Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

I don't believe it, I somehow managed to hold out all the way until the spring season batch of shows without running out of things to blog! I'm pretty thrilled by this turn of events, although I didn't watch many spring shows so I'm going to actually run out of things to blog pretty soon. 

Hmm, well for the moment, as per-usual my first review of the season is my favorite show/the one that really needs as many views as it can get (places like Funimation have said that the views that count towards determining if a show is going to get a physical release or not are all of the views while the show was airing+one week, although I've missed that window). I talked about the first half of Concrete Revolutio earlier in the year so I suppose this is my last shot to convince folks that yes, this is yet another superhero anime worth watching.

Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

Anime Review: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Before the season started I was tentative on this title, it sounded like it could be good but I really hadn't heard much about it. I knew it was about rakugo, knew what the basics of rakugo was, and that it was a josei title. So it was for an entirely unrelated reason that I was optimistic, the last time I was curious but had no idea if a josei title was going to be good was Chihayafuru and we all know how amazing that series turned out to be!

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Book Review: The Dead Key

This was the second of the free books I got from Amazon as part of my Prime trial membership, if anyone else here is thinking of doing the prime membership I highly recommend doing it so it falls over two calendar months (especially a 15th-15th if you can) so that you at least have the option of getting more than one book from this deal.

The Dead Key by D. M. Pulley

Manga Review: 20th Century Boys (volumes 15-18)

My new library has a few more volumes of 20th Century Boys which I was pretty thrilled to discover. True I'm still six volumes from the end but I think it'll be a lot easier for me to bug them and convince them to buy six volumes of manga for me to read instead of 10....

20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa

Manga Review: 20th Century Boys (volumes 1-14)

It's always nice when I get to read something I've been looking forward to for a while and, given the effusive praise I've seen for this series over the years it's been on my list for a while. People speak of it as if it's Naoki Urasawa's crowning masterpiece (I simply find it silly to call something that when the creator is still alive and making things) and I did like Pluto when I read it years ago so I've wanted to read it for a while, the problem is that not only is it quite long (over 20 volumes) but Urasawa does not want his manga available digitally so if I wanted to read it it looked like I was going to have to shelve out quite a bit of money and shelf space. Thankfully my new library system did have some of it but sadly I'm still at least eight volumes away from the ending, I wonder how I'll get to it and how many of the plot threads I can still keep straight by then.

20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, Spearhead From Space

It's that time of the month again, well it will be next Sunday since that's when the Fourth Doctor Classic Serial will be anyway, time to dive into the BBC archives! And this is interesting, the only bit of the Third Doctor I had seen before was the Three Doctors special which apparently is the end of a story arc which starts with this episode, the very first episode of the Third Doctor (and I've already seen Two regenerate into Three). I went in a bit hesistant since I didn't really like Three in the special but hey, I didn't really like One there either and ended up loving The Aztecs so this should probably end well!


Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

Summary: Directly after The War Games, the Doctor has been forcibly regenerated by the Time Lords who have also played with his memory (as well as his previous assistants/companions who are back in their own time and places) and left him stranded on Earth with a TARDIS that can't move. He's soon picked up by UNIT

The Good: The more I see of Classic Who the more I'm mazed at just how many aliens/villains they brought back for the new series, I had no idea that shop maniquens had been a source of terror for British children for decades! On that note, it's probably a good thing I never saw these episodes as a kid myself, while some things looked a bit hooky to my young adult self the basic idea is sound and certainly works. Also, as I mentioned earlier I was a bit worried going into this since I didn't really like Three in The Three Doctors (thinking back on that I just didn't like that special at all, I was a bit offended by how bad the costumes were to be honest) but yet again I ended up liking him. I caught a bit of the documentary about the third doctor beforehand and they were talking about how this Doctor was a bit James Bond like and yep, I can see that with how the Doctor was acting and it was a fun change of pace to see him more as a guy who is actively seeking out action rather than a guy who seeks out mystery and adventure and just happens to find adventure along the way.

The Bad: Weirdly enough, since I've seen episodes with UNIT in it before but they felt a little awkward here. Of course, that might have been the intention, setting up future conflicts with the Doctor since he's going to be stuck on Earth for a while, but I couldn't even tell if the Brigadier and the Doctor has met before, I think so but I'm still not 100% positive. It was also a little hard to keep some of the various characters/factions straight but I think that was more my fault for trying to knit and watch at the same time, overall I think that yet again the BBC made a really good choice here.

