing you know, the anti-smoking gestapo will want it so that transmissions of sporting events from foreign countries wherein tobacco advertising is not banned will have to be censored or banned from broadcast in Canada altogether so that Canadian childrens' eyes will not come across the demon eight letters "M-A-R-L-B-O-R-O" which will magically make them want to start smoking. Well, at least I can voluntarily endorse fine Marlboro-brand tobacco products from the Philip-Morris... even though I don't smoke. As long as they don't pay me, it's alright, correct? Well, kids, Asian stuff is cool now, apparently, so smoke the smooth filters Asian people are coming to know and love. Hey, it's the brand Spike Spiegel himself smokes on that whiz-bang cool Japanese cartoon
Cowboy Bebop. Isn't it time you explored the taste of Marlboro country?)
ITEM! It's
the Link's annual spoof issue, which fooled me for just a minute, making me think the imaginary
Swerderstinians was some new, politically-correct appelation for "Lapplanders", until I noticed that the title of this particular issue was
Ze Vink, so I knew it was a spoof. Unfortunately, the funniest part seems to be only in the print edition: a 20-photo story of Comrade Yves Engler getting arrested at a Concordia Student Union meeting in September. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I noticed the captions below the photos, telling the story in fairy tale format. Pretty funny, but, really, photos of an annoying, self-aggrandizing Communist grandstander getting arrested are funny on their own merits.
ITEM! I still have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about, but it's very late, so I'll continue this tomorrow evening. Also, I saw the
second episode of live-action Sailor Moon and, since several people thought my comments on the first episode were really funny (well, it's such a goofy show that "TEH FUNNY" writes itself), I'm doing the exact same thing for the second episode. I've already done about half of it, but I didn't feel like watching the episode the whole way through for the second time in one night, so I saved it as a draft and expect it on Friday.
**Allegedly, "chalice" = fuck, "tabernacle" = shit, and "hostie" = damn even though these are really Catholic words. I don't know who decided that "chalice" can be translated as "fuck", to be perfectly honest; the vulgar French word for the sex act itself is "baisser", whilst the vulgar word for "shit" is "merde".
SAILOR MOON THOUGHTS (UPDATED, WITH THE ULTIMATE "SAILOR MOON ON YTV" STORY)
I downloaded (from WinMX, not a website) and watched the first episode of the live-action
Sailor Moon series,
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, in raw unsubtitled format. I'm not going to attempt to write out a synopsis, but I don't need to since
the Sailor Moon Soapbox (genvid.com) already has an exhaustive summary of everything that happens, so I'll just give a couple of thoughts.
This show is good goofy fun. I get the weird idea that some online
Sailor Moon fans were expecting something more maturely-themed than the anime, full of angst and gravitas, but, pretty much as soon as I saw the coloured wigs that the "Sailor Senshi" wear in their transformed mode, I knew this would really be nothing but a "sentai" (Japanese costumed superheroes, with the most famous example in the West being, obviously,
Power Rangers) show for girls (and adults reliving their
Sailor Moon memories), though I'm glad that, as in the anime, you see enough of the girls' "normal" lives for it to be interesting to me. Really, making it live-action doesn't make it more mature; if anything, making it live-action makes one realize how ridiculous a lot of the concepts from the manga and anime were, since it's a lot harder to suspend one's disbelief when it's real actors and not just drawings. Though, the acting is very good, considering the goofiness of what the actors have to put up with.
I don't know about that opening... I don't mind the song, though it doesn't seem remotely as memoriable as "Moonlight Densetsu" ("Moonlight Legend")... it's fairly generic J-pop. The still images of the "normal" girls in rapid succession to give a strobe effect reminds me exactly of my vision when I woke up in the morning back in the days when I was taking
Serzone. (Actually, that was pretty cool... I oughta see Rush Limbaugh's "pharmacist" and see if I can get some more "under the table".) Something about the silhouettes of the girls in Sailor Senshi mode dancing in the hands of the girls in "normal" mode is unnerving... like it reminds me, vaguely, of some bad (but in a fun, cheesy way) educational show from the 1980s, but I can't quite place it. But... oh ho, why do they have to get the girls to sing along for a bit? That's just too corny. However, I do like the girls in that side-scrolling pan shot when they're in still action poses straight out of the cartoon. And... is it just me or is Mars' hair natural and not a wig like the others?
Shingo (Usagi's younger brother, "Sammy" in the dub of the anime) seems a bit more well-mannered than in the animated version, like he thinks of himself as having to take care of his klutzy older sister. And Usagi doesn't kick him.
