Kimi ni tokoke anime?

Wow.  I’m a bit out of touch, aren’t I?  Just found out today that there’s a Kimi Ni Todoke anime!  This is probably old news to everyone else, but I liked the preview:

Ponyo

I keep forgetting that Ponyo will be opening in English on August 14. I wasn’t sure about going (it’s not the most exciting or coherent movie I’ve ever seen) but I think I’m leaning towards it now that I’ve seen the English trailer.  (Oddly enough, the only anime I seem to prefer dubbed are Ghibli films.)

Half my problem is the complete lack of excitement over most of the movies released this summer.  I’ve only really loved 3 so far (UP, Star Trek and Harry Potter) so my enthusiasm has waned with each new let down.  I supposed I shouldn’t punish Ponyo for everyone else’s mistakes.  :)

But!  I do feel that it’s important to support films like this in the theater.  Movie studios love looking at profit and if crappy movies get sequels based on the box office,  then I think it’s important that ones like Ponyo get my $11-13.

Plus, Leam Neeson is in it.  Gotta love that.

I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but…

I spent the last night of my Christmas vacation pulling an all nighter with my nephew to watch this:

Yes, it’s so cheesey it hurts.  It’s unintentionally funny at times.  But wow, did we get hooked on it pretty quickly.  That’s the trick, folks.  Embrace the cheese, turn off your brain and enjoy Sailor Moon with real live people.  The nephew was disappointed with how quickly Mercury faded into the background – she was always his favorite when he was little (tho I’m assured by a friend who’s watched the whole thing that she makes a comeback later on) and I’m not a huge fan of the actress playing Venus (my favorite!) but we started watching at 10pm at didn’t stop until 5am and that’s only because I was catching a bus back to Toronto in two hours. 

I was happy to see that it follows the manga a little more closely than the anime did (Venus has a much bigger role here) so at least there are some differences in the story.  I also kept forgetting who Zoicite was in the show – they had him dressed like Malachite from the anime and he mostly sat around and played the piano really really intently.  They also kept the backstory of the generals (so far anyway) closer to the original story – that took some explaining to the nephew – and Tuxedo mask doesn’t throw magic roses here.  He doesn’t seem to really have any powers at all, really.  One moment that had us pausing the show to stop laughing was after he showed up to save Sailor Moon… then walked off through the park in the middle of the day.  Just casually strolled off…

This definitely earned the label of guilty pleasure, but I kept thinking while watching that the actors must have had a lot of fun doing this.

There’s something in my eye(s)

I decided to be brave after my last eye exam and give contacts a shot.  Yes, I figured it was about time that I overcame my “eye thing” and contacts would be very nice to have.  I discovered that I have a huge blinking reflex to overcome, but I’m better at putting them in myself than having someone else do it.   My eyes like to send a frantic, “Some dude’s fingers are touching me!! Get them out! Get them out!” message to my brain.  Tonight I went over to Laurie’s and got a live demonstration of taking the damn things out since that was my biggest worry.  (I was actually going to find out the location of the nearest walk in clinic just in case I couldn’t manage.)  Yesterday I spent a whole hour in the optometrists office and had to eventually get him to take them out.  His refrain was “stop digging around in there!”  but his demo was less than helpful as he didn’t actually wear contacts.

I gave them another try tonight but I’m not sure if the experiment was a complete success.  I could *feel* them covering my eyes and my vision wasn’t quite right on one of them.  It made me wonder if the lenses somehow got switched.  Not when I put them on!  I totally knew that the big “L” on the case meant that that was my left lens.  :)  I’m going to put them in again tomorrow afternoon at work and then go to the eye place (conveniently located in my hospital) and have the guy check them to make sure they’re in properly.  Maybe I just need drops or something…

But why am I putting them in tomorrow afternoon?  To see Iron Man, of course!  I went opening night and absolutely loved it.  It’s everything I could want a comic book movie to be, and I even think that comic book Iron Man is a dink.  That Civil War thing was totally his fault.  :)  But I loved Robert Downey Jr. – he was perfect.  And his little robot arm thingy in the lab could have it’s own movie.  I’d go see it.  So my second viewing is my reward for contact lens success.  It’s going to be the first movie I’ve seen since I was 12 that didn’t have my glasses framing the screen. 

Speaking of eye things, btw… there’s a new xxxHolic season/series started.  There are five episodes subtitled so far and the first story is of the grudge-holding spider that webs shut Domeki’s eye.  I loved that story. 

Just a little bit different

There is a strange, alternate reality version of Princess Mononoke on television right now.  Many of the voice actors have changed, the performances are different and so is the dialogue.  It’s a wee bit mind bending to listen to.  I’m not surprised that there were different versions of the movie recorded, just that one of them made it on to tv.

huh.

Oh, of course!

I read via the Newsarama blog that Viz sent cease and desist letters to fansubbers working on the Death Note anime.   Instead it’s available for sale on the Viz website.   But!  When you get there, it says in RED letters:

This product is only available for purchase in the US.

Of course!  Now, I’m not feeling worked up about this at all (I can’t stand the manga so haven’t bothered with the anime) but this is fairly typical.  What kind of cheeses me off about including Canada as a country it’s licensed in, yet denying us the ability to pay for legal downloads is that if you actually go for the dubbed version it’s probably being done by Canadians.  Nice, eh?  (Please note Canadian inflection on the “eh”)

Hmm.  No, I just checked it out and it’s the subbed version for sale.  That’s unusual.

Now I’m going back to rereading Twelve Sharp and watching the Dr. Who Christmas special, which is playing on CBC.  Heh.  I just got to see the Tardis high speed chase again…