The Audio/Visuals: It's our first serial in color, yay! And, according to the internet, because there were some interesting production problems the serial was shot on film (as opposed to, erm, whatever they normally shot on, film is apparently superior to whatever that was) and apparently it's good enough to be released on blu-ray (the only pre-2005 serial to do so). The special effects seem less hooky than the cybermen last time, which is funny since the reason for the whole "the Doctor is grounded on Earth" storyline is because the BBC was having budget cuts. Then again, if Doctor Who ever manages to have a cheaper looking costumes than those cybermen ones then they probably had negative budget to work with.....


Not much to add one, bring on the Fourth Doctor and I can't wait until I'm near a library with more Classic Doctor Who serials again!

Anime Review: Rose of Versailles

When I first started hearing about this show I of course heard about how great it was, how much of an influence it had on later shows, about the Tarazuka performances but one other thing I heard was that even fansubs were apparently hard to find, hence why I never looked around for the show itself. So when Nozomi announced last year that they had licensed the show (a feat that took them literally ten years, holy hell how do you have the dedication to do that?!) and that they were streaming it I figured this was a pretty good sign that I should watch it. Started watching the streams a bit after they started but once I got a few episodes into the show I found that I was enjoying it quite a bit for a show that was over 10 years older than I was, making it by far the oldest bit of anime I've seen and also a rather unique one in some ways.


Rose of Versailles

Summary: When his fifth daughter is born General Jarjayes of France decides that if he and his wife can't seen to conceive a son then he'll just have to raise one of his daughters as one and christens his last child Oscar and raises her as his heir. Her gender is fairly well known, and she seems quite comfortable not having to deal with the petty squabbles of 1700s French court women, although with the French Revolution building that inane life might have been a safer one for you.

The Good: I was a bit worried when the story started with Oscar being just 14, no offense to 14 year olds but you guys just aren't the best main characters for epic stories, so I was pleased to see that this story takes place over years and years with a good sized cast coming in and out of the story. The show is also surprisingly faithful in regards to real history, you can look up just about any of the major events in a book (or wikipedia) and see just how similar it all was. The story takes bigger liberties with it's characters, certainly there was no one like Oscar around and several characters had their backstories changed or expanded upon, although ultimately none of these changes were enough to influence the history which is exactly what I hope for in good historical fiction, a very solid and well-researched setting with characters who are influenced by it but still have their own problems and goals.

The Bad: My biggest gripe here is how hard it is to figure out how much time has passed from episode to episode. As far as I can tell the show starts when Oscar is about 14 and ends sometime in her late 20s/early 30s, if I had really and throughly studied French history I could have picked up more clues in context and figured out her age but I haven't and the voice actors remain the same for all the characters, plus some of the characters look young/old for their age, so it was a bit frustrating to try and keep track of that.

The Audio: The show uses the same voice actors for each character regardless of age (which certainly didn't help me with keep track of Oscar's age but I can see why they did it) and the music didn't change much over the course of the show either. It kept it's opening and ending theme throughout and it's most distinctive themes should be quite familiar to the viewers by the end of the show. Everything sounded fine, the music was a bit overly dramatic at points but that's just a matter of taste and the acting was certainly fine, no problems here!

The Visuals: This is a show that's been around longer than I have so obviously it's not going to look as pretty as a show produced in the last two or three years and very stylistically different from a show produced in the last decade or two. The show uses a lot of still images for dramatic effect (usually with the camera moving out or in to dramatic music) yet at the same time it doesn't shy away from having quite a few sword fights between characters which are fully animated (I'm sure some people who know more about animation than me can say if they're as fluid as fights in more recently shows, they didn't seem quite a fluid to me but regardless my point is that even though the show cut corners in some places they went all out in others). There wasn't as much shaking as I expected (or maybe I just got used to it, in the past shows I've seen from the mid-90s earlier had so much shake it was like they decided to scan in the frames during an earthquake) and again the colors aren't quite as vibrant as something painted digitally but given the setting of the show that's perfectly fine. A lot of the characters look alike (to be perfectly frank, I'm still not 100% sure who a few of the characters in the above image are) and a lot of the, apparently, lavish outfits of the cast look plain to me, probably because the coloring is a bit flat so a peasant's outfit seems to be made out of the same fabric as Marie-Antoinette's (which might sound weird to some people yet after years of cosplaying I can figure out the texture of an outfit in a show from looking at it for just a few minutes, here I really couldn't do that). So yes, the art is dated and animation is limited from a modern viewers perspective but I could just as easily pull out a show from the past few years and show where RoV surpasses it in both departments, whether you can get used to the art or not is going to be a matter of how willing you are to give it a shot and try to overlook or understand it's shortcomings.