Oh, Minako Aino's ("Meena") actually an idol singer in the live-action version, and her song "C'est la vie" (pronounced the same way the Japanese pronounce "Sailor V"... of course Naoko Takeuchi probably intended that as a joke all along) is playing on the radio in the bedroom scene... could they be any more obvious? Well, I'm guessing the bulk of the audience knows the whole story anyhow, so you're supposed to be able to get the joke immediately.
Did Usagi's mother (Ikuko Tsukino... I honestly don't remember if she had a name in the dub) give birth to Usagi when she was about ten?
What's the point of having the Karaoke lyrics displayed on the TV screen? So viewers can sing along? Isn't that destroying the "fourth wall" just a smidgen? Especially when Usagi looks straight into the camera...
Honestly, the guy playing Mamoru Chiba ("Darien")/Tuxedo Mask just doesn't do anything for me. He's not the sort of Japanese guy I find terribly sexy... well, a guy can admit whether or not he finds another guy sexy. Nothing weird about that, right?
I understand why they made Luna a stuffed toy and not a real cat... if they had attempted to mix in a real cat with a cat puppet � la "Salem" in
Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the puppet they use anywhere the cat has to talk or "act" would look distractingly fake. If the cat's supposed to be fake to begin with, it's a lot less distracting. Also, I like how they play around with Luna's eyes for cartoonish expressions. Just, in the scenes wherein Luna moves around, she's quite obviously a computer-generated rendering, and, sometimes, Luna's much too glossy for a stuffed toy, like they were using a Phong shader with the highlights set much to high... a Blinn shader (diffuse highlights) or even a Lambert shader (no highlights) would be much better for a stuffed toy. (Note:
Here's a good introduction for CGI shader terminology, for those of you not in the know; it's for
Maya, but the terminology used on this page also apply to, at least,
3d Studio Max and
Softimage XSI.) By the way, yes, that is indeed Keiko Han from the anime once again supplying Luna's voice (she was also the voice of Queen Beryl in the anime).
Jadeite is *much* younger than he appears to be in either the manga or anime, where he seems to be in his young twenties. The live-action version of Jadeite is a barely-pubescent boy, who appears to be even younger than Usagi Tsukino ("Serena")/Sailor Moon herself. I'm guessing they may have cast Queen Beryl's henchmen with boys much younger than the characters were in the cartoon or comic, simply because, for whatever reason, Nephrite's "Lolita complex" might fly in the animated version (it doesn't really occur in the comic), but it just would be uncomfortable to watch in live-action, so, if his alias "Masato Sanjouin" ("Maxfield Stanton") is going to fall in love with Naru Osaka ("Molly") in this version, he may just be about the same age (he is supposed to be older than Jadeite). By the way, Jadeite's eys going green reminds me exactly of Zardip from
Zardip's Search for Healthy Wellness (or was it
Zardip's Quest for Healthy Wellness? I get both titles on Google...).
Nooooooo!!!! Why does Luna give Usagi the heart-shaped brooch? Don't the creators of the live action series know that Usagi doesn't get that until the third series,
Sailor Moon S? (In the first series, she has the simple gold brooch with the crescent moon and the circle, and in the second series,
Sailor Moon R, she has the brooch with the pentagram.)
I have to say, the "monster-of-the-week" posing as Naru's mother is much more impressive in the live-action version than that green ghoul thing from the first episode of the anime, with the giant, gelatinous arms coming out of her head. It reminds me of the Chaos bosses from the first
Sonic Adventure game.
Hmm, on the "big close-up" of Sailor Moon's face, when her eyes look up towards the jewel in her tiara... tell me that pic isn't screaming out to be made into a lame "hypnosis manip", for all those people with a hypno-fetish (popular in Japan)?
In the close-up profile shot of Sailor Moon during the "Moon Healing Escalation" sequence, when it gets shiny and dissolves into the crescent moon, where did her ponytails go?
Yeah, I would "do" Queen Beryl whom is indeed hot in a "Rita Repulsa" sort of way... as for whether I'd "do" anyone else on the show, my lips are sealed. I'm not admitting anything... you'll never get me to talk, coppers!
That's it for my thoughts on the first episode of the live-action version; I'll update this entry on Friday afternoon with the ultimate "
Sailor Moon on YTV" story I've been promising I'd get to for a while...
UPDATE: Ah, here's my ultimate "
Sailor Moon on YTV" story, as promised, if a little late.
