ARIA is the story of Akari Mizunashi and her day to day life on Aqua as a Undine (gondolier). This is slice-of-life anime at its best. The series started out as a manga and has been translated into animated form beautifully. The stories tend to be fairly simple glimpses into Akari’s life. Wether it is giving a free ride to a young girl and showing her what is special about Aqua or practicing her rowing with her friend Aika. You always find a relaxing bit of story. So far, one I’ll be watching.
ICv2 has posted information about a marathon of Miyazaki films on TCM in January 2006.
ICv2 has learned that in January 2006, Turner Classic Movies, a prominent cable and satellite network, will run nine animated features by the great Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki’s movies have received scant exposure on American TV so the showings on Turner Classic Movies should expose a wide audience to these masterworks.
A complete list of the films (and airdates) will be released next week, but ICv2 has learned that TCM will show such Miyazaki-directed classics as: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and Porco Rosso, as well as Whisper of the Heart, which was directed by Yoshifumi Kondou, though Miyazaki wrote the screenplay, drew the storyboards and produced the film. [ICv2]
I’m pretty psyched. I’ve wanted to see Whisper of the Heart for a while. I’m also hoping for Kiki’s and The Castle of Cagliostro.
More and more content for the video iPod keeps showing up. This time it’s anime from Central Park Media. Their initial offering is a show called Votoms. While I don’t have a video iPod it’s still stuff I can watch on my computer. But people are already putting out content.
On November 6th Cartoon Network starts showing the animated version of The Boondocks. Definitely something to check out. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the comic strip, Newsweek has an article about it and the upcoming show.
Tonight I did a double feature of two movies. One I’ve watched many times already, and one that just came in from Greencine. First there was one of my favs, Shaun of the Dead. It still entertains and I needed a bit of that wackiness today. Then came Garden State, which came from Greencine, but which may be purchased soon.
I liked Garden State a bunch, but I’m not sure I could say why. I also couldn’t decide right away if I liked it. I’m pretty sure I want to watch it again before sending it back.
Together though, they were an odd combination that I’m not sure were what I was looking for. Maybe I should have done Shaun then Bubba Ho-Tep and saved Garden State for tomorrow.
From the “in case you hadn’t figured it out already” department. cbc.ca reports “Hollywood movies unrealistic when it comes to sex and pot“. Are they implying that they are realistic when it comes to other drugs?
Hollywood movies unrealistic when it comes to sex and pot
A team of Australian medical researchers published a new study today that said Hollywood movies fail to show the negative consequences of sex and drug use.
The team lead by Dr. Hasantha Gunasekera of the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney studied 87 of Hollywood’s biggest box-office hits since 1983 and found plenty of sex, but only one reference to condoms. The films contained no depictions of unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. The report also said that drug-use tended to be portrayed “without negative consequences” among the top-grossing films of the past two decades.[cbc.ca]
Shining looks like it could rock. Check out the trailer.
AdRants has an post about people being upset about ads on Flickr. People seem to be blaming Yahoo! for this practice.
With Yahoo’s purchase of Flickr, it didn’t take too long for Yahoo text ads to begin appearing next to Flickr member’s pictures. Unlike Google AdWords, Yahoo text ads, at least on Flickr, appear on personal Flickr pages whether or not the member wants them. Granted, Flickr provides the service for free which negates a non-paying Flickr member’s ability to completely control what appears on their photo pages but one Flickr user, tanais, doesn’t like the practice, commenting on an ad placement next to an image of, we assume, his dog, “I do not like my pictures being used to advertise a specific breeder (they may be excellent they may be terrible – that’s not the point)… so I shall sit down and think about how best to AdBust this.” [AdRants]
IMHO the people complaining are idiots. I’ve been a user for ages, and Flickr has always had ads for free accounts. It’s been one of the big selling points for their Pro accounts. I’m not a fan of advertising, but you can’t expect to get something for nothing.
Flickr is one of the few web sites that I think does get it right. And my Pro account has been a very good deal. If it’s that much of a big deal pay for the service.
Recently the New York Times ran an article about Manga for Girls. In other words: shoujo manga. Even though I might nit-pick on a few points, it’s a pretty solid article.
Shojo – the word means girl in Japanese – frequently involves a lovelorn teenager seeking a boyfriend or dealing with situations like entering a new school, being bullied or trying to break away from a clique. There are also action stories featuring girls in strong roles as scientists and samurai warriors. (The shojo genre has been called “big eyes save the world,” after the characteristic drawing style of girls with saucer-shaped eyes who are sometimes endowed with supernatural powers.)
But parents and teachers, who are sometimes happy to see teenagers reading just about anything, might be caught off guard by some of the content of the girls’ favorite books. Among the best-selling shojo are stories that involve cross-dressing boys and characters who magically change sex, brother-sister romances and teenage girls falling in love with 10-year-old boys. Then there’s a whole subgenre known as shonen ai, or boy’s love, which usually features romances between two impossibly pretty young men. [NYTimes: Manga and Girls]
Last saturday Naruto started airing on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block of programming. For those of you who aren’t anime fans, Naruto is one of the most popular shows to come out of Japan in the last couple of years. Cartoon Network has a really random reputation when it comes to treatment of anime. Sometimes deserved, sometimes not.
Given the above, I was kind nervous tuning in to check it out. I tend not to be a fan of dubbing, but realize that it is the only way that most shows will make it onto TV. In the end, Cartoon Network did a pretty good job. My biggest complaint was ‘why bother changing the opening and ending?’. The ones for the show are pretty good as it is (and some of the later ones are great). The voices themselves were okay, I think the VAs may have to grow into them a little, but hopefully that won’t take long. Very little editing. One minor thing that bugged me a little was that they edited out nosebleeds. Nosebleeds? They’re an anime thing. When a character sees something naughty or has perverted thoughts they tend to get nosebleeds. No, I don’t get it either, but I’m used to it.
I’ve got it programmed into my TiVo as a season pass for now.