So I'm giving the show a solid 3.5 out of 5 stars and recommending it to anyone whose ever been even vaguely curious about it or who really enjoys modern day shojo, it never hurts to see how the genre has progressed over the years and all 40 episodes are streaming for free on Viki (Nozomi will be releasing it in two sets sometime this year). Heck, after seeing this I really want to pull out of my Revolutionary Girl Utena sets and rewatch that show now that I can see where Utena must have gotten a lot of it's influences (I'm told that both of them were influenced by Princess Knight and I'll probably watch that someday too, just with a bit of a ranty write-up based on what I know about it....). Also feel like rewatching Le Chevalier D'Eon for comparison's sake too, which now that I think about it must have been at least partially inspired by RoV. In any case, will I buy this? I don't know, I liked it quite a bit but I just don't know if I want to rewatch it and I only buy stuff that I want to rewatch. Hopefully Nozomi will have the sets for sale for a while so I'll be able to think more about it, I'm sure my wallet will be happier for that too.   

Movie Review: Argo

Back this past summer or so I stumbled across this article on Wired.com talking about how during the Iranian Hostage Crisis there had been some other Americans who had gotten out of the embassy and managed to escape well before the rest of the hostages (who were still alive) were released (according to wikipedia the screenplay was actually based on that article, need a source on that though). Shortly afterwords I saw an ad for a movie called Argo and thought what a funny coincidence and it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the connection (I should've at least noticed that the article dated from 2007). For those who don't understand how history classes in the US go (or at least classes in the Midwest and South), American history/American involve in history is king yet, while you would think that would mean that high schoolers would have learned about the crisis, really those classes focus on the American Revolutionary War and American Civil War ad nasuem so it had never come up in any of my (advanced even) history classes. So, armed with only the knowledge from that article and what had come up in my nonfiction reading (I remember the characters briefly commenting in Persepolis that with the embassy closed that there would be no more visas but the hostage crisis was never mentioned) I headed out to catch the film at school and see how well it worked on the silver screen.


Argo

Summary: The year is 1979 and tensions are high in Iran due to all of the political upheaval and unease over the past few years. As our story begins these tensions come to a point and citizens storm the American embassy and take all the workers hostage, all but six that is who manage to escape and hide out in Tehran, almost as trapped as their colleagues. The CIA gets word of these six and starts to devise plans to get them out and for once it seems like the flashiest plan, to claim that their part of a fake movie production crew, might be the one that saves them.

The Good: Normally I don't like thrillers since they remind me a bit too much of conspiracy theories, both of them rely on the idea that there are people out there who are so much smarter than the average person and perfectly control everything (well except for that one moment that starts the plot/leads a person to concoct an insane theory) and that stretches my suspension of disbelief a bit too far. Here however we have a realistic set-up (growing tensions lead to an embassy being attacked and people in one building are situated in a way that lets them escape and then hide out with allies) and it's this setting that makes the rest of the story work. I also liked a lot of the dialogue on the American side of things (although sadly I think all of the snappiest lines were made up since they were in situations that weren't based on real events), although that leads to my biggest problem with the film.

The Bad: While I am okay with some dramatization of the events for the sake of a movie (the confrontation with the guards at the airport? Okay especially since it wraps up a character arc) but some of them were just silly (the scene following it, that was just unnecessary). Wikipedia (both the Argo [2012 film] and the Canadian Caper pages) has a whole section on historical accuracy, with sources, and it sounds like quite a few little details were changed and I highly recommend anyone whose seen the film to at least glance through, a few things in the film didn't ring true with me and sure enough they weren't. I suspect the reason for at least a few of the changes was to make the movie longer (it clocks in at 2 hours exactly and I had been curious how they were going to make a full length film with what is essentially, as odd as it sounds, a straightforward story) and after looking at Wikipedia I think they could've cut some of the fake events and instead focuses more on the Americans in Tehran (really the film was about  Mendez, not the Americans) since they went through a lot more there which could've filled the time instead.

The Audio: No real comments here, the audio wasn't really important to the story (neither were the visuals actually, this is a story that also works just fine in print) but nothing stuck out to me for the wrong reasons so I suppose it was technically sound.