Where should I start? I was out of full-time education from 1993 to 1996, and I wasn't working so, while I took a couple of classes, I had a lot of free time on my hand. So, I drew a lot, including anime pictures. I really needed to get out of the house more, so, in 1994, I joined an anime club over at Universit� de Montr�al. (I think the original name was Fanimation/Animania, but it soon changed to Animate, and, finally, Anim� Central before it folded in 2001.) And, one of the first series I saw there was
Sailor Moon, which appealed to me very much despite its overall apparent cheesiness. I don't know if it's just that I like Japanese schoolgirls from watching
Project A-Ko earlier that year or what. Well, maybe that it's not totally a superheroine show... you see enough of the girls' private lives and there's enough humour for it to be interesting to me. But very few other people at the club liked it, so they stopped showing it after about episode six ("Protect the Melody of Love! Usagi is a Cupid!"). Fortunately, I was able to see more of it from fansubs in the club library, and dubbed my own tapes. Even though the picture quality was crappy, I was able to reproduce the look of
Sailor Moon fairly well on paper with my Prismacolor pencil crayons for my pen-pals and those other friends I liked writing to (you know whom you are ;)...)
At the beginning of August 1995, I caught a voice-over promo during the credits on some YTV programme that said
Sailor Moon, so I got excited, even though I knew
Sailor Moon would have to have been edited for television. Well, look, this was 1995... there was hardly any anime on television... okay, aside from
Ronin Warriors, but that wasn't too popular. It wasn't the same situation for anime on television here in Canada where we have
Inu Yasha and... umm... well,
Inu Yasha's a good start for non-kiddy anime. So, anyhow, I went down to the local stationery store and bought myself a large sheet of card, and cut it up into
TV Guide-sized postcards, and I drew a picture of Sailor Moon... I think the first one I did relevant to this story was her in her famous "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" ("Tsuki ni kawatte, oshiokiyo!") pose... and I drew another one... and several more. And, yes, I sent them in to YTV, to
The Zone specifically... though this was long before Stephanie Beard (once again, guys, there are no naked pictures of "Sugar" anywhere to be found, so stop looking... and it's more than one person looking for them too, according to my Bravenet counter). This was the era when
Phil Guerrero was the host along with Snit, a purple monitor whose screen displated teeth and whose voice was provided, from what I understand, by early YTV host
Ron Oliver, who is, incidentally, a director who has directed episodes of such television programmes as
The Chris Isaak Show and
Queer as Folk, as well as the theatrical film
Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (wasn't it originally called "Hello Mary Lou"?).
Well, August 28th, the day
Sailor Moon premiered on Canadian television, came and went, and my artwork wasn't shown... however... I think it was sometime in September, before my 21st birthday at least (October 2nd, 1995), Phil did start showing them on the air. And he mispronounced "Pincourt" (it's "PAN-coor"), so I had to correct him, I do remember. Well, eventually, them showing my
Sailor Moon artowrk on the air became almost an unofficial once-a-week thing, so I even diversified a little. One day, Phil referenced the "ALF Pogs" line from the classic
Simpsons episode "Bart Sells His Soul", so I sent him a picture of the "ALF Pogs" with a drawing of "Comic Book Guy" on the back. That was neat. The best part, though, was that I even got a couple of pieces of fan-mail, including a girl who wanted me to draw a picture of Zoisite on the merry-go-round in the episode "Umino's Resove! I'll Protect Naru!" (well, I don't remember the dub title of the episode and I don't feel like checking right now), so I sent one in, and then I started communicating to a producer (or was he the director?) on
The Zone nicknamed "Egghead" by e-mail (which was still a newfangled innovation to me back then, and I had to use my father's e-mail address too, I think), and he said that they hadn't received anything like that so I did a second one of the same picture... the weird thing about that particular picture is that, once they were showing a videotape of Phil's office and I think I saw it hanging in there.
Well, by the beginning of 1996, they had pretty much stopped showing my stuff, but my brief moment of celebrity was fun while it lasted. Although, yes, I really was just a 21 year old with too much time on his hands (well, they didn't really have blogs back then), I do like to think I gave
Sailor Moon's popularity in Canada a tiny boost by showing kids that some adults really do like the show, giving it a cachet that... say... old
Alvin and the Chipmunks reruns lacked. Also, I seem to remember that there was at least one other adult copycat that submitted a picture or two of Sailor Mars... heh heh.
Now that I've revealed that about myself that I, as an adult, submitted artwork to a children's television programme, you may laugh at me all you like.