The Visuals: The film used some actual news reports from 1979 and I'm curious if some of the video of the protests in Tehran were also from 1979 since were were some shots there were letter-boxed (followed immediately afterwards by shots that were not). Regardless, the use of actual broadcast was a nice touch and was the only thing that really stood out to me visual wise (well, I have learned since that Mendez was part Hispanic so it's a bit frustrating that he was portrayed by a clearly all white guy).


So, while I enjoyed the movie while I was watching it (and was annoyed by some parts I knew to be dramatizations), after reading more about the history of the Canadian Caper I'm frustrated that they did dramatize some parts when they cut out other parts that could have helped fill the time and up the tension instead (and that there were a few lines in particular that paint some people/groups in completely the wrong light and could have been easily re-written so as to not do it). So I'm only going to give this movie a 3 out of 5 after all and probably won't rewatch it (then again I don't think it's the kind of story that benefits from rewatching anyway, regardless of historical accuracy).  

Anime Review: Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer)

One of the winter shows I followed that I wasn't crazy about but gave me something to watch while I was waiting for my laundry to finish up, if it had aired as part of the larger Spring or Fall seasons instead I probably would have had too many other things to watch to dedicate time to follow this. Oh, and a funny bit that doesn't really fit in the review, I've been studying Japanese for three years now and have a very, very basic grasp on it so despite all of that I still rely on subtitles quite a bit while watching most shows. However, the dialogue was so basic here that I could understand over half of each episode without looking at the subtitles which does sum up the show in an odd way, it's nothing inventive or worth getting extra excited over and if you've been watching anime for a few years and have seen your fair share of romantic comedies there's probably nothing here for you.

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer)

  
Summary: Set in the same 'verse as Please Teacher and Onegai Twins, but not requiring knowledge of either, Kirishima Kaito expects to have a quiet summer vacation with his care-taker sister out of town and spending his time making films with his friends. What he doesn't remember however is that one night while shooting his was struck by a small spaceship piloted by alien Ichika who used some of her technology to heal him. She quickly transfers schools and manages to live with him for the summer, both to make sure his recovery goes well but also to look for a place on Earth based on a memory in her mind, a memory implanted by her ancestors that no one knows the meaning too.

The Good: This series can basically be summed up as "a more light-hearted Super 8 with slightly older characters" and I really liked the parts it did differently from Super 8. No giant militaries chasing the characters around and providing a convenient antagonist to move the plot around and causing the plot to forget it started off as a story about kids making a movie, nope Kaito is still filming even when things get heated towards the end. There are a few subtle hints throughout the series, mostly in visual details, that the story isn't set in the modern day and it was fun to see how the kids were making their movie with all the cheesy special effects (and probably much more romantic than watching them sit around a computer and carefully time noises to video sequences). Also happy that the show never forgot that part of it's premise involved an alien and that the resolution to Ichika's problems didn't feel like a hastily slapped together solution, rather it fit in with everything else nicely and cleanly.  

The Bad: The biggest difference from Super 8 however is that what romance there was there was pretty straight-forward, here Ano Natsu has a full-blown love-polygon which wasn't really my cup of tea. I must give them credit for at least making it complicated, there are no simple love triangles or such here, and all of the threads were well resolved by the end (sure some people had their hearts broken but they were starting to move past it by that point which is what I hoped to see). Those parts do get a bit cliched though, the main reason I could follow so much of the dialogue without seeing the subtitles was because I had heard all the conversations a dozen times before, it may have been resolved well but it certainly didn't do anything new.

The Audio: While there were some nice visual details to the opening and closing sequences the music wasn't memorable in the slightest so I don't have anything to say about it. Nothing really to say about the voice acting as well, it worked (well, at least I THINK Remon's voice was supposed to sound a bit odd) and I didn't have any problems with it. Again, see my statements that this show just didn't do anything new, just older stuff well.

The Visuals: While the character designs look a bit different from generic "anime character" designs overall the series isn't hugely inventive visually either. I did like the visuals used for the ending song and for the science-fiction parts, those looked rather cool and I liked that the show had a lot of little details to indicate that it's not set in modern day Japan (it's actually so subtle that I doubt everyone picked up on it but there were actually a lot of hints as the story went along). I do swear that half of the episodes were created just for an excuse to put the girls in bathing suits or yukatas (which I would actually accuse a lot of series doing) but everything looked good, regardless of what the scene actually was.


So, if this does sound interesting to anyone (and I imagine aficionados of romantic anime will try this one out) it is streaming over on crunchyroll and was licensed as part of The Anime Network's big licensing spree last winter (probably won't be out until way later this year or early next year and I think they only got DVD rights for it but it is licensed). Funny enough next week's anime also involves a lot of romance in it, guess it's to make up for the fact that the past five or so shows didn't have a lot of it (well, depending on your interpretation of Fam, Rin-ne, and Chihayafuru certainly had romance, it just more of a minor theme than a major theme over all and I'm sure people would argue with me on that).  

TV Series Review: Life on Mars (season two UK version)

Unlike the previous season it was incredibly simple for me to get a copy of Life on Mars season 2 (walking into my school's library, go to the basement, grab the DVDs and go). I love it when it's this simple to watch something legally, then again I have no idea why it's so much harder to find illegal streams of a British tv show from a few years ago versus a subtitled stream of a 10+ year old foreign cartoon. In any case, onto the review!

Life on Mars (season 2, original UK version)

Summary: Following where the first season left off, Sam Tyler is a DC in Manchester 1973 but he's really from 2007 where, as far as he can tell, he's in a coma following a car accident. He continues to obsess over what has happened to his life while solving cases and dealing with his coworkers in 1973 but doesn't seem to be making much progress as his 1973 life gets even more complicated as it goes on.

The Good: It's fun to compare this show to Grimm, which is another cop-show-with-a-twist that I've been following lately, since with Grimm I can play it in the background and still basically follow along, here the show really demands your full attention if you want to really get something out of it and it's interesting enough to hold your attention for a full episode. Each story was interesting, it never felt like the writers were taking the same plot from an earlier episode and just mixing different details in, and while the solutions weren't so simple they could be solved within the first five minutes there were enough hints for the viewer to put together the case and it's solution by the end. The characters were also fun, I was glad to see that Annie had an even more central role in this season, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed this show from beginning to end.

The Bad: I have, mixed, feelings however on the ending of this series, even despite the fact that I had accidentally found out how the show ended before I even started it. The ending wasn't bad and certainly made sense with the themes the show had set up, I just have some mixed feelings on it. Part of the reason for the mixed feelings is that there is a lot left unexplained, Sam Tyler's story does seem well wrapped up by the mechanics of how the setting worked were barely touched upon and I do want to check out Ashes to Ashes to see it explained. That was my main gripe with the show, which is more because I'm a little more obsessed with settings than most people, overall it was a very strong show.

The Audio: I think the show used even more period insert songs this season than the previous and all of the choices seemed to fit in really well. I wasn't familiar with many of the songs but when looking at the lyrics it was very clear why they had been chosen and they usually provided a bit of foreshadowing as well. The rest of the music didn't stand out quite a much but the bits I do recall that it all seemed to flow well.

The Visuals: There's no change in the visual styling from the previous season, everything still has a slight sephia tone and overall the styling seemed spot on. I've seen some comments on wikipedia that there were some background details that appeared in the show that weren't period appropriate but nothing in there ever stuck out so much that it drew me out of the show.


So, not much else to say except that I need to figure out where I can find a copy of Ashes to Ashes to keep on going before I completely forget about the details here!  

TV Series Review: Life on Mars season 1 (British version)

Well I had a fun time getting a hold of this series and I'm still not even sure how it happened. Back in early January I was browsing the school library's catalog and found that both seasons of the British version of the show were listed but that the first season was lost. So I thought, I'm able to find cartoons from other countries online and subtitled so how hard can it be to find a show that doesn't even need subtitles? Really hard it turns out, I found around the first five episodes before giving up and deciding I would just have to wait for spring break and check out the DVDs from my local home library (I had put in an interlibrary loan request but it had fallen through). But then I got an email saying it was on hold for me at the library, after I had gotten an email saying the interlibrary loan had fallen through, and I went to pick up a copy of the series with my library's sticker on it. I'm wondering if my request triggered something in the system so they ordered a new copy or what but decided not to complain and simply enjoy the show.

Life on Mars Season One:

Summary: DCI Sam Tyler (roughly a Chief of Detectives in the US) is on the case one day when he’s hit by a car and wakes up in Manchester (a city in England) in 1973 as the new DC transfer to the local police department. Police work is conducted rather differently in 1973, no version of the Miranda Rights, the Gene HuntInterrogation technique, and all the coopers carry guns and will shoot if provoke. So Sam must learn how to maneuver in this alien, new world all the while he keeps hearing snippets from 2006 where his body apparently lies in an unresponsive coma.  

The Good: One of the big draws to the show is that Sam Tyler has a vague idea of what is going on around him in 2006 and I liked those bits (which doesn't mean the rest of the show was bad, I just really liked that detail). As the audience you already know that he’s telling the truth, he really isn’t from 1973, but it’s also very easy to see why he appears crazy to everyone around him, especially Annie (who is part of the women's department which makes her a little bit of an outcast as well). I also liked how Sam Tyler’s own past was worked into the plot and thought it was a clever move, he knows that some odd things happened in his past right around this time so why not investigate? All of the crimes seemed relevant to the time as well and none of them were obviously easy to figure out and were interesting to watch. Also, props to John Simm for some really good acting, the only show I had seen him in before was as The Master in Doctor Who and in there I was seriously doubting he could actually act since he was so hammy. Here however he did a completely different character and it actually took me some time to realize it was the same actor*.

The Bad: My main complaint is that this season doesn’t stand on it’s own very well since the ending just doesn’t do much. Sam does have character growth but has only partially accepted his fate and it’s clear that this show is going to have/really needs its second season. Since there is a second season this is a bit less of a problem and it was easily my biggest problem with the show but writing a multi-part show where the individual parts can't stand on their own does mean that the writing went wrong at one point or another.

The Audio: The show has several period pieces of music playing in the background and a few of them reference themes in the show (such as the titular “Life on Mars” song by David Bowie, part of the song seems to literally describe the show and the idea is that 1973 is so alien to Sam Tyler that he might as well be on Mars). Normally I wouldn’t have been a fan of a lot of the songs used in the show, they’re simply not my style, but I really liked how the music was integrated and found myself enjoying the music and that’s probably the ultimate sign that the music was used well.

The Visuals: The show is set in 1973 and does a nice job recreating the setting with the clothes, color schemes, and cars used. One touch I liked was how the 1973 police station is always filled with cigarette smoke, something absent from the shots of it in the 2000s. I’m not that fond of 1970s style but I thought that the designers managed to make it all look natural on the characters, not like people from the current day at a costume party.

Thankfully I have not had nearly as hard a time getting a hold of the second season of Life on Mars, my school library already had a copy of that, so I'm making my way through that right now and enjoying it as well. I know there was a deliberate decision to stop the show after two seasons (with Ashes to Ashes being made a bit later as a spiritual successor of sorts) so hopefully that resolves my problems with the show. 

*and that’s not because I’m bad at faces since he looks identical in both shows, although it has been a while since I saw John Simm in Doctor Who.

TV Series Review: Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy

I haven't had a chance to see the new movie adaption of John le Carré's book, which I've also never read, but I did find time to watch the 1979 BBC tv mini-series adaptation of the book since my dad actually had a copy of it. The American version, which I had, is six, one hour long episodes (apparently the original version was seven episodes long and some shortening/altering happened for the US version, no idea why they went to that trouble) which I watched over the course of a few days and has made me more curious than ever for how a two hour movie could hope to adapt this huge, detail heavy story.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Summary: The Cold War is on and the head (Control) of the upper division of British Intelligence (the Circus) believes that there is a mole in their midst. When a mission to collect more information about the hypothetical mole goes disastrously wrong this all but confirms it but nothing else is done to the case until George Smiley, who was forced into retirement after Control's death and remains bitter about that, is given the task to pick up where the investigation left off and figure out if it is the tinker, the tailor, the soldier, or the poorman who has turned turncoat. 

The Good: This is a very meticulously plotted series without a wasted minute and yes, it is possible to figure out the mole before the reveal (I actually did although I wasn't completely positive until the last minute). You don't need to know much about the Cold War to understand the movie, really just the basics, to understand the intrigue going on which is good since it's one less thing the viewer needs to keep track of. The series is well paced, there is always enough going on in each episode to keep it interesting and I always wanted to see the next one afterwords, but that doesn't mean that this series always made sense, see below.

The Bad: This may be due to the cuts but glancing through the Wikipedia article before I started writing I was surprised to see that some parts of the show were flashbacks since I hadn't picked up on that at all. Actually, this is a very plot dense story and if you don't have some kind of crib sheet with you (wikipedia, handy list of characters and terms that came with the DVD) then you're going to get lost fast, marathoning is not recommended for this series since that will only make it worse. That isn't a bad thing per say but you do need to be prepared to give your whole attention to this series and give yourself some time to watch it.

The Audio: Surprisingly enough this series does have distinct opening and ending themes (not 30 second clips of songs as they frantically scroll credits but proper little songs) and both of them grew on me, the image is actually a shot from the opening sequence. Other than that, the show was a bit quiet so I kept having to turn up the volume but that could've been a problem with the transfer to the DVD.

The Visuals: This series was shot in the 70s and it looks like it was (which isn't a good or bad thing, just a thing). There's not much to say about the visuals either, while they are necessary to this story it's also easy to see that this was originally a book and how this story could work in a text only environment as well.

Did I like this story? Well, honestly I'm not sure. It was well done and interesting, and I do wonder now if some of the problems I had were because of the US cut, but it just didn't grab me in the way that my favorite shows do. It didn't give me a burning desire to read the book or see this series again, although I am curious how a two hour movie version of this would work, but I still think it was a pretty good work.  

Movie Review: Super 8

Back when Super 8 came out over the summer I was a little curious was about, read some reviews, and figured out from the reviews that this wasn't my kind of movie at all. In fact, it seemed like it would probably be a movie I would rage at and feel like it was a waste of money, unless I was seeing it with friends on campus for a dollar that is. So that's what happened, I waited until school started, grabbed some friends and I saw the movie with all the nickles and dimes I had left over from doing laundry.

Super 8

Summary: In a small town in Ohio, 1979, Joe and his dad are still getting over the loss of Joe's mom a few months earlier and Joe seems to be coping better by helping his friends make a zombie movie for a local film festival. Things are going swell, the director is happy, they managed to convince a cute girl in their class to play a small role in the film, but when a military train derails at their shooting site it's only the first of many strange things to happen to their town.

The Good: Not much fiction is set between the 1960s and the 1990s (that wasn't written as contemporary fiction in that time period to start with) so I always like to see stories set then and it was fun to see people walking around with new walkmen, late '70s fashion and the dated details on the insides of the houses. It was also fun to see the kids going about making their movie and, even if I wanted to strangle some of the kids at times, I thought they felt like real children. 

The Bad: This movie ended in the wrong place and even seeing the kid's finished movie playing during the credits didn't make me much happier about it*. Others have said the movie felt like two movies smashed together and it really did feel that way at parts. Sometimes the contrast between ordinary life with soldiers in the background doing mysterious things worked and other times it just didn't. I also felt like the movie was trying too hard to make Joe's dad a really badass character that I should root for but after his line "it's us against the world Joe" I just couldn't like him. Here's a man with a hard job but he does have friends who believe him and is now in a position of authority, why the heck is he trying to isolate himself and his son?


The Audio: I thought that the sound effects managed to perfectly mimic the way that a homemade film produced a few decades ago would sound (especially one made by kids, I think someone had fun editing that whole thing) and that the background music in general was good.


The Visuals: A friend had told me beforehand that there was a scene in here that put Michael Bay to shame and there is one, way over the top (so over the top it draws you out of the movie) action scene which was just nuts. Aside from that scene, which almost felt like it should be in another movie, everything else was consistent, the CGI worked fairly well and even a few of JJ Abrams trademark lens flares managed to find their way into the movie.

I didn't end up hating this movie and didn't dislike it as much as I thought I would but it was still a silly thing and I'm confused why so many people liked it, nostalgia? Then again, I don't get why my friends still love bad movies from their childhoods either, nostalgia is a strange thing....


*I was joking with friends that after seeing District 9 and Super 8, both of which end with non humanoid aliens fixing a spaceship and taking off into outer space, that I want a movie that ends the exact same way next year with the number 7 in the title.

Comic Review: To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel

A slim book that I picked up at the local library, this was a book that looked more like middle grade reading than young adult but it seemed interesting and I flipped through a few pages which also seemed fairly interesting so I thought why not. I'll also admit that the next few comics I'm reviewing are rather large so I wanted a few shorter works as well in case time got tight and I needed to read something really quickly to keep the reviews here balanced. Besides, I like stories where dancing is a major focus so this kind of story seemed right up my alley.

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel by Siena Cherson Sigel and art by Mark Sigel

 Summary: An autobiographical story of Siena Cherson Sigel growing up dancing in the 1970s and 80s, first in Puerto Rico and then at the American School of Ballet in New York City.

The Good: It's a quick and charming read that's sure to make the reader wish they did ballet (or that they could go see one soon) even though Siena mentions some of the hardships she had doing ballet. That said, a lot of sports stories focus a lot on the pain and the things the athlete has to give up for their sport (sometimes leaving the reader wondering why they keep doing the sport in the first place) but this book maintains a happy, positive tone the whole way through and it's easy to see why Siena was willing to give up other parts of her life for ballet, her love for it comes through clearly.  

The Bad: Sometimes the transitions between sections were a little rocky and it would have been nice to have even a single reoccurring minor character, very few people in the story are even named which is a bit unusual for any story. This could be explained by the fact that that story was rather short and every panel had to be important but I would have liked the story to be a little longer and give more details on various parts of Siena's life. The story felt complete but I felt like she could have kept the readers attention just as well if the book was a little longer. 

The Art: The book is in full color and the art style is a light and slightly sketchy style which I feel like I've seen in other graphic novels aimed at this age group. The art is a little simple but it works well to compliment the story and, with something as visual as dance, it adds to the story and I think makes it work much better than if Siena had tried to explain everything using just words. 

I think this book is a good example of middle grade writing that's interesting and done well enough to appeal to older audiences as well (which is why I keep reviewing it, I'm trying to find those books that are good regardless of your age). I would love to know more about Siena's life or read more stories in general that feature ballerinas, too bad that not many come to mind right off hand. 

Book Review: Dust of 100 Dogs

Aka, the book my mom kept trying to steal from me when we were on vacation, no idea why she found this book so interesting based on the blurb on it's back cover. Then again, I don't know why I was interested by this book either, I remember coming across it in a bookstore years ago, thought it looked interesting and just now found it at my local library. I suppose part of the interest for me was because the blurb seems to give away the entire plot of the book so I was wondering what was left to tell.

Dust of a Thousand Dogs by A.S. King

Part of the reason I was initially attracted to this book (in the bookstore) was because of it's cool design. It's only three colors, very graphic and really fits the book well, plus that's a pretty neat font used for the title (also a little unusual to see the title placed in the lower right hand corner of the cover, usually it's right at the top). So the cover itself is eye-grabbing and really stands out compared to other YA titles.

Summary: Emer was originally born in Ireland at the time of Cromwell and saw her family home destroyed while she escaped and eventually became a pirate terrorizing the Caribbean. However, right after burying some treasure, she was killed and cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs before being reborn again as a human. It’s now the 1970s and she has finally been reborn as a human (named Saffron) who remembering every single life she’s had before and determined to escape her deadbeat family and reclaim her treasure.

The Good: It seems that the book gives away it’s entire plot on the back cover but proves that knowing what happened (the facts) isn’t the same as knowing how it happened (the reason), in a way it shows that you can still enjoy a story even if you know almost all of what is going to happen. The book uses a lot of flashbacks to tell the story and, in an unexpected twist, shows that Emer and Saffron are not the same person unlike most stories where a reincarnated person is exactly the same. Emer is certainly a part of Saffron but they are still two separate people, Saffron doesn’t mind her visitor/former self living with her and seems to have simply accepted that she knows all the things that Emer does. Because of all the flasbacks this story is more of a historical fiction work which covers two very different time periods, 17th century Ireland and the Caribbean and 1970s through early 1990s America which is an unusual combination for a book written only a few years ago*. Emer and Saffron carry the story so well that book is a really interesting and engaging read.

The Bad: A few things about the ending seem unexpected or just a bit too convenient for some of the characters (almost an inverse deus ex machina since it makes things harder for Saffron/Emer ). It also provides a much needed climax for the story since in the current timeline the story is already in the 1990s and most of Saffron's problems have been (at least temporarily) taken care of yet something still needs to happen at the end to wrap everything up. It’s not a plot heavy book, it’s very much a character book instead and at times it feels more like a very strange slice of life story. The interludes the include dog training advice/snippets from Emer's 100 lives as various dogs sometimes felt rather strange and out of place, the story would have functioned perfectly without them. 

I ended up liking this book more than I thought I would (just because I had no idea how much I would like it) and wouldn't mind buying a copy of it someday for an e-reader or such. Makes me wish I had more historical fiction to read as well, for some reason that genre just isn't as popular in young adult (or if it is it's something more along the lines of ROMANCE, INTRIGUE.... in the 1800s!), although it is entirely possible that in my years of wandering through bookstores and libraries that I've just missed all the historical fiction they have.

*by which I mean, it's rare to see what is technically historical fiction books that are only set a few decades ago (instead of some more "romantic" era).